“Opening The Heart’s Door.”
“This is the disciple who had leaned on the heart of Jesus at the meal.” John 21:20
“Behold I stand at the door and knock.” Jesus the Christ
“Let My love open the door to your heart.” Pete Townshend
If you’re over the age of fifty, or a fan of Tony Bennet (Lady Gaga is), you might be familiar with the song “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” My take on that song would be “I Left my Heart at Iona.”
I was reminded after my recent trip there that Scotland, and Iona in particular, is the place in this world where my heart is fully at home. It is where I feel most in touch with God or put another way where I experience a fullness of sacred intimacy with God. Having just visited again I was reminded of the mysterious power that this place holds, not only for me, but for so many others. For whatever reason it is a place that brings one into a fuller awareness of the love and life of God. It is a place where one feels the heartbeat of God.
For the Celtic Christians of old the heart was and is the central locus of the dwelling place of God. Whereas in much of Western Christianity the head took precedence, and an emphasis was placed on defining God with doctrines and dogmas, for the Celtic Christians God was and is a matter of the heart. It is why the Gospel of St. John, so unique in relation to the other Gospels, is the preferred account of the Christ. John is the disciple who reclines on Jesus’ breast at the Last Supper. He hears the heartbeat of God, and he relates that heartbeat in his writing. Certainly, in the Gospel which reveals the heart of God in Christ, but also in the three epistles that bear his name, where this Beloved Disciple reminds his recipients that we too are beloved children of God.
That is the message I was desperate to hear when I went to live at Iona eight years ago. I was suffering with a broken heart and needed divine resuscitation to get my heart beating again. To be more accurate, I needed a heart transplant. In the words of the Psalmist, “Create in me, a clean (new)heart O God.” That is the gift I needed and the one I received at Iona. A heart that experienced God’s love in a new way. A heart that was filled with love not only for God but for me as well. A heart that was beating with love for others. A heart that was fueled and fed by faith in The One who IS Love. That’s what I needed. And in fact, is what we all need.
One of the most detrimental descriptions for a person is to have a “hardened heart.” It is not limited to those in the bible like Pharoah or the opponents of Jesus. It is an apt description for some of those we see in the world today, some of those faithfully attending church every Sunday, some of those we encounter in our own communities, and perhaps those we see when we look in the mirror.
It is easy to become cynical and hardened. It is simple to give way to the darkness. It is convenient to live in our heads, limiting faith in God to whatever creeds or confessions we have learned and repeat by rote. It is much more challenging to open our hearts, or have our hearts opened. There is no formula for it, but there is a process. From my experience I would suggest the process includes recognizing the lack of love we are personally experiencing, seeing the love of God in Christ, taking the risk to give up our own desire for control and dropping our nets to follow Him wherever He leads, be it literally to a new place like Iona, or figuratively to a new way of believing, and then allowing His Spirit to work in us through His Life-resuscitating word.
Forgive me if I’m sounding preachy here. Not my intent. Rather, I simply am extending an invitation in the Spirit of the ancient Celts to let God’s love daily open the door to your heart and then embrace the One who knocks. Having done so to experience the embrace that comes from reclinging on the breast of The Beloved.
“Ours is not the work of seeing You here or there where we think You might be,
But opening the heart’s door,
And when we do this, You cannot resist coming in,
Since our opening and Your entering are one.
You knock and wait, and when we open, we find that You were there all along and will not leave us.”[i]
[i] “Meister Eckhart’s Book of the Heart: Meditations for the Restless Soul”, John Sweeney and Mark S. Burrows.