The heart is a tender space. Lent it is time to tend to it. The heart is tender.

There is a thing: in this highly pressured life that we lead, where we overlook, disregard and ignore the heart.  An addiction to busy-ness enables us to ignore or not attend to the nurturing it needs.

Cistercian Monk, Thomas Merton, is quoted as saying, (way back in the 1960’s in his book ‘No Man is an Island’), that “The whole mechanism of modern life is geared for a flight from God and from the Spirit into the wilderness of neurosis.”

Heart are tender…

The duty of tending to the heart is an invitation in Lent.  The continual call to prayer, bible reading, wider reading, walking, stillness, service to one another and community, are all calls to tending to the heart.  As a season of attention to the Spirit, attention to caring for self, neighbour and world, helps the ‘heart -work’ of living this human-spiritual life.

Singer-songwirter Ben Harper sings

“Life is sharp

it cuts like a knife

Everyone I know

Is in the fight of their life.”

This week, our Lenten Action is to consider our Use of Energy: and I am interested in where this topic lead me. Where do I put my Energy? Where do I put my emotional energy?  Where do I put my Spiritual energy? In whom, or to whom do I put my energy?

Writer, Julia Cameron, who is famous for her book “The Artist’s Way”, draws out attention to what we are doing unconsciously in our living, in our choices and relating.  And when I did her book back at art school, it was chapter 2 that confronted me: with whom do we spend our time and energy.

Julia says: “We could wonder and worry about our arrogance instead of being humble enough to ask for help to move through our fear.  We could fantasise about art instead of doing the work.  By not asking the Great Creators’ help with our creativity, and by not seeing the Great Creators hand in our creativity, we could proceed to righteously ignore our creativity and never have to take the risks of fulfilling it.”

Hear that again in words of faith:

We could wonder and worry about our yearning for a Spiritual life instead of being humble enough to ask for help to move through our fear.  We could fantasise about being connected with God, instead of doing the work.  By not asking for God’s help with our Spirituality, and by not looking for God’s hand in our living, we could proceed to righteously ignore our sense of Spirit and never have to take the risks of living into our faith.

Where do I put my emotional energy: Where do I put my Spiritual energy? 

I am invited to think about the people in my life, who are what Julia calls, a ‘crazy maker.’  She says “’Crazy makers’ are those personalities that create storm centres.  They are often charismatic, frequently charming, highly inventive, and powerfully persuasive… the kind of person who can take over your whole life.”    A crazy maker loves drama: and if they can swing it, they are the centre of the universe: and everyone in their orbit is running around them as the supporting cast, picking up after them, attending to their urgent whims, and responding to their every cue.

And in terms of this week’s Lenten consideration… The Use of Energy: and my focus on Where do we put our emotional energy: Where do we put our Spiritual energy? … Quickly leads me to the more difficult question,  ‘In whom or to whom do I put my energy?’

It’s a tough thing to identify a crazy maker in your life, because if we do the work, we realise that we are enabling them.  And worse: that we are crazy ourselves and we are part of this self destructive behaviour.

ouch… because I thought I was just doing the Christian thing…

So this week, I invited you to consider this ACTION: Our Use of Energy.

And I invite you to consider these questions…

Imagine what our community here would be like if we intentionally placed, consciously, some of our Emotional and Spiritual energy into this congregation?  What would we look like then?  

If we invested some of our Emotional and Spiritual energy into this congregation, how much more satisfying would it be?  How much more nourishing would our Spirituality be? Imagine the health of our hearts?

Hearts are tender…

They don’t need crazy makers: 

hearts need environments that nurture our Spirit.

The heart is a tender space. Lent it is time to tend to it.

And I leave you with this question:

Imagine the community we could be for those who are looking for the same kinds of things that cause us to gather together this morning?

Let us commit to this Lenten adventure, as we consider our use of energy. Amen.