"The Heart of Heaven"

First Presbyterian Church, Jamestown , NY

John Monroe-Cassel

February 13, 2008

Lenten Wednesday Service

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In the Heart of heaven

                                                    muscles of mirth

                                                    melodies of mercy and

                                                    harmonies of the Holy

                                                 Sustain life everlasting

                                                In Compassion’s chambers

                                                         valves of victory

                                                         Open and close,

                                                         Pulse and surge,

                                                            the coming in and going forth

                                                            of weariness and redemption,

                                                The red, rich flow of the Holy

                                                The One whose body we are living,

                                                By alchemy of oxygen and carbon,

                                                Incarnates endlessly, seamlessly,

                                                Exchanging platelets of pardon,

                                                Pounding the sounding of our souls’

                                                Yearnings for Life

                                                            through all the arrhythmic rhythms

                                                            of fear and

                                                            wandering from our Heart’s content

                                                That we prodigals to Paradise

                                                Can imagine as we return Home

                                                Into and through

                                                            all misgiving,

                                                            deep sadness of separation

                                                            and, yes, even mortal arrest

                                                            merges and mingles

                                                Your heaven, amid us, here

                                                Your promise of love, so near

                                                Your invitation, costly, dear

                                                That in our gathering we

                                                May breathe together the

                                                Grace that exists

                                                Within our chests,

                                                Wherein lies the Heart of heaven

                                                                                            -John Monroe-Cassel

            Writing this poem of incarnation was an exercise in clarifying for me just how I feel about God’s movement in this world.  Simply put, I am increasingly aware as I age that God is Love, and my mechanism and metaphor for love is the heart.  

            In the life of the church, we may celebrate Lent as that time when we rid ourselves, to some extent, of the greatest distractions to our well being so that we may increase our attentiveness to loving kindness.  Throughout our American culture, tomorrow is the day in which we exchange cards, flowers and chocolate in celebration of love, itself.  Although I long ago gave up giving things up for Lent and no longer support Hallmark’s heaviest day of trading, I am compelled to return to a central message of the Lenten season—to acknowledge and release the fear within me that makes me feel separate from God’s love.  

            I found the metaphor of the Heart of heaven helpful because of the moving closeness of our hearts’ activity within us.  God is present within me in every pounding of my heart.  The heart amazingly draws into it oxygen-poor, tired, spent blood, rejuvenates and oxygenates the blood back into bright redness as it leaves the heart muscle, and then continues its redemptive circulation through miles of arteries and veins, taking heaven to every part of us.  

            Without circulation, made possible only in the beating of our hearts, we become numb, unfeeling, unable to respond with hands and feet.  Isn’t it astounding that the journey from God’s life to ours can be so…tangible?  The kingdom of God is at heart!  

            In my poem, I mentioned the “arrhythmic rhythms of fear” I experience as I lose sight, lose feel, of God’s close love, the “red rich flow of the Holy.”  You see, our hearts may contain eternity, but the muscular reality has a definite end:  hearts cease.  We die.  Many of us find this frightening.  

            My father, a Baptist minister, died from a massive heart attack on Good Friday when I was 14 years old, and I went numb.  God’s “melodies of mirth” ceased to circulate in my heart, and my life changed in the heartbeat.  I functioned, barely, for nearly a decade, sleepwalking through the meaningless motions of status quo, keeping up appearances as a “prodigal to Paradise .”  

            Though I went numb, I did not die, and it was in the miracle of God’s love in the person of my heartthrob of now 30 years, my wife Maggie, that I began to rediscover and re-enter circulation.  We know what it is like to go numb, and I’ll bet we really know what it is like when numbness fades—it is painful.  Pinpricking, burning needles of re-animation annoy and amaze us as once again we feel the flow of heaven in our veins.  

            Yes, hearts may still.  And while those whose hearts cease return to the larger life of God, we who are at a loss find ourselves once again in the merging of heaven’s heart and ours in this earth.  I am daily reminded of my mortality working with hospice, and I also am reminded periodically of my immortality in the heart of heaven.  I give you two stories to this point:  

Several years ago I went to Point Gratiot Park in Dunkirk along the shores of my beloved Lake Erie —a lake in which I swam at a decade and a half’s worth of family reunions—and found myself walking the beach alone.  The waves lapped gently in rhythms of a peacefully beating heart as I strolled along on a perfect late spring day.  I arrived at one point to a shale cove, horseshoe-shaped and layered with lovely rock.  Although I was alone in that small cove, I was keenly aware that everyone I have ever loved was in that cove with me, all of us snuggled into a moment of calm repose.  I did something I rarely do—I dropped to my knees and held out my arms in gratitude, bending over and placing my head upon the flat stones beneath me.  When I sat up, there was a heart-shaped element-worn piece of old pottery sticking firmly to my forehead! (Hold up the rock for congregation to see.)  I was reminded then and now again of my immortality in this eternal Now.  

Secondly, years later I stood in the Pecos River of Nueva Mexico, up to my knees in the freezing mountain waters of New Mexico on a lovely day.  I noticed that I was once again standing in the crook of the river that fashioned an embracing horseshoe of rock, and I reached down into the river and pulled up another heart-shaped rock, this one in 3-D.  It had a deep crevice across the stone face, and I said aloud, “Oh, my.  A broken heart.”  Turning the stone over to another facet, I noticed that same line across the stone was no longer a gash, but a smooth scar, a broken heart, healed.

            Let us, the cardiac community of faith, consider why we are here in this earth.

            Where is your Heart’s content?

            What keeps you from claiming your joy?

            When do you go numb?

            Who helps you re-animate?

What reminders of our immortality do we ignore, and with every beat of our hearts, what is Love feeling like in our veins?  

            We are all returning, says the mystic poet Rumi.  Agreed, I say.  And someday when we have all gone on into the larger life of God, we will once again gather as we are gathered here, with all those whom we have held in our hearts, embrace each other again, release each other into Grace, and move ever deeper into the Heart of heaven.

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