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. 

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