living hearts

I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.  No longer shall they teach one another or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me….

                               Jeremiah 31:31-34

 

Discernment is an act of the heart, a way of listening with more than the mind… when we discern, we are making space for new revelation to arrive without needing to force it.  This is the soul’s slow ripening.

                               Christine Valters Paintner The Soul’s Slow Ripening, pp 95,96

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How do we end up with so much hate?

How do we profoundly neglect the poor?

How do we marginalize people and treat them cruelly

How do we abuse power?

How do exclude the immigrant and refugee from our abundance?

How do we accept violence as a solution?

 

How do we do all of this

and do it while claiming to be aligned with the Sacred,

with God,

with Love?

 

Why does this faith we claim with such passion,

not make us

 

wise

compassionate

kind

generous?

 

Why does faith become, all too often, a weapon we use on others

rather than for others?

 

perhaps it is because we have hearts of stone

and have tried to impose holiness

impose faith

 

through power and domination

through coercions

through rules, and even civil law

 

we have made faith rigid and cold

a matter of earning God’s love

and then, from a position not of grace, but of merit

not of peace but fear

 

we have shut our hearts to those who are

less (in our eyes), who are

needy

demanding

untidy

messy

 

demanding they conform

demanding they “be like us”

 

but true faith comes not from hearts of stone

but from hearts beating

and hearts broken

 

hearts broken by our own failure and pain

and broken by the pain of the world

 

true faith comes from the slow awakening of the heart

and the slow ripening of the soul

 

as the warmth of Sacred love

softens us

opens us

 

until our now malleable hearts have space

 

not only for Sacred presence

but for, all

 

all the pain

all the misery

all the joy

all the love

all the people

 

when God is in us

no longer do we have to demand

“Know the Lord!”

No longer do we have to question

“Do you know Jesus?”

 

for our hearts will know

and welcome the Sacred One

and our hearts will know and welcome

 

all