The Movable Heart

The Movable Heart--August 9, 2016

"Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms.  Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, and unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." [Luke 12:32-34]

Here's a question that doesn't often get asked: where do you want your heart to be?

And the reason we don't ask that question, most likely, is that is probably doesn't occur to us that our hearts can move in the first place.  It's funny, in that sad-and-weird way that things can be "funny," that without realizing it, we have ended up imagining that the deepest, truest part of our selves, which goes with us wherever we go, is somehow also an immovable object.

Here's what I mean: conventional wisdom says things like, "The heart wants what it wants..." as if that were the end of a conversation.  Conventional wisdom says that your dreams, desires, and aspirations are all sort of a "given," and that the point of life is to go after those things that your heart already tells you it wants.  Conventional wisdom shares a great deal in common with Disney thinking, which goes, famously:

"A dream is a wish your heart makes
When you're fast asleep
In dreams you will lose your heartache
Whatever you wish for you keep

Have faith in your dreams and someday
Your rainbow will come smiling through
No matter how your heart is grieving
If you keep on believing
The dream that you wish will come true."

Never does it enter into the conversation whether the thing your heart is wishing for is a good thing to wish for in the first place.  Never is there a pause to consider, "Is the dream in my heart really going to give me the good life, or would I be left feeling just as empty and unfulfilled if I got it?"  Never does anybody stop to ask the cartoon princess singing about the dreams and wishes in her heart, "Who says that whatever you have been told you should want, or whomever you are supposed to pine after, will really give you lasting joy?"  (More recently, it should be noted, even the folks at Disney have helpfully taken a step back and considered that maybe a princess can want something other than just marrying a prince at the end of ninety minutes, as the two sister princesses of Frozen demonstrate by finding "true love" is not always the same as "romance." But still, honest realizations like that are few and far between in pop culture.)

But the long and the short of it is that our culture tends to just start with the assumption that your heart is stuck aiming after whatever it is already seeking, rather than going underneath that assumption to consider the question, "Can I redirect my heart? Is my heart bolted to a fixed point, or is it movable--and how would I decide what is worth setting my heart on anyway?"  If that question seems odd to you, that is probably a sign of the problem--we have very few voices reminding us that you can choose where you aim your heart's "sights" to some degree.  If your telescope is pointed in the wrong direction to see Jupiter, you don't say, "Well, I guess I can only ever forever stare into this dark patch of space..."; you find out where Jupiter will be in the sky and you aim your telescope there.  Why should our hearts be permanently aimed at empty patches of sky as though we cannot redirect them to where the light is?

Jesus makes the same point in the well-known, but perhaps less-well-understood, saying of his, that "where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Now you could hear this is a sort of litmus test to find out if people really care about what they say they care about--you could hear this just as Jesus' way of saying, "Put your money where your mouth is."  But note the order of Jesus' words--it's not, "You'll know where someone's heart is by where they spend their treasure," and it's not, "Where your heart is, there you'll find your treasure," as if the heart was, again, in some fixed hidden location underground that could only be found by the stack of money over it.  This is not really an "x-marks-the-spot" statement for how to discover or diagnose where someone's heart is--it is a promise.  If you want your heart to be aimed at God, put your treasures in God's use, and watch how it pulls your heart along to a new orientation.  If you want your heart to be aimed at loving others, spend your resources on other people, and watch as it shifts your heart outward rather than being bent in on yourself.  If you want your heart to be more willing to care for other people, to be more naturally self-less, rather than self-absorbed, then... you guessed it--put what is most valuable to you in that direction, and you'll see your heart change along the way.  Jesus hasn't given us a tool for judging other people's hearts with this sentence, but rather a promise for how our own can change.  And he has done it by reminding us that the aim of our hearts is not rusted and set in place--it is possible to ask, "Is this thing my heart is supposedly set on really going to give me the good life?" 

I am reminded of a prayer of Teresa of Avila's (she is one of my favorite medieval Spanish mystic women, in case you were wondering), which goes like this, "Oh, God, I don't love you. I don't even want to love you. But I want to want to love you!" While those might seem like scandalous words to offer to the Almighty at first, on second thought, she is being wonderfully and utterly real with God. And what's more, she gets Jesus' point--it is possible to move the trajectory of one's heart, if we are honest about how they are aiming in the wrong direction.  If I am honest with myself, I will see how very many ways I am still bent in on myself, or on longing for more "stuff", or a different job, or a better social situation, or a bigger house, or... or... or.... And once I see that about myself, Jesus' words free my heart so I don't have to be tethered to those old objects of desire.  I am not stuck with wishing for the the default setting wishes from the Disney song.  I am free to pray, faithfully, "God--I am still such a selfish jerk, and sometimes I want to stay that way because it is easy and comfortable... but you can change my heart so that I want to become love like you are love.  Help me to re-focus and re-aim my heart's telescope to where the light really is."  And then you and I can begin to nudge these hearts of ours in a new trajectory by throwing our resources, our time and ourselves in the direction of what really will give us joy and life.  And then we can watch as our hearts get tugged along for the ride.

Where is your heart aiming today? Where do you want to want it to aim?

Lord God, as a wise sister in the faith taught us, we will be honest with you. We are not great at loving you, and we don't even always want to love you, because we still like being bent in on our selves so much.  But we want to want to love you, so help us to throw our treasures at you and to let our hearts be pulled into closer orbit around you.