Wednesday, March 20, 2024

HEART

LENTEN RETREAT VII

Dear All of Us,

Ever since she was 

a wee tiny delight, 

I've described

my daughter as 

"A Heart On Two Legs"

and she really is!

All heart!

Her name is 

Janelle Lovelle,

Janelle from the 

French for John, 

The Apostle of Love" 

and Lovell, 

a family name 

and heart hope 

for centuries.

WE JUST KNEW


So what do we here

   "just know"?

What names us

at our center:

- a sweet heart

- faint of heart

- hard hearted

- a sensitive heart

- a brave heart

- a dear heart

- cold hearted

- warm hearted

- all heart

- lonely heart

- heartless 

- a generous heart

- a whimsical heart


That's more than 

an idle question.

       It is 

THE QUESTION


         The 

       HEART

          is 

who we actually are, 

how we really are.

The heart is our 

    True Self.

The heart is our core, 

our center from which all

radiates or darkens.

      It's central 

in way more than body. 


     The Desert 

Mothers and Fathers

found a place and way

- inside and outside -

to get to the heart of things.

        They freed up 

          to live out 

            LOVE

Richard Rohr and 

Thomas Merton

paint it picture perfect:

  The desert mystics 

  primary quest 

  was for God,

  for Love; 

  everything else 

  was secondary. 

  Merton writes: 

     "All through the 

      Verba Seniorum   

      (Words of the 

      Desert Elders) 

      we find a

      repeated insistence 

      on the primacy of love 

      over everything else 

      in the spiritual life: 

      over knowledge, gnosis, 

      asceticism, contemplation, 

      solitude, prayer. 

      Love, in fact, 

      is the spiritual life, 

      and without it 

      all other exercises 

      of the spirit, 

      however lofty, 

      are emptied 

      of content 

      and become 

      mere illusions.

      The more lofty 

      they are, 

      the more 

      dangerous 

      the illusion." (1)

This is Essential Christianity.


Please, Please 

let's stop and stay here,

see it soul deep,

Feel it, well, 

in the heart. 

What does it highlight

in our basic thinking,

feeling, acting, serving  

   as an individual 

   and as a people,

   especially as

      Eccesia 

 "The Gathered" 

          in 

 The Kin Domain

          of

     Love Lived


I'm going 

to stop here 

for those 

who need to go.

See you next week.

In the deepest

  of ways,

   LOVE

   to all.


For those able,

there's a lot more 

to share if you care.

Please scroll down to 

  FURTHERANCE

      below.

    ******

(1) Richard Rohr,

      Daily Meditations,

      Center for Action

      and Contemplation

      May 4, 2015


      Thomas Merton

      The Wisdom of the Desert

      New Directions

      1960

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     FURTHERANCE

After getting a cup of coffee,

or a glass of wine,

depending on our time zone

and preference,

let's pray pause over the 

Rohr/Merton sharings above,

all of it, slowly and deeply.

In one way and many 

it all comes down 

to the up of:


 "Love, in fact, 

is the spiritual life."


Life these days is 

oh so complex.

Just try to 

seamlessly get through 

your patient portal and 

to your medical records.


Basic, for real life,

certainly spiritual life, 

isn't at all like that.

It's simple and 

straight forward.

Yet the young turks 

in Silicon Valley

and too many more, 

make their money 

complicating things.

In that bunch are 

theologians, 

church bureaucrats,

"spiritual" leaders 

and writers

(and pray I am not 

one of them!!).

They spin the spiritual.

They dizzy our heads 

and confuse our hearts.

The reduce God to 

definition and dogma.

God is simply 

to be experienced,

not explained.

Yet, they script one new

technique or tome 

after another -

a storehouse of 

reconditioned

spiritual hula hoops.

Admittedly I overstate, 

but less than an inch off 

from their complicating 

buzzy busies.


   The Desert 

Mothers and Fathers

do us so much better.

They caught on and 

happily got all caught up in

the sublime simplicity that

     "God is love."

We can't figure that.

We can live it.

So, every aspiration

and activity are

weavings in a fabric of 

    Love Lived.

Put better,

in all things the

Desert Mothers and Faters 

responded to 

the God in themselves

and the God of 

what was before them.

They danced God 

as God led.

In suffering, joy, 

patience, excitement,

moment and movement,

they lived a practical, 

everyday, often mundane

          "YES!!"

             to

The Love Who Is God,

in solitude and in community.

They didn't find God.

They found themselves 

in God and we can as well, 

and well it is- 

in everything

and always -

breathing, working, eating,

sleeping, helping, hurting, 

crafting, making love,

cooking, cleaning, 

raising kids, 

easy, hard,

assisting the needy,

our day job,

being in community,

going into God's Love Tent

   and letting God 

   love us to life.

That's what our 

Lenten Retreat

has sought -

"Essential Christianity."

   "Love God, 

    neighbor 

       self'

  where and 

  as we are.

It's all a matter

and a fullness of

      LOVE

        at

     HEART

    ******


 AGAIN AND MORE

    We have been blessed by

       large groups from

            HONG KONG

                 and

              KOSOVO

        joining in with us

         this past week.

            WELCOME

 to them and all new with us.

        So good, really, 

             So God

         to be together

            ******


   See you next week,

      HOLY WEEK

As always and for sure,

           Love 

           to all,

       John Frank

         ******