Heart Land

Hi,

Have you ever lost your heart? It’s an ever-loving pain, because then you’ve got to go out and round it back up. Hearts are such willful, deceiving things. They say they’re one place, and then you find them somewhere else, and then you can only hope that whomever found it is someone who keeps hearts safe.

Then there are times when your heart simply refuses to get out of bed. When life loses its zing and savor, and everything tastes like a Scottish grandmother overcooked oats for breakfast. One sits there staring into the oats and feeling exactly like a shivery blob of white jelly. “Where is the brown sugar?“ We croak, only to discover there is a quarter of a teaspoon left in the crock. Outside a sullen grey cloud cover hobnobs with misery. The sunshine is gone from the world.

Then there is the heart which starts ricocheting off walls when it sees a crush. “ooh, ah! Thump, crash, ker-pow.” All the china is on the floor in fragments along with the coffee and your dignity. Hearts like that can’t be reined it. They will not be tamed. They do make the mouth say awkward things like, “have you had a pleasant trip?” Or, “Q-tips have gone up in price.”

Then there is whiplash of the heart. You are sitting there one minute happy and the next your grandmother is dead. No warning. It is too much of a shock, there are no air bags to cushion the blow. The heart is left bruised. The moment of impact stops, and begins the hushed finality of never going back to life the way it was before.

Did you know that hearts sometimes cause tsunamis? Otherwise unsuspecting people sitting on their personal beaches, enjoying a nice sunset, are unsuspectingly caught up and knocked over by these waves, like some giant game of bowling. Huge, swirling, heaving, roaring, waves of salt. Why do tears come out of the same place as our vision? Emotions are no respecters of vision.

I once found my heart laying in a guest bed in a friend’s home, the attic window open next to me, while a thunderstorm rolled in. Then later I found it down in their kitchen: a sunny, bright and homely place. It laughed at me for my worries and said that peace was found by those who know how to love the homely things.

Once, it got lost for three months while I spend time studying a language in a foreign city. I eventually got it back, but it was never the same.

Sometimes the heart takes a plunge into the icy waters of mainstream news.

Do you know how it feels to be hugged so well that it wraps around your heart? It’s like a warm sip of coffee and Irish liqueur on a cold, cold night of the soul. It lights a flame around which both people sit and enjoy friendship.

Sometimes when you meet eyes with another person you see they left the doors to their heart open, and since you also forgot to close yours, for one moment you see into their hearts and find out what it’s like to be truly seen.

Sometimes we see how wicked our heart can be. Like a personal monster who hides under our bed of which we are more afraid than anything else in this world. Like cracks which grow in our walls about which we can do nothing.

We ask the master in to help us fix it, and instead we see with what love he comes and touches the foundations, the rot, the mold. He’s not afraid like we are. Suddenly we worry less about being fixed and follow him.

We sit playing our cards, trumping, triumphing and acing affairs of the heart. We bluff and win, bluff and lose. In the end, the game is done and we go home. If you find a person to go home with, you have found your person.

We map this miraculous, intricate life-giving heartland in which we will spend the rest of our lives. We plant gardens which will grow and produce fruit and weeds, but give us our heart’s satisfaction. A place which only grows with the breaking of ground, which stabs us with hurts, and takes our breath away with morning mercies.

Many hearts gather around a table. They all hold their secrets, their sadness, their joys, their hopes, their loves, their crushes, their griefs, their illnesses, their peace, and all are given life.

It is a great gift. Do not neglect your heart. Let it be unto you everything it was made to be, and find joy in it. If you give it away, give it to someone who also finds delight in it. Any hearts which come your way, handle carefully.

We lose and find our hearts many times over the course of a lifetime. People will be in and out of it. It was made for this. It was made to love life.

Let it.

L. Raine