About the Heart by Bro. David Steindl-Rast O.S.B.

To face the aloneness we feel when we look up to the stars, and to face the needs of those near us, these two together make us in practice develop the heart by bringing us home where we belong.

[Cont. from page 1] ... We may call this place home or we may call it heart. As point of reference it constitutes the decisive difference between an explorer and a drifter. The explorer is characterized by courage (a word that stems from the same linguistic root as heart), while the drifter has lost heart. Home and journey together constitute the creative polarity of the heart, the two dimensions we must cultivate if we want to “develop the heart.”

But “how, in practice, do we go about it?” you ask. What we have just now considered may have brought us one step closer to an answer. We shall have to do both: find our true home and venture out. But we shall accomplish neither, unless we accomplish both.

To understand in what sense the heart is to be a home, we must realize that the prototype of the home in biblical tradition is not the sturdy house, but the “sukkah,” the booth or tabernacle built of green branches. On the Feast of Sukkoth (or Tabernacles) a poor Jewish family may build one of these booths on a fire-escape between tenement houses in New York City and there celebrate the joyous memory of the time when the Chosen People on their journey through the wilderness knew what a home was. It was then that the sides were so loosely constructed that one could see through to the neighbor’s booth, and the roof was open enough to let one see the stars in the desert night; this is still the traditional way of building the sukkah. Awareness of the Mystery above and of the neighbor next door (supporting, or in need of support) – this double awareness constitutes in biblical tradition the place of the home, the heart. To face the aloneness we feel when we look up to the stars, and to face the needs of those near us, these two together make us in practice develop the heart by bringing us home where we belong. Yet, let us not forget that this is a sojourner’s shelter.

The journey, on the other hand, is always a journey home: “ …the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started…” However, until we arrive we are always venturing out into the unknown. We have no assurance. We must find our own path; no other can be substituted. We need courage. Rabbi Levi Yitzhak, one of the Hassidic Saints, beautifully expressed this courage of the sojourner when he prayed; “Lord of the World…I do not beg you to reveal to me the secret of your ways – I could not bear it. But show me one thing; show it to me more clearly and more deeply; show me what this, that which is happening at this very moment, means to me, what it demands of me, what you, Lord of the World, are telling me by way of it.”

“Show me what it means to me!” This is the prayer of the heart on its dark journey. As the eye perceives light and the ear perceives sound, so the heart is the organ that perceives meaning. But this presupposes the courage to listen to the message and to rise to what it demands of me – the courage to say “Yes.”

You might have been wondering where love would come in. This, now, is the point. Love is the unconditional “yes” of the heart. Or better still, as e.e. cummings put it, “What yes is to if, love is to yes.” The “yes” of love is all-embracing. If we said “yes” to the journey without saying “yes” to the home, our courage might deteriorate into faithless recklessness. But if we said “yes” to the home only, not also to the journey, our faithfulness might shrivel into narrow timidity. Only the all-embracing “yes” of love closes the arc between the poles of the heart, thus welding together faithfulness and courage. We learn to say the “yes” of faithfulness by being faithful, and the “yes” of courage by overcoming our fears one by one. It takes a lifetime and death is the final test. To say “yes” with one’s whole heart, that is spiritual practice according to biblical tradition — at least this is one way of putting it.

You can see for yourself how close this comes in practice to the goal of other spiritual paths: Zen, Yoga, even to a Yaqui way of knowledge. In the Christian tradition the “yes” of the heart is said with a view to the One Who is called “God’s ‘Yes’” (2 Cor. 1:20). He was born on a journey and spent his life trying to bring the whole world home to where he lived; at the intersection of God’s “yes” to us and our “yes” to God and neighbor. This intersection is reflected in the two beams of the cross on which he died. His heart was opened by a soldier’s lance, and it stood open while many passed by on their journey.

Peace to you!
(Or shall I wish you “con-cord” which literally means harmony of hearts?)

Your brother David

Reprinted from Integral Yoga, Spring 1974, pp. 17-19.