The Heart of the Matter
AM Psalm 20, 21:1-7(8-14) • PM Psalm 110:1-5(6-7), 116, 117
1 Kings 7:51-8:21 • Acts 28:17-31 • Mark 14:43-52
“O Beloved, You who have created us, hear our call, make Your home in our hearts.”
How do I make room in my heart for God? One necessary step is to let go of the usual ego-driven thoughts and feelings that inhabit my psyche. Centering Prayer is a spiritual practice that, when practiced regularly, helps us clear a space for God. Only the empty glass can accept the fine wine....
I have lived my life with a compulsion/addiction to “fill each minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run” as Kipling admonishes us in the poem, “If.” The awareness has come to me recently that I have filled my life too full with activities and commitments. Part of that motivation has come from my mother’s advice to “earn my keep.” I learned that my worth was tied to what I could do. What have I produced today?
I remember being confused by John Milton’s words: “They also serve who only stand and wait.” How could I serve without being up and doing? More confusion reigned when I read the Mary-Martha story in the Gospel of Luke. Here was Martha working her butt off in the kitchen while Mary sat at the feet of Jesus and Mary’s was the “better part”? Say what!
Thomas Keating taught me that the best doing comes out of Being. I have decided to let go of many of my activities/commitments for the foreseeable future. Then, with the good counsel of the Holy Spirit, I will add back that which is essential. In the words of Henry David: “To live deliberately so that when I came to die I wouldn’t discover that I had not lived.”
Solitude and contemplation along with meaningful relationships with family and friends will help me discern that which is essential. Please stay tuned as this life experiment unfolds. I will conclude with some words of the late Benedictine Sister Macrina Weidekehr:
And don’t we all with fierce hunger,
crave a cave of solitude,
a space of deep listening—
full of quiet darkness and stars,
until finally we hear a syllable of God
echoing in the cave of our hearts?
Written by Nicholas Cole
A grateful, recovering human-doing.