As the Heart Awakens

Wednesday Wisdom.

This past weekend, I attended a three-day retreat led by James Finely, author, retreat leader, and master of the Contemplative Way. His generous presence and teaching was a great gift to all of us.

One of the things James spoke about was the importance of paying attention to when we are taken into the heart of God, and the experience leaves a marker in our heart. For this is how we awaken to the Divine nature of all of life.

This notion of divine experiences leaving a marker in my heart really struck me. And it led me to remember an experience of awakening that I once had.

I was twenty-three at the time, living in an apartment with a friend here in San Francisco, while getting my teaching credential. It was my first year in the program, and I was doing my observation hours in an elementary school in the Mission district, with a diverse population of kids.

I didn’t have a car then, so I always traveled by bus to get around. It took me about an hour each way to get to the school from where I lived.  The Mission district is dense, lively, diverse, and has a large Spanish speaking population.

One warm September afternoon, I got on the 49 Mission bus, on my way to my school assignment, traveling right through the heart of the area. It was a local bus, so it stopped at every corner. I was hot, exhausted, and running late. The bus was filled with young and old, grocery bags lining the aisles, children crying, and the smell of torillas, sweat and shampoo filling the air.

I stood in the back of the crowded bus, sounds of Spanish filling my ears. I held on tight to the overhead handle, as the bus bumped along the street filled with pot holes. My heavy backpack rested between my legs, and for a moment I closed my eyes, trying to collect myself and gain my balance.

And in that moment, however long it might have been, I experienced an overwhelming sense of oneness with everyone and everything on that grimy city bus. It took me by surprise, and sweep through me with such ease and delight. I softly opened my eyes, soaking in all that was around me.

We were one, all of us, connected in the Spirit, in the heart of God as I might say it now.

That experience has left a mark in my heart; a sense of a oneness, without boundaries; a realization that God is present everywhere, all the time in you and me and in us together.

What is an experience that has marked your heart? Perhaps, when you held a baby; helped your spouse when he was sick; swam in the ocean; received communion at mass.

Yes, our hearts are being touched. As Finely invites us to reflect on: How do we remain faithful to our awakened hearts?

Practice:

• Pause in prayer, and ask yourself: Where has the Infinite revealed itself to me? In the moon, in my sister’s tears, in my mother’s fraility, in my husband’s anxiety, in a night of fractured sleep.
• How can you remain faithful to what has awakened in your heart?