Blaise
Pascal wrote that and it explains why our feelings and behavior are often a
mystery to us: "Why do I feel this way?" "Why am I so restless
just now?" "Why am I angry at this person when I should feel
love?" "Why am I so tense at this meeting?" "Why do I feel
this particular jealousy, coldness, bitterness, or obsession?"
The
heart has its reasons and we're not always privy to them. And
part of the heart's tortured complexity is its pride. We have proud hearts (for good
reasons). Because of that pride, we are never far from being defensive, aloof,
cold, assertive, suspicious, and paranoid. A very small slight can trigger huge
reactions that can quickly make us shut doors inside of us.
We
all know how easily this happens: We feel a little threatened and immediately
doors that were once open begin to close inside of us and we feel the need to
protect ourselves, to reclaim ourselves from someone, to be cool, aloof,
disinterested, and seemingly given over to more important things. Where just
minutes before there was warmth, vulnerability, softness, trust, and the desire
to share, there is now a chill, a hardness, a distrust, and a reluctance to
share anything beyond the surface.
There's
a biblical name for this, "hardness of heart". Jesus warns against
this everywhere. For example: He idealized children, warned about the dangers of
not welcoming them, asked us to be like them, and laid hands on them. Scholars
tell us that his laying hands on them was more than a simple gesture of
affection. The laying on of hands is an ordination, a missioning. For Jesus,
children are "missionaries" in that they reveal to others that
discipleship consists in having a heart that is not yet hardened, but is still
trusting, vulnerable, warm. We all start from there, but our wounds cause us to
harden. Jesus invites us back to that place, before our hearts grew hard.
Jesus
teaches this too when he is questioned about divorce. There's an incident in the
Gospels, little understood, where the Scribes and Pharisees ask him: "Is it
lawful to divorce?" (In essence: "How does God look on divorce?")
Instead
of answering them, Jesus turns the question back to them: "What did Moses
teach?" They answer that Moses said a man could divorce his wife. Jesus
uses their answer as a springboard to teach something deeper. He tells them that
Moses allowed this only
because of their "hardness of heart", but that
originally, before there was sin, God's design was that the physical, one-flesh,
sexual union between a man and woman was meant to reflect a communion of spirit
between persons within which the very notion of divorce is foreign. One-flesh
union reflects what is happening inside of God, perfect union of male and
female, perfect mutual empowering. That kind of union should never be broken
apart.
Divorce,
Jesus tells us, is a reality, not in the design of God, but in the bitter
realities of our world and how those realities harden our hearts and render it
impossible at times for us to not have our relationships unravel.
What
Jesus does in this teaching is invite us to go back, back to the beginning, back
to pre-fallen times, back to that time before our hearts began to harden, back
to when we were still childlike, and, from there, to try to answer for ourselves
how God feels about divorce and the fracturing of any relationship. Not an easy
thing.
In
my life, I go to a lot of meetings. Almost always I am with good, sincere,
dedicated people. Almost always too we meet in an atmosphere of shared faith,
shared prayer, and shared concerns. But sometimes at those meetings the mood and
tone will suddenly change. A minor slight, an unexpected irritation, a small
misunderstanding, a gratitude that isn't expressed, an ill-chosen comment, or
just someone having a bad day, can trigger a chill, a loss of trust, a hardening
of atmosphere, and suddenly we all feel a need to protect ourselves and the
whole atmosphere becomes guarded and professional, devoid of warmth and genuine
sharing.
And therein
lies one of the biggest moral struggles within our lives: To keep a mellow,
warm, trusting heart when, as Pascal says,
the heart has its reasons to want to
chill and become aloof in order to protect itself. But the capacity to resist
that impulse, to not turn cold, to not turn off, is, I believe, the real mark of
maturity and even of faith. It's this that makes for a great lover.
For
the most part, as we know, we're not there, none of us. We're still too often
defensive, cool, self-protecting and prone to all the subtle negative behaviors
this triggers. But it's good to recognize that this is a broken place, a humble
place, and a place from which we are invited, each day, to make a new beginning.
By Ron Rolheiser,
OMI
To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your
heart. It
is not the position in which you stand, but the direction in which you
look. Look within and listen to your heart.
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Tim
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