The Wonder of the Outside Heart by Fran Salone-Pelletier

I have a daily habit—well, almost daily, if I am to be totally truthful—of reading and praying with a lovely little devotional titled Give Us This Day. As I type this, it suddenly dawns on me that I have never really paid much attention to the title as being both a prayer and a plea. Even more surprising to me is the reality that it is sometimes a command being addressed to the Holy One. How dare I!

My morning usually begins with a whispered gift, a prayer I learned as a child. In its simple words, I attempt to give God the day which lies ahead of me. Never do I stop to think this might be a rather presumptuous present. Who am I to offer the day as if I were its creator and owner when I am really its recipient?

One particular morning, during a week when prayerfulness had succumbed to a flurry of daily pressures, it became evident that time had passed without the necessary quiet, contemplative presence. I had fallen prey to the siren song of preoccupation, despite my good intentions.

So I returned to my little book and perused all the reflections I had missed. I pondered their scriptural sources and discovered truth as an arrow that pierced my heart. In the words I read and allowed entry into my being, I felt something strange. It was a gasp of sadness that I had missed so much. I had not allowed reflection to grace my life. Only the “stuff” I had to accomplish had been permitted entry. It was not the true wonder of an outside heart. But I digress.

Recognizing the unique economy of eternity, I began again to recognize there is no end to time. Timelessness means I can venture backward in order to go forward. Sounds eerie, I know, but it is indeed something we can all do. Thus, I dare to offer my reflections on all that was and still can be, if we are open and available to the treat of being transformed. One might label it as the marvel of being born again, and again, and again.

In my view, it all begins with an outpouring of love—specifically love that is moved with compassion, love that emerges from the wonder of an outside heart. This benevolence is so deep that it churns within us. This is the “heart love” which empowers our longing for God and for all creation. It’s a continuing outpouring that is life-saving and life-giving. Sister Ruth Burrows describes it as

real holiness and acceptance of a life mystery and insecurity where the ideas we have formed of God and God’s ways are turned upside down. Nothing makes sense. All seems meaningless and the spiritual life we thought we had disappears. Yet, in this darkness we are willing to take the risk that all is well. . . . That is what faith means.

I stopped reading and thinking. I began inhaling the words. Then I entered the process of ingesting and digesting them. What is the graced mystery they hold for me, for us? How might I—how might we—exhale their wonder as a healing presence into a world now plagued by and with so much fear and division?

Am I, are we, willing to take the risk that Barrows describes? Are we willing to leap into the dark and know, simultaneously, that this is what faith means?

By now, my heart was pounding. No, it was trembling! The price is high yet the presence is precious, I thought. After all, and through it all, the reality is that we belong to God. Marilyn McEntry warns us of the real cost: “It’s the suffering that equips us. You never know what you are being prepared for.”

That hurts to read, hurts more to hear, and hurts even more to accept as truth and to live within its reality. To have, or at least to try to have, the perspective owed by eternity without denying the quandaries of time is a labor of love. It is not a facile task. It includes the acceptance of McEntyre’s thought: “Wisdom cannot be bought or won or acquired by effort but is the fruit of what we undergo, of how we endure.”

So, we are left, as always, with choice. Do we rebel against any new vision or revision? Do we submit to looking more deeply and widely and trust the verity of the backward glance we glean when we look in the rearview mirror of life? It can make the process of progress more visible.

Wisdom rarely comes without suffering as its price. Do I relish writing, speaking, believing those words? Do I really believe they are true and accurately describe and define life?

Perhaps one last “story” in this reflection will help to explain the wonder and power of an outside heart that beats with wisdom gleaned through life’s suffering.

This is the experience of Fran Rossi Szpylczyn, who writes of a time when she was young. Her devout mother, “a woman of simple and uneducated faith,” had an image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus hanging on the wall. This image, familiar to most Roman Catholics, depicts Jesus’s heart outside his body.

This position may seem strange. It is different, to be sure, and may cause confusion. Szpylczn’s mother had an explanation that theologians might find simplistic. However, it surely does describe the oddity with an unusual clarity. Her mother said, “Jesus’s heart was on the outside to love us even more.”

To which I would exclaim with joyous faith: It is the wonder of an outside heart that heals the wounds of time with the power of love. ♦

Fran Salone-Pelletier holds a master’s degree in theology. She is the author of a trilogy of scriptural meditations, Awakening to God: The Sunday Readings in Our Lives. She is also a religious educator, retreat leader, lecturer, and grandmother of four. Reach her at hope5@atmc.net. A version of this article originally appeared in the Brunswick Beacon.

Image: Canivet or Devotional with Sacred Heart, Anonymous, Flemish, 18th century. Metropolitan Museum of Art / Public Domain