A Warrior's Spirit

To open deeply, as genuine spiritual life requires, we need tremendous courage and strength, a kind of warrior spirit.

But the place for this warrior strength is in the heart.

Jack Kornfield
A Path with Heart

 

Seeing With Our Hearts

If we look at the world through suspicious or angry eyes, we'll find a world that mirrors our expectations - a world where tension will mount, arguments will abound, strife will be present where none need be.
However, our experiences in some manner bless us, and we'll recognize that if we'll look upon them with gratitude.
Everything in our path is meant for our good and we'll see the good when our hearts act as the eyes for our minds.
When we see with our hearts, our responses to the turmoil around us, the fighting children, the traffic snarls, the angry lovers, will be soft acceptance.
When our hearts guide the action we can accept those things we cannot change, and change those we can.
And the heart, as the seat of all wisdom, will always know the difference.

Karen Casey

Having a Heart of Flesh

On the Journey To Having a Heart of Flesh

written by FR. LARRY GILLICK, S.J.

There was a popular song long ago which began, "Hearts made of stone, do-do-wah, do-do-wah, will never break, do-do-wah, do-do-wah."
During ten years of spending time at the L'Arche houses in Toronto, I received many friends.
Then I was missioned here to Omaha.
Ten years of having my heart warmed and inspired had allowed its flesh to feel joy, accompaniment, forgiveness, and literally, encouragement.
I had received a living heart-spirit transplant.
Then I was geographically transplanted to Omaha, in the "heartland" of the United States.

I remember very clearly as my flight left Toronto, with friends standing at the gate to see me off, vowing that I would never again allow my heart to be touched, molded, softened.
My resolution worked quite well for the first year.
Then other people came knocking at my stone-heart.
They kept knocking and chipping and peeping inside.I would rewrite the lyrics of that old song.

I would skip the "do-do-wahs" and sing, "Hearts made of flesh will always heal, hearts made of flesh were made to feel."
Our flesh-hearts have deep memories of losses and hurts as well as of gains and touches.
Jesus came out into the light after the stone of His tomb was rolled away.
His mission since then has been to call us out as He helps to replace the heart of stone with a fleshy place which pumps life and love through the veins of our relationships.
That "never again" promise as I left Toronto has been replaced with a graceful "often" or "always."
My heart is working again thanks to those who help Jesus roll away the stone.
It is definitely a journey.

- FR. LARRY GILLICK, S.J. was ordained in his hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin after completing his theological studies at the Toronto School of Theology and Regis College, Willowdale. Canada. It was there he became familiar with the L'Arche-Daybreak Community of Toronto. He is presently the director of the Center for Ignatian Spirituality at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska.

"Choose life."

That's God's call for us, and there is not a moment in which we do not have to make that choice.
Life and death are always before us.
In our imaginations, our thoughts, our words, our gestures, our actions ... even in our nonactions.
This choice for life starts in a deep interior place.
Underneath very life-affirming behaviour I can still harbour death-thoughts and death-feelings.
The most important question is not "Do I kill?" but "Do I carry a blessing in my heart or a curse?"
The bullet that kills is only the final instrument of the hatred that began being nurtured in the heart long before the gun was picked up.

-- Henri Nouwen

Elder's Meditation -- Heart And Mind

The combination of heart and mind is very powerful.
The Medicine Wheel teaches that two worlds exist - the seen and the unseen.
The seen world is the physical and the unseen is the spiritual world.
Both of the worlds are necessary to discover true reality.
The seen world is easiest seen by the male side.
The unseen is easiest seen by the female side.
The heart is the unseen and the mind is the seen.
Blessed is the leader or person who has developed the heart and the mind.
Truly, the person is of tremendous value to the Creator and the people.

My Great Spirit, help me this day to develop

both my female side and my male side.

Let me know all the feelings of each,

let me develop and grow my intuition and my mind.

Let my development only serve You.

A Heart Of Grace

The greatness of a community is most accurately measured

by the compassionate actions of its members,

a heart of grace, and a soul generated by love.

-- Coretta Scott King

An Inner Choice -- Peace

Often we look at the outside world and find it in a state of seeming chaos or disorder.
We feel compelled to transform the situation from one of turmoil into one of peace, yet we are often disappointed in our best attempts to do so.
One reason for this is that we cannot bring to the world what we do not have to offer.
Peace starts in our own minds and hearts, not outside of ourselves, and until its roots are firmly entrenched in our own selves, we cannot manifest it externally.
Once we have found it within, we can share it with our family, our community, and the whole wide world.
Some of us may already be doing just that, but for most of us, the first step is looking within and honestly evaluating the state of our own relationship to peacefulness.
Interestingly, people who manifest peace internally are not different from us; they have chattering thoughts and troubled emotions like we all do.
The difference is that they do not lend their energy to them, so those thoughts and feelings can simply rise and fall like the waves of the ocean without disturbing the deeper waters of peacefulness within.
We all have this ability to choose how we distribute our energy, and practice enables us to grow increasingly more serene as we choose the vibration of peace over the vibration of conflict.
We begin to see our thoughts and feelings as tiny objects on the surface of our being that pose no threat to the deep interior stillness that is the source of peacefulness.
When we find that we are able to locate ourselves more and more in the deeper waters and less on the tumultuous surface of our being, we have discovered a lasting relationship with peace that will enable us to inspire peace beyond ourselves.
Until then, we help the world most by practicing the art of choosing peace within.

-- DailyOM

A Courageous Life

"Have courage," we often say to one another.
Courage is a spiritual virtue.
The word courage comes from the Latin word cor, which means "heart.
A courageous act is an act coming from the heart.
A courageous word is a word arising from the heart.
The heart, however, is not just the place where our emotions are located.
The heart is the centre of our being, the centre of all thoughts, feelings, passions, and decisions.
When the flesh - the lived human experience - becomes word, community can develop.
When we say, "Let me tell you what we saw. Come and listen to what we did. Sit down and let me explain to you what happened to us. Wait until you hear whom we met," we call people together and make our lives into lives for others.
The word brings us together and calls us into community.
When the flesh becomes word, our bodies become part of a body of people.

-- Henri Nouwen

An Open Heart

As one can see when the eyes are open,
so one can understand when the heart is open.

-- Hazrat Inayat Khan
The Bowl of Saki

The Path Of The Heart

If not now, when?
If not me, who?
To walk the path of the heart is a great honor.
Every human has the choice to walk this path, but very few will decide to make it.
Why? Well, because you can't act and behave like everyone else behaves.
You must be the person who will learn to look within.
You must be the person who will be fully accountable for yourself.
You must be the person who prays and meditates.
You must be the person who will sacrifice.
You must decide to be a Peaceful Warrior.
What will you decide today?

Oh, Great Mystery, lead me on the path of the heart.