Living open-hearted

What I want in my life is compassion,
a flow between myself and others
based on a mutual giving from the heart.
Marshall B. Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication

When I read this heartfelt post today, it reminded me of a conversation I was part of last week.

It was evening, and everyone around our close circle was tired. But we had gathered to talk about leadership and grace and how the two relate.

Most of the folks in the room were women. And most of those women are in preparation to become ministers. What I mean to say is: these are people with presence.

They know how to listen, how to hold space, how to be with the pain of others. They also know how to speak wisdom and truth, even to a room of strangers. That’s what they’re about.

But in the course of this conversation about what holds us back from being authentic and present, one woman shared an experience that was deep and heartbreaking, mostly because so many others in the room understood her story.

“I can’t live every day truly open-hearted,” she told us with certainty. After a pause she said, “I’ve tried before, and it doesn’t work. It isn’t safe.”

And she told us about a day when she opened her heart as wide as it would go, and walked around the whole world offering all the love she had to give — to her loved ones, to her fellow students and teachers, to strangers.

And it was beautiful –

until–

she passed a stranger who looked at her, as she said, “as though he could kill her.”

This person who didn’t even know her. But with her heart wide open like that, the hatred in his eyes came like a blow. And she closed her wide open heart to protect herself.

Living open-hearted isn’t safe.

I was moved by her telling of this experience. By her commitment to live in authentic love, by her painful honesty in sharing with us. And by her courageous willingness to consider trying it again.

“It might still be possible…” she said.

And hope grows just like that, like a tiny planted seed waiting to break ground, like daring the impossible and believing.

I can’t say I’ve lived an entire day with my heart as wide open as it will go, but I can say that thinking about this woman’s story made me open mine a little bit wider.

May we all drink ever deeper from the well of authentic love. May we believe, always, that the radiance of God’s love can shine through us even into eyes filled with hate, even in times when it is not safe.

Perhaps that is where it’s needed most of all.

Learning not to armor our basic goodness

This is the path we take in cultivating joy:
learning not to armor our basic goodness,
learning to appreciate what we have.
Most of the time we don’t do this.
Rather than appreciate where we are,
we continually struggle and nurture our dissatisfaction.
It’s like we are trying to get the flowers to grow
by pouring cement on the garden.
Pema Chödrön, The Places that Scare You

Take this moment, right now,
right where you are,
to take off your armor.

Find one place, one tiny crack, in your shield,
and widen it.
Find on weakness in the brittle hardness
that covers your self-compassion,
and soften it quietly.

Be sure to take a deep breath:
it may feel a little unsettling, exposing.
Notice the chain reaction when you find that starting place:
what happens when you relax your shoulders,
when you unclench your fists,
when you straighten your slumped back?
What happens in your body? in your spirit?

Feel all the way down into the soles of your feet,
and see if you can feel the tiny rootlets growing out of them,
anchoring you to the soft, sweet earth.

Can you feel them drinking?