Take good care of your hearts - Chris Gleeson SJ

During the last week of October I was privileged to have been involved in three consecutive Valete celebrations for year 12 graduates here in Melbourne – two as a speaker and one as an interested spectator. I heard some inspiring addresses, many from the young valetants themselves, and was gratified that my own modest offerings seemed to strike a chord at times. As we move into a new year and refresh our resolve to grow, I thought I would share some of my message to these graduates—‘Take good care of your hearts.’

In an age where we seem to be knee deep in fanaticism and fundamentalism, when religious fanatics seem to be some of the worst offenders, we can do well to remind ourselves of Michael Leunig’s prayer for balance:

Dear God, we pray for balance and exchange. Balance us like trees. As the roots of a tree shall equal its branches so must the inner life be equal to the outer life. And as the leaves shall nourish the roots, so shall the roots give nourishment to the leaves. Without equality and exchange of nourishment there can be no growth and no love. Amen (A Common Prayer).

Life is a journey from God to God, and this inner journey—the journey to the heart—is the longest and most difficult journey we ever make. It is a journey that is never complete. And that was my message, my prayer, my hope for all of those young graduates—Take good care of your hearts! Most of us will look after our bodies: give them adequate food and drink, exercise, watch our diets, and, if we can afford it later in life when the body needs re-shaping, hire a personal trainer. But our heart needs caring for too.

I am not talking about that amazing little 300 gram pumping unit in our chest that feeds a vascular system comprising 96,000 kilometres of veins and arteries and capillaries. If we are looking after our bodies, it is very likely that our heart pump will be in good working order too. No, I am talking about the heart which is our inner home, the centre of our being, the place that fuels our love, the place where we make the most important decisions, the place for finding the truth in our lives. The heart is I myself, without any pretence, disguise or make-believe. The heart is me.

There is a marvellous piece in the novel Zorba the Greek where Zorba says:

One day when I was a child, an old man took me on his knee and placed his hand on my head as if he were giving me a blessing. ‘Alexis’, he said, ‘I’m going to tell you a secret. You are too small to understand now, but you will understand when you are bigger. Listen, little one. Neither the seven stories of heaven nor the seven stories of earth are enough to contain God, but a person’s heart can contain God. So, be careful, Alexis—and my blessing be with you—never to wound another person’s heart.’

What do we need to take good care of our hearts?

We need to be a good friend to ourselves. In his beautiful book, Anam Cara (Soul Friend) John O’Donohue writes that ‘you can never love another person unless you are equally involved in the beautiful, but difficult spiritual work of learning to love yourself.’ We need to learn to appreciate with humility, never with arrogance, our gifts and strengths, for they are our truth. We need to listen not to the negative talk—our own and others’—that seeks to downplay our talents and exaggerate our limitations.
We need also to be a good friend to others and to work at retaining these friendships. It is said that ‘a friend knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten how it goes.’ A hero is one who turns strangers into friends. Remember, in the words of Sr. Joan Chittister osb, that ‘the people who love us do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. They release the best in us…They show us the face of our creating, caring God on earth.’
May we learn that ‘falling in love’ is not the same as deciding to love. Falling in love is like an emotional sprint – high voltage, super charged—and over very quickly. Deciding to love another is a marathon of the heart—there for the long haul, requiring a great deal of hard work and endurance. Sadly, it is often easier to find a lover than a friend.
The heart needs to be nourished with a good deal of imagination and inspiration. May we be lifelong readers of good books, not just on the internet which tends to be a parking bay for information, but in hardback and paperback, even tablet, versions that we can carry with us as friends. Imagination is the eye of the soul or the heart, and is crucial in taking us beyond our comfort zones. Imagination asks ‘what’s possible?’, whereas technology asks ‘what works?’ As Joan Chittister has said: ‘Imagination breaks open the human mind to what is desirable when what is real is unbearable.’
A strong heart, and that is what courage means (from the French word coeur), thrives also on a good sense of humour. What we laugh at we can rise above. When we laugh, we chime in with God’s laughter. Gerard W. Hughes has written: ‘The laughter of human beings must correspond to something in God. He shares our sorrows: he must also share our laughter, so I prayed to recognise the wink of God and to hear his laughter in my own and other people’s seriousness and solemnity.’
We are told that hundreds of face muscles relax with every smile. When bad news seeks to take over our lives, good humour helps us to believe, with Julian of Norwich, that all is well and that all manner of things will be well.
A healthy heart will be a good decision-maker. In Native American folklore, an old Cherokee warrior one evening around the campfire was telling his grandson about the battle that goes on inside all people. He said, ‘My son, the battle is between two “wolves” inside us all. One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego. The other wolf is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.’
His grandson thought about this story for a minute and then asked his grandfather, ‘Which wolf wins?’ The old Cherokee warrior simply replied, ‘The one you feed.’
Finally, like every other part of us, a strong heart needs constant stretching. May we always see and reach out to the poor and needy. Human life can be described as a spider web. If we touch it anywhere, we set the whole thing trembling. The life that I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place and time my touch will be felt. Our lives are linked. No man, no woman, is an island. The gift of friendship, of stretching the heart to others is contagious.

Recently, I came across a line from the Irish poet, Brendan Kennelly: ‘If you want to serve the age, betray it.’ He went on to ask:

What does that mean—to betray the age? Well, to me, it means exposing its conceits, its foibles, its phony moral certitudes. It means telling the secrets of the age and facing harsher truths. Every age has its massive moral blind spots. We might not see them, but our children will … What are the ideas right now worth betraying? What are the lies we tell ourselves now? What are the blind spots of our age? … It might be something as simple as our deep down refusal to believe that every human life has equal worth.

A millennium and a half ago, St Augustine of Hippo wrote these inspiring words: ‘Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage. Anger at the way things are. And courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.’

St Augustine also said once that our hearts are restless until they rest in God. Whatever our beliefs about God, may our hearts always be restless in their search for Truth. May Truth be our compass, our map for the uncharted roads ahead.