November 23, 7:00pm (Kevin Westling)
Our hearts know where the dark corner is, and we have hidden there crouched in a stance of self-protection. If we stay there long enough the heart gets “hard and parched up.” Like arthritic joints held too long in the same position, a crouched heart will harden to protect itself, and once hardened, will become parched up. When grace is lost from life, come with a burst of song.
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When my heart is Hardened
by Rabindranath Tagore, 19th century Bengali poet
When the heart is hard and parched up,
come upon me with a shower of mercy.
When grace is lost from life,
come with a burst of song.
When tumultuous work raises its din on all sides
shutting me out from beyond,
come to me, my lord of silence,
with thy peace and rest.
When my beggarly heart sits crouched, shut up in a corner,
break open the door, my king,
and enter with the ceremony of a king.
When desire blinds the mind with delusion and dust,
O thou holy one, thou wakeful,
come with thy light and thy thunder.
When my beggarly heart sits crouched,
shut up in a corner…
I don’t think I am alone
in knowing what that is like –
to have my heart crouched in a corner,
needy, fearful and defined by scarcity.
There is an organization I belong to,
that I have been a part of for nearly my whole life,
but with whom I nonetheless
feel like an outsider and alien.
I confess that,
as regards this particular organization,
I am a bit of the proverbial round peg
that does not easily fit into the square holes
made available to me.
Because of who I am,
the peculiar way I perceive the world
and process my experiences
and because of my odd vision,
I kinda stick out like a tall man in a short room
in this particular organization to which I belong.
So when I bump up against this odd-man-out
experience, and feel rejected,
the easiest, most satisfying thing to do
is crouch in the corner and be hurt.
When the heart is hard and parched up,
come upon me with a shower of mercy.
I suspect that all of us here,
with some group or family or organization,
somewhere,
sometime,
have experienced rejection,
isolation
or even plain old inhospitable neglect.
Our hearts know where the dark corner is,
and we have hidden there
crouched in a stance of self-protection.
If we stay there long enough
the heart gets “hard and parched up.”
Like arthritic joints held too long in the same position,
a crouched heart will harden to protect itself,
and once hardened, will become parched up.
When grace is lost from life,
come with a burst of song.
That’s the thing about our hearts:
they are a pump
and they can’t be turned off to prevent the flow of one particulate from entering it,
without also sealing off the pump to all the good stuff
we want to have flow through.
When tumultuous work raises its din on all sides
shutting me out from beyond,
come to me, my lord of silence,
with thy peace and rest.
Here is the way Recovering Alcoholics say it,
in the language of the ordinary spirituality
of Alcoholics Anonymous.
It says they, “Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”
Now we might not think that our hearts,
crouched in a dark corner
of hurt, rejection, neglect
or otherwise rotten experience,
equals insanity,
but in fact,
crouching in the corner,
nurturing our hurts
and whispering to our fears,
will inevitably lead to a kind of ordinary insanity.
The kind of ordinary insanity
that all of us have had
when we keep doing the same things
over and over and over again
even though it is self-destructive
and continuously creating problems.
And the ordinary spirituality of AA,
when it speaks of a “power greater than ourselves”
may not sound as poetic as Tagore
when he writes:
O thou holy one, thou wakeful,
come with thy light and thy thunder…
But it means exactly the same thing.
So what I want to suggest is that the poetic wisdom
of Rabindranath Tagore
is simply a more eloquent version of the homely AA wisdom.
It’s a helpful comparison
because sometimes we fall into thinking that
deep spiritual wisdom
only comes from old and eloquent sources.
In fact,
deep and abiding spiritual wisdom is ordinary,
and floats in the ordinary atmosphere all around us,
all of the time.
Anyway, both Tagore and AA tell us
that when we get crouched down there in the dark,
with our heart in a world of hurt and fear,
it’s time to call on a power greater than ourselves.
When desire blinds the mind with delusion and dust,
O thou holy one, thou wakeful,
come with thy light and thy thunder…
Or…“restore us to sanity.”
Either way, it is in recognizing that there is a power greater than ourselves that can and will help restore us,
that we open ourselves to healing.
The best way to open a clenched fist
is to offer it something it wants,
in this case,
something or someone to intervene
and help the heart get out from underneath
the hurt and fear.
When your heart or mine is clenched,
crouched in a dark corner
from hurt or fear,
we often do not feel the strength
to get out from under it all by ourselves.
Often the heart feels bruised and vulnerable,
weary and weak,
and as if it simply cannot rise on its own.
In those moments we have to call out for help
to a power greater than ourselves
to come and raise our hearts…to raise our hearts for us.
Ordinary spirituality,
ordinary spirituality,
requires the ordinary presence
of a power greater than ourselves,
to help us
and raise us up
when the ordinary hurts and pains of ordinary life
send us crouching in the dark corner…in fear.
So whatever the condition of your heart tonight,
call out to that power greater than yourself,
and invite it to come in
and hold your hand,
and love you tenderly into the night.
As you light a candle this evening,
allow the moment
to engender warmth and enlighten the darkness,
and welcome that ordinary power
that is greater than your ordinary self,
to touch your hurts
and heal your pain.
