Month: June 2021

An old children’s necklace sits on the left side of my bathroom sink countertop. A worn-out elastic string of plastic, multi-colored beads and baubles, most of the necklace’s violet and soft red trinkets are the shape of tiny hearts. Although I like to arrange the string into the larger shape of a single heart, the contour of my design gets sufficiently ruffled and displaced such that regular adjustments are required. Sometimes I even have to lift the string into the air and start anew.

It’s a bit silly, I suppose. I know that the actual human heart, or the heart of any living thing, is not so even and symmetrical; a few notches and dents are probably more realistic than a smooth shape resting atop the countertop. Yet I must admit that I feel better, even slightly, when the necklace of faded curios takes the form of a more perfect heart. It reminds me of my children when they were younger, before the world demanded at least a modicum of desensitization from wonder and fantasy. It does the same for the young boy still alive within me, the one who secretly thrills at the possibility that there is more to life than is visible to the naked senses, that there is magic at work and play in our lives if we only seek and stay open to it.

This past week, one of my daily mindful exercises asked me to meditate on my possessions. Which ones were most important for me, today? Which ones would likely be most important for me in five years? I was walking in the evening heat while listening to the recording. So the first things that came to mind were my water bottle and my shoes. Sunglasses were helpful but, no, those weren’t vital. Oh, sure, I shouldn’t forget that recordings and materials I could listen to or read, those were valuable. As was the house that sheltered me, and the car that offered mobility. The rest of it? My list was rather short – especially when I was forced to consider what I found valuable through the lens of the physical possessions. However, everything on my surprisingly short inventory of top possessions evaporated like moisture in the desert air when I was next asked to consider what it was in my life that I most “treasured”. That list was quite different. It was the people I loved. And the memories of those who have died. It included my stumbling steps toward spiritual development. And the hope that some day, before my own death, I might better reach some higher state of enlightened being.

When asked the above questions, my internal replies did not take long to formulate; despite being buried beneath the debris of daily duties, what really matters burns bright in the realm of the soul. Ask the spirit – not the body or mind – about its priorities and the truth, when allowed to be shared freely, bursts like bright light from an unrecognizable source. But why had I been asked to uncover the treasures held closest within me? The recording offered the following: For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

My shoes traversing the rocky high desert soil, I let the line sink in. Where my treasure lays, there also will be my heart. Yes. The heart as metaphor, for compassion; as symbol, for love; as physical representation, for the “why” of life. The heart also as embodiment of feeling, the expression of purpose, the acknowledgment that what endures, beyond the factual summary of my activities over the decades or the details summarized by my curriculum vitae, is so much simpler, so much less amenable to categorization, so much more exposed and fulfilling.

Who sculpts the quotidian contours of the human heart? We do. You and me. Do we manage the heart as if it needs containment? Or do we release it, and ourselves, to the boundary-free experience of vulnerable being, of selfless love, of faith in the treasure of unity and integrated breath?

On the other side of my bathroom sink, just opposite to the children’s necklace, is a smooth stone that my wife gave me some years ago. The word “trust” is painted on the stone. I’ve positioned the stone atop another gift received from her, a square tile with the decorative inscription “I love you”. Until today, until just moments before I typed these words, I had focused on the word “trust” and the placement of the stone within the hand-painted flower at the center of the tile. It is beautiful. It symbolizes the power of commitment, of my wife’s love. Just now, however, I noticed something else inside the wonderful display of marital affection. On the stone, just beneath the word “trust”, is a small painted heart. Oh! The message on the stone is not just trust. It is trust heart.

Yes, I am blessed with the love of family; I must remember to trust in the love that I am given. But I am also blessed with the choice to trust my own heart and to trust the love that I am fortunate to be able to give others.

And that there, that right just there, is, perhaps, my greatest treasure. To think that it has been right before my eyes, in plain sight, for so long.

We look to history’s great spiritual leaders and prophets for more than wisdom. They were, after all, able to manifest the divine through miracles of healing, faith, and compassion. When I meditate or pray in their names, I feel closer to the source of such majesty. It humbles me. Holds me. I sometimes feel welcomed into a presence which defies any effort to name or comprehend. Nameless, this essence of totality simply accepts. I am – because it is.

Years ago, as a medical student, I learned how to study the human body and its constituent parts. There are lots of components to this thing we call life. Even forty years ago, there was far more than could be memorized. Still, my classmates and I tried. We peered through microscopes, dissected through layers of physical matter, and analyzed various formulae. We learned to observe, to identify patterns, and then to assign names to those patterns, prescribe treatment methods for disrupted functions and behavior, and adjust those methods in response to observed changes in the original patterns. It’s not a bad system. In fact, it often works quite well, especially for medical problems and conditions that nicely fit frequently observed disease constellations.

But the approach is sometimes challenged by situations without an obvious pattern, as well as experiences that do not neatly take the shape of expected illness or recovery. There are people who worsen when they should get better. There are others who get better when things should have deteriorated.

We didn’t much discuss miracles in my training. The word suggested religion or, at the very least, spirituality. Admitting to a belief system that incorporated spirituality could bring frowns and annoyance. Hope in Allah, Yahweh, or God was no substitute for the right antibiotic or prescription. The scientific standard, even one that referenced the “biopsychosocial”, rendered unto religion what was indeterminate, and unto medicine what was measurable.

So no one said anything when they felt the spirit leave a dying body and hover in the upper right corner of the room. We didn’t dare mention aloud the powerful sensation that something else was involved in a decision to order a certain test, continue a certain therapy, or simply to stand by, allowing healing that was well beyond our individual capability to occur. A conversation about faith was for the priest, rabbi, or religious advisor. We stood on the ground of science. Unfortunately, because it was not the higher ground, our vision was often obstructed.

Thus far in my lifetime, I have witnessed many miracles. Some have been medical, while others have been part of the so-called everyday fabric of experience. None of these miracles have been my doing. All have been inexplicable – when viewed through the limited refraction of the lens we call science. The more I am able to slow, however, to witness and to accept uncertainty, the less hazy that lens seems, the less disconnected I feel to the greater power flowing through and around me, and the less resistant I am to name something otherwise unpredictable as marvelous, even miraculous. Spirit moves in and around us. Physics calls that spirit ‘dark energy’. Religion calls it the Creator. My soul calls it a welcome comfort of wonder.

Four decades ago, I stood before a microscope in histology laboratory and learned to recognize human cells based on staining and other coloration techniques. I never learned how to properly use a binocular scope; it was easier to close one eye and avoid feeling dizzy while quickly spying inside the microscopic world of cellular pathology, searching for abnormality. The lesson was always there to be found, because that was the point of the teaching exercise. And so I went hunting in monocular fashion, sufficiently naming the errors to pass the class and move onto more macroscopic considerations of human health. Nonetheless, the real action, I was taught, lay at the cellular level. That was where medications worked. It was where cancer developed. It was how the fundamental workings of the body could be explored, understood, and manipulated. That is where, someone once declared, “God lives”.

I think God lives a higher level. For just as a single cell in a solitary tissue that makes up one organ that is part of an individual human body cannot comprehend the workings of the entire body, its state of health, and from whence the energy that flows to that cell arises, neither can a single human in one family unit living in an individual city on the third rock from a central sun in the Milky Way galaxy ever expect to understand how all this works, where it all comes from, where it all is heading, and who is responsible for its more marvelous features. Despite this, that single cell, and the human in which it resides, can recognize their roles. They can enfold themselves in the good fortune of being part of something grand and sometimes glorious. They can smile at miracles when and as such miracles manifest.

And so I turn – right now, in this moment, through the asynchrony of the miraculous – and I smile at you.