Living From the Spiritual Heart – Interact
Learn – Interact – People – Resources
Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6
Praying for each other in whatever way feels right to you is the most important part of this community.
You may journal in any way you wish: in a notebook, using art, or by adding a thought, comment, or journal entry with the class. By sharing a journal entry publicly below, you offer encouragement and a chance to share your journey with others who are in this course as well. Feel free to prayerfully respond to an entry someone else has made as well.
Comment below (fill in your name and email the first time you post) and ‘Post Comment’. Press ‘Reply’ then ‘Post Comment’ to respond to another person’s comment (even if you simply type ‘thank you’).
Enjoy!
TE WK1 question 1: Yearning
Spiritual community continues to be a yearning for me. So I am looking forward to e-meeting all of you!
TE WK1 question 2: My connection with description of Spiritual Heart
There were several points of connection for me…along with some points which I hope to bring to closer connection. The point with which I am most familiar is “Next Step”. In my experience God gives but one step at a time. As a result, I find I need to “lean into” (not a phrase I’ve used often and find useful now) my trust of process and of the Spirit within me. Without both the perceived receipt of the appropriate next step and the trust I put in the validity of that step…I may not move at all.
I am grateful for Sandra’s comments regarding “next step.” In response to Tilden’s question 2, identifying a hope for the weeks ahead, I named hoping for a sense of guidance regarding next step(s). Sandra, your comments about trust of process/Sprit, “perceived receipt” of a next step and trust in it’s validity ring so true. Thank you.
Hi Anne! Thank you so much for connecting with me/my comment. It’s what I mean by community. I wish you blessings on your “next step”. May you experience a deep knowing…even if the step is only a tiny baby step! Sandra
Ann Kelley
Let us pray for one another that we deeply desire to live from our spiritual heart, our true Home, and that the Spirit guides us to really live that way.
This is an invitation for deeper conversion for me, to consistently desire a union with my true self, the Self in the Divine Beloved, and to love out of that center, that Home.
A prayer for us all, especially Ann. Holy One, may we all live your dream for us. Amen.
Q1: The yearning that brought me here is a need for the support of God and community as I navigate a transition. A desire to learn and start new practices during Lent.
Q2: What resonated for me is a hunger to detach from “grinding” away in the realms of the head and the ego and a desire to live more deeply from the truth of myself.
Poem for Lent
The cosmos dreams in me
while I wait in stillness,
ready to lean a little further
into the heart of the Holy.
I, a little blip of life,
a wisp of unassuming love,
a quickly passing breeze,
come once more into Lent.
No need to sign me
with the black bleeding ash
of palms, fried and baked.
I know my humus place.
This Lent I will sail
on the graced wings of desire,
yearning to go deeper
to the place where
I am one in the One.
Oh, may I go there soon,
in the same breath
that takes me to the stars
when the cosmos dreams in me.
~ Joyce Rupp, joycerupp.com/lent-2001/
This Joyce Rupp poem speaks to my desire to live from the Spiritual Heart even as my prayer time this morning reflected the distracted tugs of my ego and thinking mind. But I trust that God knows my longing, and that God’s desire for me is that I might abide in the heart of the holy.
My prayer for each of us is that we might “wait in stillness, ready to lean a little further into the heart of the Holy… yearning to go deeper to the place where I am one in the One.”
Jane, thank you so much for the Rupp poem. I so appreciate the words and your thoughtfulness. Sandi
Week 2 Reflection response.
How living from my spiritual heart makes a difference:
What I notice most and most immediately is physical: It slows me down. Sometimes I am stopped entirely. Sometimes the slow-down leads directly to reflection. Other times to confusion, as my Ego and Thinking selves (ET) vie for dominance.
Sadly…in spite of the blessed gift of graced awareness that sometimes challenges “where I’m coming from,” I don’t always stop and reflect. Happily…when I do knock myself, or get knocked, off the treadmill of circular thinking and/or egoic reaction, I can usually spot what’s going on. At this point I have two choices. I can berate myself for falling into old and unhealthy practices (not helpful). Or I can simply let it go and pray for the courage and patience to both adjust my path and slooooooooow down next time.
After decades of working on this I can honestly say that I’m less transactional and more reflective in my everyday living. I’m grateful for that for sure. Still, I can’t help but feel, “too soon old, too late smart.” I don’t think I’m unusual in this. There is always more work to do. Always.
What yearning brings you to this course?
Like Wendy, I want to detach from the “grinding” in my head. It is exhausting. I am constantly thinking through ways to make changes or respond to life to make things easier/better. I have never embraced life as it is…. but yet, my “spirit” has always told me that there are limits to my “thinking” and that there is “exceedingly more”. I am yearning to move away from more than 50 years of a thought-centered life to experience the fullness of life from a deeper source that is not bound by the mind.
How did the descriptions of the spiritual heart connect with your own experience of the deep center of your being?
The deep center of my being craves “more” and it appears from the description of the spiritual heart that “more” is possible. The best “decisions” that I have made in my life were from the heart. They were not exclusively rational. I used my mind to help support my heart decisions. From the first teaching, though, what resonated for me was the discussion around transformation. My spirit jumped at that.
Week 2: An idea that came to me this week was the Trinity. My faith tradition is rooted in God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This week’s reflection had me consider my humanity as having three parts-with ego and thinking as well as spiritual heart. I like holding the image that all three exist and that I can lean back for perspective. I notice I have more capacity for perspective around me (external) and within me (emotions and bodily sensations).
Ann Kelley
I have so appreciated Tilden’s teaching on Sundays and the support that he gives to us midweek. Both are obviously from his deep experience of the Holy One and the mystical union with the Divine Beloved which is such a grace.
Tilden has addressed the mutual indwelling that is such a gift for us as we live from our spiritual hearts. To me that has meant our indwelling in the Trinity and the Trinity dwelling in us. It has also signified our indwelling with each other. This past Sunday I had a profound experience of that mutual indwelling during a concert by our Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra featuring violinist Randall Goosby who played Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor. Randall, a young 28 year old who has a Korean mother and African American father, mesmerized us as he performed flawlessly the concerto along with the orchestra. I was graced to actually feel the mutual indwelling of the beauty of the music flowing from each member of the orchestra and Randall, in a kind of swelling of the concerto touching my heart and all those in attendance. It was as if we were all caught up in the music our Creator gave to Mendelssohn to write, and for the performers to play. All present were receiving the indwelling through the music being played, and we were as one body united in our joy. I want to express my gratitude to the Holy One for the experience during that concerto. I am profoundly grateful for the sacred gift that was truly a unique concert experience.
After the standing ovation which Randall received, he asked the all the concert goers to join him in singing Happy Birthday to his father who was in the audience and who was celebrating his 60th birthday that day. This was another example of mutual indwelling as we all rose and sang “Happy birthday, dear Dad !”
I believe that the Holy Spirit is calling me to recognize the mutual holy indwelling that is ongoing all the time. I pray that all of us are able to recognize that more consistently.
Ann Kelly, thank you so much for this sharing. I live in Tucson now, but your sharing made me mindful of listening to Mahler at the CSO in Chicago. s
When you are able to be present in your spiritual heart through your day, how would you describe the difference it makes to your awareness, compassion and freedom?
Everything is different. What I notice most is that I am not conflicted. I don’t stop to consider thoughts and actions because I’m not constrained by what I perceive to be appropriate or considerate behavior. I am not controlled by fear. I act/exist from a place of Knowing that is organic and easy. I breathe better., and I think I am a more responsive parent.
Confident. Like you I feel a notable difference which I can best describe as quiet confidence. I also notice that I smile a lot!
And today during church, I began to wonder if the concept of “Living in the Spirit” or letting the Holy Spirit live in you might be the same concept as “Living from your Spiritual Heart” but from a different tradition. I worship in the African Methodist Episcopal tradition. Today, we talked about the Holy Spirit and for a few minutes the church was on fire – scripture, theology, and exegesis all gave way to Spirit. The place felt different, and I felt different in much the same way that I feel different after yoga, chanting or meditating via Eastern traditions. Perhaps this is an example of how the thinking mind must conceptualize and categorize in a way that limits real “Knowing”. And I had forgotten that contemplative practices can be corporate, reflecting the connectedness of one to another and to God.
Thanks so much for this Lillyanne. In my experience, corporate/community have indeed been powerful…and a bit different than solitary presence. Though, if you were to force me to describe the difference I’d have to say I just don’t have words. I do wish I could go to your church one day though. I’ll try to imagine it.
Hello Everyone, It’s lovely to connect here in reading your posts around this theme of living from the spiritual heart.
A few highlights for me so far, have been being more aware of connecting with my heart through the day. And how the practice of it grounds and centres me almost immediately, connecting me with this Deeper Knowing, this Deeper Reality that most of the time I sense as this gentle reassuring calming Presence that if i had to put words to says “It’s ok”. I loved what Tilden says about how the heart is where the veil is the thinnest between us and God.
I am interested and looking forward to exploring the way all these different parts of us can work together and what it means to live in Union with Self and Union with God.
Ann Kelley
In listening with my spiritual heart this week, a line from Psalm 95 kept resonating with me, “If today you hear God’s voice, harden not your hearts.” We sang that together on Sunday during our liturgical services, which meant a time of a communal indwelling of a scriptural word. And through the week I heard that music in my own heart over and over.
I did have an experience yesterday when I began clinging to my small ego self which felt frustrated, confused and conflicted. However, this morning I read from a scriptural meditation by Maria Boulding: “Make space for God to be God for you, so he (sic) can draw you into that truth-relationship with himself (sic).” She went on to say that we are called to personally empty ourselves, and not cling to a sense of being conflicted, “letting go of any defense against the living God, and letting God love me.”
I believe I listened to the spiritual heart’s calling, to harden not my heart in remaining frustrated, to let go, and to make space for God to be God for me, which also involved my mind. More and more, if we open to the Holy Spirit to guide us in living from our spiritual hearts, I believe we are blessed with that deep grace.