My Broken Heart

Dear Mike,

I was at church recently and was introduced, through the sermon, to Parker Palmer.  It talked of this concept he coined, the broken open heart.  This time that I went it was like the sermon was made for me personally.  Here's Parker's explanation of the broken-open heart.

"There is no way to be human without having one’s heart broken. But there are at least two ways for the heart to break— using “heart” in its root meaning, not merely the seat of the emotions but the core of our sense of self.

The heart can be broken into a thousand shards, sharp-edged fragments that sometimes become shrapnel aimed at the source of our pain. Everyday, untold numbers of people try without success to “pick up the pieces,” some of them taking grim satisfaction in the way the heart’s explosion has injured their enemies. Here the broken heart is an unresolved wound that we carry with us for a long time, sometimes tucking it away and feeding it as a hidden wound, sometimes trying to “resolve it” by inflicting the same wound on others.

But there is another way to visualize what a broken heart might mean. Imagine that small, clenched fist of a heart “broken open” into largeness of life, into greater capacity to hold one’s own and the world’s pain and joy. This, too, happens everyday. We know that heartbreak can become a source of  compassion and grace because we have seen it happen with our own eyes as people enlarge their capacity for empathy and their ability to attend to the suffering of others."

I wondered how is it possible to transform my heart, the one on the floor in a thousand shards.  So I may have picked up a few pieces over the last couple of years, but I can't do that my whole life.  I have felt a tremendous healing but I know there is still significant wounds.  I have just started on the road of thinking I have to open my eyes and heart and face it.  Then I read this.

"First, in a culture where the answer  to the question “How are you? ” is supposed  to be “Just fine” even when we are not , we must  learn to acknowledge and name our suffering honestly and openly to ourselves and to others. This is called “becoming vulnerable”—a hard thing to do in a culture that does not respect the shadow, where even among friends we are at constant risk of someone trying to “fix us up,” an act that drives the suffering soul back into hiding no matter how well - intended . We need to find a trustworthy friend or two who knows what it means simply to receive and bear witness to our pain. As we cultivate such relationships, we will find ourselves rewarded with a comforting,  “Welcome to the human race.”  

Second, once we have named and claimed our suffering, we must move directly to the heart of it, allowing ourselves to feel the painfully, rather than doing what our culture teaches numbing it with anesthetics, fleeing from it with distractions, or fighting it off by blaming and attacking the external source.  The only way to transform suffering into something life-giving is to enter into it so deeply that we learn what it has to teach us and come out on the other side.  Third, if we are to learn from our suffering, we must cre-ate a micro-climate of quietude around ourselves, allowing the turmoil to settle and an inner quietude to emerge,  so “that of God within us” can help us find our way through. Nurtured by silence, we can stop taking our leads from the voices of ego and world and start listening instead to the still, small voice of all that is Holy.

None of  this can be done on the cheap.  It requires what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “costly grace.”  But if we are willing to pay the cost, that grace will be given and we will purchase the pearl of great price — a chance to participate in God’s continuing creation of  the beloved community."

While I think about transforming MY broken heart into the broken-open heart I can see that mine might take  on another aspect too.  I have to do something with all the mental imagery it carries with it.  My heart and soul can carry only so much at a time.  But, as I experience the release I feel when I write you a letter, or Fionn a letter, or work on the art gallery in my head, I can feel the clarity of mind they provide.  I long for an even greater clarity.  Or is it clarity?  Maybe simplicity is it.  The film playing in my head, or the picture I look at trying to figure out how to convey the image through my lens, or the strobe of an image waiting to be unleashed.  It would be nice to be alone in my brain with nothing fluttering about for a while.

Love,

Gabby

P.S. Ivan is working on some awesome photography right now.  You'd love it.