Listen to Your Heart

A nurse, teaching our class of military medics how the human heart sounds, said something like this, “You’ve heard your heartbeat inside your ear, as you’re falling asleep, lying on your side.” Until that point I’m not certain I had heard my heartbeat in that fashion. Since then, that bit of information has caused mean awful lot of tossing and turning.

A student once asked, in writing, that I evaluate his required ‘ten page, double-spaced, typewritten paper,’ which he’d penned in three paragraphs on the single sheet he’d turned in that I, “Grade this with your (my) heart, not your (my) head. I penned in return, “My heart is moved. My head is unconvinced. F!”

Both the nurse and the student were on to something. There can be an amazing hypnotic effect on the mind’s voice when we focus on the steady lub-dub rhythm of our heart’s present, future leaning movement. There can be insightful perceptions, beyond the mere mental, when we focus on the heart’s lilting melody; hearing hymnody to the tempo beating, “Now, now, now, still now, now, now…”

Tuning into the heart’s voice requires stilling, not disconnecting, the mind. Becoming attuned to our heart’s poetic knowing requires both stilling and practice. We practice ways to grow quiet. We rehearse ways to absorb and to relish new awareness of our self, as self – a knowing self, a known self, a loving self, a loved self.

When ipods and cell phones, MySpace and YouTube give way to more subtle, interior intrusions real knowing can well up. From such knowing true prayer can arise:
• 5"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you;…(Jeremiah 1)

• 9Yet it was you who took me from the womb; you kept me safe on my mother's breast. 10On you I was cast from my birth, and since my mother bore me you have been my God. (Psalm 22)

• 13For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother's womb. 14I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well. 15My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. 16Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed. (Psalm 139).

Of such prayer conversion (turning away from X and turning toward Y) beckons: Be still, and know that I am God! (Psalm 46)

When we know that God is God we also know that we are not God. There is relief in knowing that we are cared for. There is resilience in trusting that we are lifted up and carried over – in slumber, in labor, in fretting, and in freedom. Now, now, and now, still now.

Sucking Wind, Breathing Prayer

My wife gave me a desk calendar for Christmas. Its theme is, “Our Sacred Community." It features artwork from a variety of cultures, as well as pithy saying by person from races and ethnicities other than my own. It’s published by a religious order of Catholic sisters who make the arts their primary ministry. You can check out all their cool stuff at www.ministryofthearts.org.

One of the planner’s coolest features is a brief message / suggestion for daily meditation or action which follows a monthly focus. January’s focus takes its lead from a word by Chief Seattle; The air is precious to us, for all things share the same breath – the beast, the tree the human… Last Friday’s action / reflection suggestion was, “Breathe consciously.” Today’s nearly took my breath away.

The calendar’s action / reflection suggestion for Friday, January 19th says, “Pray for our President." There you go. I was first struck by the bold face idea of it. Pray for Bush? About what? I should ask God to _____! For him?

Lord knows the man needs prayer. Jesus is his Lord and Savior, but he won’t talk to his enemies – presumably folk “his Jesus” died to save. He issues ultimatums, you’re for us, or you’re against us – presumably folk God might suggest are our brothers and sisters to keep.

Wait. There’s more. The suggestion says, Pray for our President. It implies I have a stake in this man’s holding this office at this time, in this place. How hard I’ve tried to disown myself from his social policies, and to disavow myself from his faith posture.

When I caught my breath I was reminded of another saying of Jesus recorded in Luke’s 7th chapter: “Remove the log from your own eye, so you might see the speck in your neighbor’s more clearly, before you try to remove it.”

To the extent that people of faith choose to live in the world, not of the world; inside Our Sacred Community to which God is still committed to create, to save, and to bless, then we who claim to be alert to the in-breaking of the Kingdom (Rule) of God must hail the heavenly powers to lead, guide and direct all our leaders.

To the extent that people of faith choose to live, as Luther suggests, in a reality where we are all, simultaneously, saints and sinners, then we all have some optical tending to do. I spent some time with Psalm 131:

O LORD, my heart is not lifted up,
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.
O Israel, hope in the LORD
from this time on and forevermore.

Wind-Making, Breath-Sharing God, give all of us, myself and my brother, George Bush, who claim a relationship in Christ by baptism, making our water-connection to one another thicker than our blood-connection to our own mother’s, the vision to see our relatedness, rootedness, kinship and belonging is the surest roadmap to true peace, with every breath we take, as each one is yet and still another gift from You. Amen