A Converting Heart


“Compassion born in solitude makes us very much aware of our own historicity. We are not called to respond to generalities but to the concrete facts with which we are confronted day after day. A compassionate man can no longer look at these manifestations of evil and death as disturbing interruptions of his life plan but rather has to confront them as an opportunity for the conversion of himself and his fellow human beings. Every time in history that men and women have been able to respond to the events of their world as an occasion to change their hearts, an inexhaustible source of generosity and new life has been opened, offering hope far beyond the limits of human prediction.” Henri Nouwen
These words by Henri Nouwen resonate with me. And they cause me to ask myself: How has my heart changed? For I know that it has and it is and it will.
Sometimes I think it is for others to describe the manifestation of that change but I can speak to the emotion and spiritual nature of it. As Meister Eckhart said: “spiritual living is about subtraction not addition.” Yes.
My heart has rejected on a daily basis heavy despair and ponderous agony. That does not mean those weighty monsters have not occupied my time and energy. But my heart seems to be in the process of letting them go in favor of hope and justice. Themselves, they are lighter and lifegiving, making my heart feel both full and effective. As I engage in compassion and contemplation it seems that the threats to hope, like plaque, are broken up and minimized by love and silence. 
Water helps too. To gaze and bathe and imagine into and in and within living water converts my heart no matter the disturbing interruptions. There is an eternity which is touched with compassion which transforms and transcends. There is an extensiveness and expansiveness of generosity and abundance which now pumps through the veins. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Say My Name

Image
  Respect the dignity of every human being. It begins with their name. It honors who they are. It speaks their name lovingly. Say My Name by Meleika Gesa-Fatafehi ( A Torres Strait Islander and Tongan storyletter. They descend from the Zagareb and Dauareb tribes. ) My name was my name before I walked among the living before I could breathe before I had lungs to fill before my great grandmother passed and everyone was left to grieve My name was birthed from a dream A whisper from gods to a king A shout into the stars that produced another that shone as bright They held me without being burnt, humming lullabies in pidgin My name was passed down from my ancestors They acknowledged my roots grew in two places So, they ripped my name from the ocean and mixed it into the bloodlines of my totems My name has survived the destruction of worlds and the genocidal rebirthing of so-called ones It’s escaped the overwhelmed jaw of the death bringer Many a time It has survived the conflicts that r...
Read more

Tragic Optimism

Image
Tragic Optimism...there it is, another one of those paradoxical couplings! But it speaks to me somehow, resonates really, as our time of disorientation and disillusion continues in lengths for which we have no comparison. Except perhaps in history as in slavery or holocaust or the Bible as in the Exodus! Tragic optimism is a term coined by Victor Frankl which came to life after 9/11 when research on resilience found a strange and strong meaning in these words, a synergism in their inherent tension. While telling similar stories and confessing similar emotions that which separated the resilient from the not so resilient was a capacity to make tragically optimistic meaning of the horrific event, to acknowledge pain and tragedy while holding hope, the thing which does not disappoint, the thing with feathers! Tragic optimism then seems to be much like the Christian virtue which Jesus modeled of holding sorrow and love gently together. It is a healthier psychological framework of...
Read more

What is in the Waiting?

Image
“ I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope” Psalm 130:5 What is waiting, besides you and me, in this time of isolation? Much has been written about what we will do when we are sprung! Haircuts, restaurant visits, gyms, hugs, jobs, in church worship, book group actual gatherings, ...just to name a few of the things for which we are waiting. But what is waiting for our attention differently; what have we learned? What is in the waiting? Is there a spirituality of waiting?   Waiting on God is a favorite topic for many mystics. It might be wondrous and contemplative. But during this time of Covid 19 waiting is more often than not connected to anxiety and fear. We wait for results, we wait for financial news, we wait for cures.   Much has been collapsed into the phrase, “I cannot wait to get back to normal!” To which I respond: Wait! What!? When confronted with this kind of waiting or any translation of waiting which aligns it with “norm...
Read more