Change of Heart

I've a question for you.

Do you feel your heart, your emotional center, is changing?

I'm sure it is different than when you were a child. I'm sure that when school let out for the summer the warmth of the sun shone on you a lot like the way your heart shone its joy of being alive and free and... well, of being eight.

It changed along the way. There were hurts and joys, mysteries and discoveries, all shaped how you felt.

I feel my heart changing.

It isn't just the big changes that have happened... It seems an ongoing process. I feel my heart changing in a steady way that makes the swift changes just obstacles along the road of my life. The movement on the road has always continued.

Two great sorrows, the death of my child and the death of my marriage, broke my heart, but it mended. Major changes which reformed me the way a smith's hammer on hot metal.

But the other changes... the ordinary changes... Like what I am feeling now, I'm fascinated by them.

I feel my heart changing steadily. I find myself loving everyone, everything, a little more each day.

I have especially noticed a deeper emotional response to worship. When I worship my mind and heart fill with the scope of existence, the galaxies spread across 20 billion or more light years; I imagine the tiny strings at the deepest skein of the fabric of the universe, following the shuttles of physics in the loom of all things; I picture in my mind's eye the pulsing death throws of Beetlegeuse, swelling, deepening, preparing to die... I imagine the deaths of quasars and of may flies and my heart swells.

Even in talking or writing of such things my pulse quickens, my tongue grows thick, my eyes moisten. It is all so lovely.

And it seems to me, there is something about my heart, something about my life, that continues to change, continues to grow.

Is this unique to me? Do others experience such change? I note my father seems to gentle as he ages... Do we all?

So, dear reader, do you feel your heart, your emotional center, is changing?

A Little Writing Before the Others Awake...

I guess I haven't written much of late because things are going well.

Not perfect, but well.

I'm at a youth camp this weekend with my son Jeremiah. We are volunteering, doing whatever work they would have us do in preparation for their summer season.

I've been awake many times through the night. Perhaps it is the bunk bed, or the snoring of other men, or simply the bizarre dreams.

My dreams were filled with trying to find sleep in corners of a nearly vacant city with strange tall, and strange small birds stalking about in the dark, police cars shining their lights down alleys, of large mirrors placed too high to see into, and dusty vacant buildings echoing with the sounds of meals which no longer exist.

I went to sleep peaceful enough.

There was a worship service last night, my heart was at peace.

A good thing.

It seems odd to be 53.

It seems odd to be single and to have a heart moved by the thoughts of spinning galaxies and breezes blowing over grasses of meadows covering fragments of continents which no longer exist.

It seems odd to have a heart which loves and wants to love and yet only shares my life in pieces with my children, with my friends, with my God, and with a woman I am greatly attracted to.

It seems odd to consider this life, this second life after a marriage which spanned the best part of three decades. I wanted to give 60 or 70 years to a marriage. I wanted to give everything to a future so it would add up to a past I was pleased to have lived.

Now I can only offer 30 or so years...

I think of what I have to offer... emotional, spiritual, even to a small extent, financial assets. That last part is strange... I prefer the idea of sharing all I have with someone who hasn't anything to give back, so the sharing can be freer, without feeling I might receive more than I give. I want to be generous in every way.

This person I am seeing... I don't feel free to write of her, of us, as I did while my marriage was shredding. I think when I was writing back then I was hoping she would read what I was saying and understand, find her way back. I asked her many times to read it.

But now, things are good, and there isn't the need to pull at the sinews of the relationship to see what is attached.

Not that things are perfect. It seems clear I am someone who can be hard to read, that my flat affect can be taken as displeasure or disinterest when it can actually be covering amusement or even joy. So, I have a long ways to go to learn how to share who I am.

But this blog isn't the place to do that. Not this time.

As I write the dreams of the past night swirl around me, float through my thoughts, their emotional responses cling to my heart like tendrils of a dense fog slipping back toward a river flowing just out of sight... Shadows of buildings, sagging chain link fences, crumbling cinder block walls... animals in the dark... more fearsome in the dark than when I swept a flashlight over their startled features. Of the man who slithered along the side of the van, turning out to be a friendly early riser out for a walk. Constellations I have never seen floating in thin strips of sky far above alleys...

I'm nine years older. It doesn't seem much, at 53. But now and then conversations reveal experiences, memories of events personal and historic... no matter.

Last night, at worship, I felt the certainty I often feel during worship, of realities of my relationship with God which prevent me from calling it faith. How can it be faith when I am so certain? Moses didn't have faith in the reality of God, not after being in His presence. That bush burned in Moses' heart long after it no longer burned within his sight.

When I worship I feel a connection to everything, to the great expanse of time which comprises this universe, the great expanse of space which comprises this universe, the great expanse of smallness which stretches from me through my molecules, my atoms, sub atomic particles, quarks, and the strings vibrating in dimensions far more plentiful that I can experience...

When I worship my heart feels large.

When my heart feels large, I want to share it.

I don't mean I want to go out on some evangelical mission, convince anyone of the truths I feel within me.

I mean I want to share my heart. I want to share my life. I want to be close to someone. I want someone to know me, and share joy.

Toward the end of this week is Good Friday. I usually watch The Passion on Good Friday, remind myself of the mystery of the infinite made finite.

Jesus was a guy like me. He grew tired. I suppose there were times when He was all the things I know in being a man. The stories of His life mention weariness, thirst, even fear or dread. I suppose He passed gas. I suppose that He had to read the Torah to have the foundation for His message, He didn't walk around with omniscience. It seems strange to think He dealt with acne and blisters and splinters.

But, He was a guy like me.

I know He longed to share His heart...