I will make you a new heart,
breathe new spirit into you.
I will remove your heart of stone,
give you back a heart of flesh.
(Remembering the Women, 300.)
It is my shame that I know what it is to live with a heart of stone.
A heart of stone comes with not living authentically, no honoring yourself or what you know. When you truly do not embrace your own spirit, your own inner core, you become deadened.
Perhaps you even really die in some ways.
Like a thousand birds pecking you over the years, not enough to kill you at once, in fact, often you never notice their tiny bites, after all they don't seem to hurt that bad. And then you realize, as you wonder why you can barely walk, the devestation they have caused over the years. Tiny indescribable and minor grievances that have pecked away at your soul.
And the only way to survive, to make peace, is to developed that hardened heart, or mind, or soul, or belief. After all it is a lot harder to peck away at stone. Stone doesn't live. Stone doesn't breathe, or move, or speak. It just exists.
In seminary, I kwew of many people whose hearts were awakened. Who received new hearts and new spirits. I am one of them. And yet I struggle.
Because those birds are still pecking. Silently. But I feel them more than ever. I want to kick them, to shoo them away. I can now. I am no longer stone. Praise God.
Life giving, stone turning, breath of presence
who inspires the kicking of flesh destroyers big and small,
You who have brought rhythm to rock
soft light to brokeness
Be the wind upon my face reminding me that I am
moving flesh, unbounded
Amen
Women’s Christmas Retreat 2024: Curious about Joy
10 months ago
1 comment:
Unbounded, indeed!
Your image of the birds reminds me of a troubling image I have always had of Ryan and now you have transformed it.
Since his youngest walking days, Ryan has always felt compelled to go up to groups of birds on a sidewalk and shoo them away. Sometimes he does it quietly, sometimes he does it with a vengeance.
Now, when I see him do it, I will imagine that he is shooing away those pecking beaks of criticism and doubt and forced normality and one-size-fits-all ways of living that are never authentic and rarely if never fit well.
It was a joy to see your heart awakened in seminary.
What a journey!
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