Sister Doreen’s Reflections
Thinking back to my first meditations around having an open heart, today I needed to think about what really happened when literally I experienced an open heart, in a sense was forced to have an open heart. Someone to save my life forcefully opened and exposed my heart.
Open-heart surgery is a general term for surgical procedures performed to treat heart problems by directly accessing the heart through an opening in the chest. During open-heart surgery, the surgeon will cut through the breastbone (sternotomy) and spread the ribs to access the heart. The procedure is then reversed after the repair job is done, in my case five blocks were corrected by a triple bypass. The ribs are closed, and the breastbone is wired back together, and the skin stitched.
Needless to say, both before and after there were questions swirling around in my mind, although at the time I was really too numb with shock to think clearly. I wondered what life would be like after the surgery and how I would manage my road to recovery. Looking back, the challenge for me was to be patient with this new vulnerability, to acknowledge that my entire being (not just my physical body) had gone through a lot and to recover and regain my strength, both physically, emotionally and spiritually, was going to be a journey that would take time, one day at a time! And looking back, I realize now that it is part of a lifetime journey that is never over! It is the gift of vulnerability.
Father Brian Freeland’s wise counsel and support is still as relevant today as it was for me in 1999 when I, having experienced a traumatic open-heart experience, began to ponder in new ways my own desire to have an open heart. I had to overcome my hesitation and fear at facing a new understanding of what it means to be vulnerable, and to harness my impatience for everything to be ‘fixed’ yesterday! The advice Father Freeland gave to me was to slowly and prayerfully read Exodus – and to imagine my own exodus, from slavery through the wilderness to the promised land.
In my own wilderness I discovered my complaints, my impatience, my inadequacy much like the Israelite’s who were never content and satisfied with the way that life was treating them. Ushered into being in a position where I was vulnerable, someone who was used to being healthy, independent, looked for answers, and was more at home caring for others than being cared for myself, this was indeed a new scary journey. However, I also discovered, since my recovery meant daily walking until I was walking three miles in an hour, that much like the Israelite’s experience, God, a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, journeyed with me. It was a discovery to find that God is a three mile an hour God! I always felt that God walked at the same pace as I did, slowly at first for short distances, and then finally reaching with me the goal of the three mile an hour walk! Over the years since this discovery, I have treasured this as a precious and exciting gift, one that has continued to feed my own journey through the different seasons of my life. Like the Israelite’s my clothes never wore out, but unlike the Israelite’s my shoes did wear out, needing to be replaced several times over the course of recovery! The journey with an open heart is hard work, it will show some wear and tear.
Today as I look back, I have come to understand in a new way that life really is a series of experiences, all of them important. All of them need to be faced and lived through not for their own sake but so that we come to know ourselves better. Joan Chittister in her book There is a Season wrote: “Life becomes a series of lurches and turns that we struggle to negotiate by redirecting ourselves from one-dead end to another until, finally, we come to see the links between them.” Now looking back, today I can see that in trying to live with an open heart it is the connections rather than the divisions that fit into place my wisdom and imagination. It is more difficult today to block out our connections, our relationships with each other and all of creation, it is more difficult today to live with constantly examining agreements and disagreements, more difficult to resist the challenge to change and become whole.
My questions grew and continue to grow. What goes with an open heart? What are we like, what are our lives like when our hearts are open? I looked at the open-heart ponderings I had written years ago, a chance today to perhaps renew the first love that I had then.
- We see more clearly when our hearts are open; see the person right in front of our face, see the landscape stretched out before us. We move from darkness to light, from night to day, when we see with the eyes of our heart.
- An open heart is alive to wonder, to the sheer marvel of ‘isness’. It is remarkable that the world is, that we are here, that we can experience it. The world is not ordinary. An open heart knows ‘radical amazement’.
- An open heart and gratitude go together. We can feel this in our bodies. In the moments in my life when I have been most grateful, I have felt a swelling, almost a bursting, in my chest.
- An open heart, compassion, and a passion for justice go together. An open heart feels the suffering and pain of the world and responds to it. Compassion and justice are the ethical impulse and imperative that go with an open heart.
- Longing for an open heart, working hard to develop an open heart, we find that it is there that we are most fully one with all that we are and all that is. We gradually draw from this a new set of values and orientations – those springing from compassion.
- Living with an open heart, doing the hard work of keeping our hearts open, vulnerable, gives us a heart of love toward that which is difficult (a person, a situation, a place). It gives us a way of looking at the opportunity in front of us as a way of discovering a deeper understanding. I begin to whine less and look for solutions more. When I do not try to live with an open heart, my whining sours the most beautiful moments.
- With open hearts it is easier to put our hands into God’s hand and take the next step.
- It is through the open heart that we too will find it helpful to imagine that throughout our entire lifetime, God keeps whispering into our ears that blessing “You are my beloved, my blessed one, and in you I am well-pleased.”
- And we too can perhaps then look more easily at each other, at the poor, the hungry, the weeping, and see them as the blessed ones.
“Wouldn’t it be ironic given the volume and sophistication of information at our fingertips in 2024, if the path to a more harmonious, loving and peaceful world was simply to lead from and listen to our open, loving hearts?” (a quote from IMEXfiles February 14, 2024)
