While atmospheric summer wants to hang around a bit longer, our lives are slowly shifting gear around this time. Kids are only a couple of weeks away from resuming school and work schedules are almost back in full swing. With every change of season, our heart starts to synchronise itself to a different rhythm.
While summer is the time to be “out there”, autumn is that time of “going back inside”. Some of us go on retreats to take stock of their heart, that centre of gravity in our being around which everything revolves. This is not some obscure exercise of introspection, or a sitting on the psychologist’s couch. It is an exercise in active listening.
The fascinating thing about the human heart is that it moulds itself in many shapes according to the episodes of our journey. Just like the doctor who listens carefully to our beating heart to give us a bill of health, so is the inner journey measured in the different shapes the heart can take.
The scriptures have a way of sifting through these different shapes. They make a curious distinction between a broken and a divided heart. And while it sounds like the classic tautology, these two words could not be more different.
While we associate heartbreak with the loss of someone dear, in the psalms a broken heart is the image of a person who does not just skim over life’s events, unaffected and aloof from those around him. A broken heart is one that is essentially breakable, malleable enough to be dented, scratched and put to good use. It is a heart of flesh that allows the intense episodes of life to give it shape.
A broken heart is also a humiliated heart, capable of sincere sorrow, grief and a desire to make amends. A broken heart is capable of empathy, which means that sometimes my priorities take the back seat in favour of somebody else’s concerns. A broken heart does not necessarily shed plenty of tears. It sometimes carries in silence one’s weight or the weight of another, precious memories or things shared in confidence.
A divided heart has no dialogue partner, is centered upon itself and is never truly ready to be challenged and questioned by life
A divided heart on the other hand is the description of that person who is equally everywhere and nowhere. A divided heart is incapable of true spontaneity because it has muted its own voice in order to appease the cacophony of voices around it.
A divided heart has no dialogue partner, is centred upon itself and is never truly ready to be challenged and questioned by life. It accepts no master except being the master of its own story. In the end, a divided heart shatters because it becomes too brittle, and only the watery drops of tears can bring it back to life.
Maintaining a broken heart is a risky business, but we know all too well there is no other way to go. It is not only pleasing to God, who is never indifferent to a sincere heart; it also enriches our relationships; it makes our workplaces more liveable and rewarding; it is a solace for the forgotten and ignored.
More broken hearts are needed to provide healing for a world that is utterly divided. It is therefore the season to revisit the inner chamber and take stock of the shape of our heart.