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Living By Heart When I was growing up, if we had to learn something by memory we were told to “learn it by heart.” Why “by heart” and not “by mind” or “by memory?” I guess that was because our teachers knew that anything we do “by heart” is just so deeply ingrained that it becomes a part of us. That’s the way “heart” is used in the Bible. So we read things in it like “trust in the Lord with all your heart; love the Lord your God and serve him with all your heart; be glad and rejoice with all your heart.” The heart is regarded in Scripture as the essence of our being, the center of the self, and the core of the soul. Macrina Wiederkehr brought all this to mind with this statement in The Circle of Life. She said, “As a child, I was quite successful at living fully because I had not yet learned to live by the calendar. I lived by heart.”[1] As a child, so did I! Oh, I lived by the calendar once I started school – at least from 9:00 to 3:30. But once school was out, I was off the calendar – no schedule to keep – just to be sure I had my chores done, that I wasn’t late for supper, and was ready for bed on time. With two grades in each classroom at school, I was sure to get my assignments done while the teacher was working with the other grade so there was nothing to take home. (I feel for children these days who are so loaded down with homework and extra curricular activities that most of their waking hours are scheduled.) So I lived by heart! Whatever my heart led me to do (and my parents would permit) I was free to do. It might be playing cars and trucks in the dirt driveway; building something with whatever scrap wood and nails I could scrounge up; catching frogs at Pollywog Dam or minnows in the little streams that meandered through the waste sands from the old stamp mill; rounding up the neighborhood kids for a pickup game of baseball; joining Grandpa under the vine-covered canopy of his “shady house” for a watermelon feast; the list goes on. But like Macrina Wiederkehr I was living life fully “by heart!” Living “by heart” has become much more elusive in adult life. Like Macrina, I too have learned to live by the calendar – the paper one with its appointments, meetings, and commitments, as well as the internal one with its sense of obligations and responsibilities. Even the things I do for fun are during time intentionally carved out of the calendar. I suppose there is something in all people that mourns the loss of childhood innocence, dependence, and complete reliance upon others that allowed us to be carefree and live by heart. But we Christians are still children – children of God – and it occurs to me that those blessings of our physical childhood are something God desires to give back to us on a different level as His spiritual children. As we become innocent children (of God) once again through forgiveness and acceptance by faith in Christ, we learn dependence and reliance upon Him. And our hearts rebound with new vitality for life because the Holy Spirit now resides there. Under the influence of the Spirit, no wonder our hearts yearn to affect how we live. I know that something within me would love to throw away my calendar, just get up tomorrow, and see what my heart tells me to do. But I suspect I haven’t yet learned completely how to distinguish between the remaining traces of my first childhood (that’s probably still yearning to catch frogs!) and the more mature child I am becoming in the Spirit. As a child of God, His Spirit within my heart will help me to know what things are truly worthy of time and space in my life and on my calendar so that I can live once again “by heart.” I know that living “by heart” was great in my first childhood! So why not continue it as a child of God? [1] Christianity Today, Reflections, July 2006, p. 46. |
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