Are You Listening?

This was first posted on June 29, 2009  

It's a good reminder for me, for all of us I think to do "heart" checks every now and again.  I know that if I don't then I am not even honest with myself and God when it comes to "seeing" what's really going on under all the activity. 

 I can pretend so well...

Another portion of "The Sacred Romance" by John Eldredge.

"For what shall we do when we wake one day to find we have lost touch with our hearts and with it the very refuge where God's presence resides?

Starting very early, life has taught all of us to ignore and distrust the deepest yearnings of our heart. Life, for the most part, teaches us to suppress our longing and live only in the external world where efficiency and performance are everything. We have learned from parents and peers, at school, at work, and even from our spiritual mentors that something else is wanted from us other than our heart, which is to say, that which is most deeply us. Very seldom are we ever invited to live out of our heart. If we are wanted, we are often wanted for what we can offer functionally. If rich, we are honored for our wealth; if beautiful, for our looks; it intelligent, for our brains. So we learn to offer only those parts of us that are approved, living out a carefully crafted performance to gain acceptance from those who represent life to us. We divorce ourselves from our heart and begin to live a double life. Frederick Buechner expresses this phenomenon in his biographical work. Telling Secrets:

Our orginal shimmering self gets buried so deep we hardly live out of it at all....rather, we learn to live out of all the other selves which we are constantly putting on and taking off like coats and hats against the world's weather.

Communion with God is replaced by activity for God. There is little time in this outer world for deep questions. Given the right plan, everything in life can be managed...except your heart.

The inner life, the story of your heart, is the life of deep places within us, our passions and dreams, our fears and our deepest wounds. It is the unseen life, the mystery within - what Buechner calls our "shimmering self." It cannot be managed like a corporation. The heart does not respond to principles and programs; it seeks not efficiency, but passion. Art, poetry, beauty, mystery, ecstasy: These are what rouse the heart. Indeed, they are the language that must be spoken if one wishes to communicate with the heart. It is why Jesus so often taught and related to people by telling stories and asking questions. His desire was not just to engage their intellects but to capture their hearts.

Indeed, if we will listen, a Sacred Romance calls to us through our heart every moment of our lives. It whispers to us on the wind, invites us through the laughter of good friends, reaches out to us through the touch of someone we love. We've heard it in our favorite music, sensed it at the birth of our first child, been drawn to it while watching the shimmer of a sunset on the ocean. The Romance is even present in times of great personal suffering: the illness of a child, the loss of a marriage, the death of a friend. Something calls to us through experiences like these and rouses an inconsolable longing deep within our heart, wakening in us a yearning for intimacy, beauty, and adventure.

This longing is the most powerful part of any human personality. It fuels our search for meaning, for wholeness, for a sense of being truly alive. However we may describe this desire, it is the most important thing about us, our heart of hearts, the passion of our life. And the voice that calls to us in this is place is none other than the voice of God.

We cannot hear this voice if we have lost touch with our heart."

Are you listening??

I wanted to say something here because some might think that to live from the heart is the same as living out of your emotions. I do not believe this to be true. Our "heart" is who we are. Emotions are not who we are, but things we experience. They are not good or bad in themselves. They are telling us how we are feeling at the moment. It is what we do with our emotions that matters. That is more telling of the state of our heart.

Blessings!