Heart Happens

I've been thinking about how we get (or don't) get each other's heart. I realized this is a metaphor for something. So it's not going to be described precisely but perhaps the conversation around something indescribable is the beauty of it.

I am fortunate to have a lot of friends that "get" my heart and I get theirs. We relate at what I would call a heart level. It's interesting that I'm quite sure we have dramatically different political perspectives, we are all over the place in how we understand (or misunderstand God) but that is immaterial to the enjoyment of our friendship.

I love something one of those friends posted this morning;

"I still crave the extravagant gesture, the woman spilling a year’s wages on the feet of Jesus, the rarest perfume, washing his feet and drying them with her hair, a gesture so sensual it left the other men in the room paralyzed with criticism, analysis, theoretical moral concern - for what - the poor?

Or was it just misdirected outrage in light of the glaring poverty of their own imaginations?" Linford Detweiler

Jesus' interest in people must have so strongly connected with their heart. And it seems like often the people he connected with so strongly and beautifully were people with wounded hearts.

So I think there is something about the wounding and breaking processes, the processes that were so wrong or so painful and feels unredeemable, of life that open us up to heart connection. It's so often true that those events that have been painful make us respond by hiding our hearts away but also I think they create a yearning to have our hearts opened up and connected with others.

At least with people that we think value our heart. Not our wisdom, our beauty, but our heart.

The mystery of that heart. Just as I believe God finds endless enjoyment watching us grow and act and be, we find people who connect with that open-ended invitation to be who we were created to be.

When we are in conversation with those people it feels open and inviting. We don't have to measure our words. We get to experiment in ways that perhaps have been shut down for years.

Silliness becomes possible. Wisdom unexpectedly shows up. Tears happen. Empathy connects us. We walk away invigorated and refreshed.

Rob Bell and my family, a parable

My kids don't have to struggle to be my kids that I love so much. They don't have to do anything. If they want to participate in that relationship all they have to do is rest in being my kids. I don't require that they love me, though I like that, they don't have to do special practices altho hey, if they give me a little red two-seater as I have requested, I'd love it.

I haven't given them a booklet on how to maintain that family relationship because thankfully at some point we developed a healthy "spirit" of the family that they can either grow in or grow away from. I'm not even requiring that Scott love me the same way Tim does, and I certainly don't need Jenny to keep track of Jesse's way of being with me.

As we love each other, our being with each other will grow and develop and change if it needs to, to allow us to continue to love each other in ways that work.

Are there specific ways of being and doing that will enhance the relationship? Yup! Could we develop and use a booklet to enhance the growth of love in the family? Sure enough.

But without referencing the "spirit" of the family, even following the instructions in that booklet won't produce more closeness in fact it could lead to disjointedness.

I have to wonder if part of the enjoyment of my family is that I just plain and simply think my kids are the best. Thinking of them, and the fact that they are where they are, just gives me pleasure.

Guess you ran afoul of this, Rob Bell

"lacking god's power to create tangible things, the false self creates by use of ideologies, definitions, social myths and words. The false self give it's own name to life and then like a self-proclaimed demiurge, demands that all of life conform to it's wishes.

What is enacted here is the tragic error of naming the elephant and then trying to ride home on the name given, instead of on the elephant itself.

This whole process frequently occurs in religion as well. We give God a name. We than equate God with the name we have given him, and in doing so we make ourselves, in effect God's God. Instead of acknowledging God as the source of our identity and existence, we make ourselves the self-proclaimed source of God's identity. God then becomes the one made in our image and likeness.

Those engaged in the undertaking of naming god see themselves to be participating in a holy work. They are the God-definer, the definition makers. They give shape to the ultimate perimeters of life.

Of course, one of the procedural principles is that God is everything and we are nothing. But they define what this means. They mark off those who properly grasp it from those who do not. Thus, while maintaining that they are nothing, they turn their nothing into a nothing that defines itself and thereby make that nothingness into a kind of everything to which all who which to know the truth must listen. This is a far cry from the true theological inquiry but it is not a far cry from the stance of the Pharisee who is always with us in the form of a deep-seated universal tendency within ourselves, It is the false self expressing it's futile, odious outcry against the Creative sovereignty of the divine freedom.

Once the false self gives birth to it's own dark gossamer existence as cut off from God, it begins to function as it's own God by passing final decision and judgements upon everything under the sun. A whole system of formulas, laws and ideologies is created to form not only one's relationship to others but to God as well. Both self and God become equated with the definitions given to them. Both God and self become cogs in a smoothly running system of self-creation."

From Merton's Palace of Nowhere, James Finley.

Feelings, nothing more than feelings?

A friend and I had another installment of a long running conversation regarding theology and it's application to humans. This seems important to us because a theology that doesn't somehow reference humans is sterile. It may be true, it may be useful, it may give glory to the divine but if somehow it doesn't touch the human condition it's merely an esoteric discussion without any chance of transformation of people's lives.

I would submit that the subject of my theology, God, is about having relationship with humans.

When I said this in one online forum, I got a terse reply; "state Scripture, chapter and verse."

I choose to ignore him and he still wants an answer. It seemed so obvious that it would be insulting to him and me to respond.

One reason the discussion with my friend is interesting is that we by our personalities and life histories are interested in different aspects of truth. He seems to want to get as clear as possible regarding rational, conceptual, dialectic truth.

I on the other hand want to know "truth" in the sense of how does it express God's personal love for humans. I want to understand the implications of rational, conceptual truth as it would be "felt" by humans.

This will come as no surprise to friends of mine that are clear that "feelings" are a focus of mine. (all together now; Whoooo, feelings, nothing more than... )

Certainly guilty as charged. But for me the connection between "truth" and feelings is compelling because for some reason I didn't have much connection with my feelings for much of my life. And I was strongly taught in "truth." This state of mind became painful and I deconstructed and started to rebuild my life. Recovering the ability to "feel" was an important part of this.

This conversation with this friend is important to me because as much as I value feelings because God said he "so loved the world" and I think he expects that love to be felt, ultimately there is truth that undergirds that love.

Love and truth support each other.

If there is anything to the quote; "The glory of God is man fully alive," than thinking and feeling are partners in that delicate dance.