Heavy Hearts

How’s your heart holding up these days, friend?

Our hearts are amazing in the fullness they can hold, from the heights of joy and awe to the depths of grief and loss, going the lengths from our own internal suffering to the people of Ukraine under attack, fighting and fleeing for their lives. If we are able to keep them open and soft, not harden to the pain and suffering of our world, they may very well feel saturated, like we cannot possibly take in one more drop.

What are we do with these full to overflowing hearts?

Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the Lord, your God, for God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing. (Joel 2:12-13)

Weeping. Mourning. Lamenting. Yes, of course. Cry out! many Lenten texts instruct. When the pain becomes unbearable, we have to let it out somehow . . . in tears, in words, in images, in music, in protest, in ritual, in prayer.

We’re not always so good at this. Many of us have been taught in explicit or more subtle ways to push it down, suck it up, just push through. Maybe we have hardened our hearts because we just can’t take in anymore. Maybe we numb or distract ourselves, just try to stay really busy. Meanwhile pain pools, floods, drowns. No wonder congestive heart failure is a leading cause of death among us.

And it leaks, if not spills or floods out in other ways . . . angry outbursts, rashes, insomnia, stony silences, troubled dreams, violent words, crying “for no apparent reason.” Richard Rohr reminds us “If we do not transform our pain, we will transmit it.”

But there is another way. We can own what is in our hearts, all the lost and forgotten parts, all the hidden and pushed down things. We can shine a light, open a window, release a valve and let things flow . . . flow in and out, flow through. We can let our hearts break open, stretch wide, circulate with more fluidity. We can pour them out into the safe containers of loving community, honest prayer and ritual, creative expression, purposeful service.

We ignore our heavy hearts at our peril. God needs our open, tender, flowing hearts to bear with Christ, and in Christ, and for Christ the suffering of this world God so loves.

Friends, as we continue this Lenten journey, may we honor our hearts, bring them full and fleshy to the Heart of our hearts.