The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.
—Luke 6:45
In his fine little book The Heart of Christianity, Marcus Borg traces the many meanings of a hard or closed heart—blindness and limited vision; a darkened mind; bondage; a lack of gratitude; insensitive to wonder and awe; forgetting God; self-preoccupied and cut off; lacking compassion; insensitive to injustice. He writes,
Not all hearts are equally hard. In severe form, hard hearts are associated with violence, brutality, arrogance and a rapacious world-devouring greed. ...The mild form of violence is judgmentalism; of brutality, insensitivity; of arrogance, self-centeredness; of rapacious greed, ordinary self-interest.
(pp. 151-4)
An open heart sees more clearly the person or landscape right before us—enlightenment. An open heart is alive to wonder; the world is not ordinary. An open heart is grateful and compassionate, with a passion for justice. Borg says, "The purpose of the Christian life, of life in Christ, is to become more and more compassionate beings."
Give us pure hearts that we may see you; Humble hearts, that we may hear you; Hearts of love, that we may serve you; Hearts of faith, that we may abide in you. —from the journal of the late Dag Hammarskjold
Copyright ©2007 Lowell Grisham.
