An Unfettered Heart: An Opening Meditation
We are exhorted by Christ to be transformed and become again like little children: “Amen I say to you, unless you be converted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3, Douay- Rheims Bible).
Play, simplicity, fascination, and imagination are the qualities that spring to mind. In the smallest of things, such as a stone, a twig, a leaf, a seashell, or a tree, the young child sees entire worlds. The ordinary is enchanted by unseen possibilities.
The perception of time’s passage is another difference between youthful and older minds. To live simply is to live in full appreciation of the blessings of each moment. To be attentive to the beauty right in front of us requires an unfettered heart: a heart aroused more by presence than by reflection on history and formulas.
For the very young, sight is not filtered through so many layers of assumption, belief and experience. They are spontaneous and authentic and speak from the heart. Transparency of thought, immediacy of experience, feeling-centered language, the birth of metaphor and love of story all mark the earliest years. These are the very same qualities that are increasingly in demand among leaders who would credibly navigate the challenges of the 21st century.
What is the opposing state that Our Lord suggests is of lesser merit as we continue on our spiritual journey?
It is the imprisoned state of attachment coupled with the memory of frustrated dreams. We witness the idealism of youth give way to pessimistic realism and cynicism: the carbon monoxide of joy. We see an insatiable thirst for amassing things that creates the illusion of individual prowess made evident by ever larger landfills cluttered with the discarded treasures of our plastic and digital age.
Busyness is the norm and many descry the tyranny of impossibly long to-do lists. Stress and anxiety disorders are correspondingly rising as quickly as the shelf life of must-have products are falling. We cling to our understanding of things and, as so brilliantly captured by novelist Anais Nin in the 1970s, we come to “see things not as they are, but as we are.”
Post-modern humanity craves the antidote for this prison of attachment – let go of stuff, de-clutter, and be freed from excess. We need to relearn the art of traveling light – more like a child. It becomes increasingly imperative that we strip away the habits that smother the spirit as so many vines sap the strength of trees.
This excess is so much more than the outer things that we may choose to temporarily “give up” as is often the thought process during Lent. Much tougher to shed are our self-comforting ways of thought. We hug tried and true routines that provide a sense of predictability.
This is all well and good so long as we are not blind to what’s emerging. According to much psychological research, so strong is this attachment to what we think we know that we fight hard against any data, however robust, that challenges our deeply held interpretations. We are, in essence, wired to prove true what we hold to be true, rather than to search for that one disconfirming instance that would require us to go back to the drawing board.
This is not the way of the child who experiments with things, tries on the new, and rides the waves of the possible. Our reflexive mindset, left unchecked, leads with seeming inevitability to rheumatoid-like thought: a condition by which we discard alternative worlds that are distasteful simply because they are foreign. At one extreme, we see the march of fundamentalisms wherein metaphor is mistaken for the Real that our poetry yearns to describe. On the other, we see empty materialism and crude scientism.
It is wholesome and enlightening to examine our attachment to ways and means, rituals and formulae, and favorite explanations that have become auto-reflexive. Our hearts and minds become swiftly bloated by all the ideas that build up cognitive cocoons around our presumption of true knowing and certainty. As a result, we relinquish the child-like capacity to attend to the living Call of the Holy Spirit, rising up in an instant, beckoning us to pay closer attention.
While our religious and spiritual traditions offer inspired and inspiring discipline for the Soul’s journey, we must also be wary of reluctance to embrace our evolving consciousness. Opening ourselves up to new poetry and metaphors enlivens the soul. When we pay attention to the still small voice, we can catch a fleeting image of a simpler way, a fresh breeze that inspires open heart and mind: the spirit of the child.
Abiding in the moment is the exhortation of Brothers Francis and Lawrence. Doing so opens us to the Deep that calls incessantly in every breath we take. Being vigilant for its movement places us squarely on the road to Emmaus. As we walk with humility, the One speaks to us from infinite perspective and guides our expectant and wondering – wandering finitude. At the event horizon, where finite meets infinite, Divine light fills our every cell, and so we are transformed.
Resting in the simple and unvarnished moment calls on us to be truly still (which is in our times exceedingly rare). Our minds are ever active, anticipating, worrying, rehearsing the next moment and sharpening our plans for action. As a counter-force to this feverishness, Scrioture andbtradition invite us to immerse ourselves in appreciative witness, deeper listening, and disciplined self-emptying.
Let us renew the art and ancient practice of just waiting and listening for the movement of the Spirit. Whether unaided by method or with support from such practices as contemplative photography, journaling, drawing, etc., let us slow down to go many fathoms deeper.
The quest for the simpler way is the epitome of Franciscan spirituality. Paying keen attention is a gift worth opening to reveal the often uncelebrated beauty of ordinary moments: (e.g., the velvet silence in the time just before sleep, the first light moment upon rising, the periods of quiet in-between the sounds around us during a walk, the scene of blackbirds fully present in their competition for suet on a small tree, the quiet space between two breaths, the blank page before language shapes a thought, the untold story of an old tree, the play of light and shadow as the sun moves across the sky, and the moment of nightfall).
Watching and waiting for the gentle whisper on the wind, we are called to suspend belief and constructs long enough to be truly present. Beliefs are our delicious adornments placed on the surface of deep mystery and their beauty has a place. We just need to be balanced so that mental chatter of our own invention doesn’t drown out the Living Christ, the matrix on which the whole Cosmos rests.
Rising from a time of thorough de-cluttering, our theology, dialogue and ritual can be more authentically prayerful. Silence acts as a healing elixir for our attachments to both stuff and thought. We are thereby reconditioned for humble reflection and the joyful, liberating play of biblical, liturgical and spontaneous poetry.
In practicing true kenosis, we are able to restore the deep resonance between our reason and the Call of the Holy Spirit. In unburdening ourselves of inner attachment, we become psycho-spiritually lighter. Only then can we truly soar with hearts aroused and just drop everything when asked by the Paraclete to come out and play.
Ephphatha – Be Opened!
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