| Feb ’09 |
| 8 |
| 1:30 pm |
The February Movie Matinee will be Soldiers Heart. Several of us were able to view the movie and meet the producer/director/writer this summer at a Soldiers Heart training retreat. We feel this will be another powerful experience for the VHG community.
EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF THE EPIPHANY
2089 Ponce De Leon Ave NE
Atlanta, GA 30307
The human body is an amazing masterpiece.
With the senses we see, taste, and touch the world, drawing its mystery inside us. With the mind we probe the eternal structures of things. With the face we present ourselves to the world and recognize one another. But it is the heart that makes us human.
The heart is where the beauty of the human spirit comes alive. Without the heart, the human would be sinister. To be able to feel is the great gift. When you feel for someone, you become united with that person in an intimate way; your concern and compassion come alive, drawing some of the other person’s world and spirit into yours. Feeling is the secret bridge that penetrates solitude and isolation. Without the ability to feel, friendship and love could never be born. All feeling is born in the heart. This makes the human heart the true jewel of the world.
Facing outward, the senses are in ever new conversation with whatever surrounds us. Facing possibility, the mind is in relentless thought-flow. Concealed within the dark, the heart is concerned with who we are. It is ever attentive to how we feel; it senses and feels where the care, the joy, the fear, and the tenderness reside. Always and at every point, the heart remembers who we are. Though so much else is in motion in the mind and the senses, the hidden heart never loses sight of us. If we ever feel lost or overwhelmed, all we have to do is become still and listen in to our heart and we will soon find exactly where we are.
Because the mind is always engaged with whatever is happening now, it often forgets who we are. The heart never forgets. Everything of significance is inscribed there. The heart is the archive of all our intimate memory. What is truly felt leaves the deepest inscription. Each of us carries the book of our life inside our heart. Often at night when we dream, we are surprised at how clearly versions of long-forgotten events return with strange clarity. Though we live much of our lives outside, in action and engagement with the world, the deeper impact of .what happens is registered in the narrative of the heart.
Because the heart dwells in unattended dark, we often forget its sublime sensitivity to everything that is happening to us. Without our ever noticing, the heart absorbs the joy of things and also their pain and care. Within us, therefore, a burdening can accrue. For this reason it is wise now and again to tune in to your heart and listen for what it carries. Sometimes the simplest things effect unexpected transformation. The old people here used to say that a burden shared is a burden halved. Similarly, when you allow your heart to speak, the burdens it carries diminish, a new lightness enters your body, and relief floods the heart. In his poem “In Memory of W. B. Yeats,” W. H. Auden has the beautiful quatrain:
In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountain start, In the prison of his days Teach the free man how to praise.
It brings great joy to feel alive. You sense the beauty and privilege of being here. For a while your eyes take in the world in all its adventure and grace; you feel somehow at the center of its surge of invitation and possibility. One of the loneliest elements of exile is the exile from one’s feelings. The person who is not able to feel his life has become dangerously dislocated. Sometimes severe suffering causes this numbing; the heart atrophies.
The shape of the human heart is very distinctive; it is an instantly recognizable image. It is an interesting shape. Neither a circle nor a triangle, it somehow manages to blend both contours. Viewed through the metaphor of the triangle, the heart is a space where the self and its other¬ness unite to configure the individual presence of the person. This threefold structure is also the structure at work in friendship and love: you, the friend, and the triangle is completed in the “third force,” which is the spirit of the friendship; this is more than the sum of the two dimen¬sions. It is a force that has its own independence and a dif¬ferent tone of spirit. Therefore, outer and inner friendship have a triadic structure.
Viewed through the metaphor of the circle, other qual¬ities of the heart come into relief. The heart has a beautiful simultaneity, being at once the place of arrival and departure within the body. All the wearied blood arrives there to be refreshed and renewed, and it is from this place that the newly invigorated life force sets forth. It is the place of ending that is always a new beginning. The circle is an ancient form; it signifies continuity, belonging, and permanence. It is consoling to think that at the center of the human body the heart holds one’s life within its sure circle.
The state of one’s heart inevitably shapes one’s life; it is ultimately the place where everything is decided.
*A courageous heart will go forth and engage with
life despite confusion and fear.
*A fearful heart will be hesitant and will tend to
hold back.
*A heavy heart will make for a gloomy, unlived life.
A compassionate heart need never carry the burden
of judgment.
*A forgiving heart knows the art of liberation.
*A loving heart awakens the spirit of possibility and
engagement with others.
The power of the heart’s attitude is expressed beautifully in the New Testament: “Where your treasure is, there is your heart also.” And all through the Old Testament, God is interested only in the heart-not sacrifices, rituals, or rules-only the heart. Indeed, the mystical tradition would suggest the heart is beautiful precisely because it is where God dwells: the heart is the divine sanctuary.
From To Bless This Space Between Us, a book of blessings by John O’Donohue
| Feb ’09 |
| 28 |
| 7:00 pm |
You and Your Guests
Are cordially invited to an
Inaugural Dinner
Benefitting
Veteran’s Heart Georgia
Saturday February 28, 2009
Petite Auberge Restaurant Toco Hills, Atlanta, GA 30329 7 pm Cocktail Hour/Cash Bar8 pm Buffet
9 pm Short Program*/Raffle
* Introduction of Board Members and Overview of Our Vision
Ticket Sales Concluded Wed. Feb. 25 and will not be available for purchase at the door.
All pre-purchased tickets for dinner and raffle will be held at the door on Saturday night beginning at 7 pm.
Questions- Christi O’Hara, Event Chair, 770-496-1645 or coseifring@bellsouth.net
**Raffle! Prizes Include (4) $50 restaurant gift certificates, pr. movie tickets, more!
Tickets $2 or 3/$5; purchase on-line, by mail, or at event. Need not be present to win!
If you cannot attend, please consider a donation via check or raffle tickets purchase.
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