My Heart is Closed Right Now

A shimmering summer day. A silent, closed heart. The ache of numbness, a sacred vow to listen, and what happens when we ask to open.

My heart is closed. I can feel it like a corpse in my chest—beating but not really breathing… cold in the midst of a hot summer. The beauty all around me cannot penetrate this shell, which crept upon me without my knowing.

I remember what it is to be alive and awake to every nuance of feeling. It was not so long ago that I felt each vibration of this wild world at the depths of my being. But right now—that feeling of sweet connection eludes me, like a beloved drifting beyond the vale.

Out on the lake, my closed heart is obvious. All around me, Nature is perfect. Tall pine trees and silver maples wave to my little green kayak. Tiny droplets of water splash playfully off my oars. Sun-sparkles on the deep blue expanse of water shine with such brilliance that I wonder how anything could ever be wrong.

And nothing is wrong. All is fine.

But something is missing.

This state is neither strange nor unfamiliar. I suspect large swaths of the population live and die in this kind of stupor. But I have known and lived something else.

I know what it is to be knocked breathless by Beauty. To feel every raw edge of the glory and terror of this world. I know what it is to open in the face of pain. To be willing to love in spite of loss.

And I prefer it.

I love that state of feeling deeply a part of the world, like the velveteen rabbit—a real thing.

I long for it. I strive for it. And I miss it desperately when it disappears.

Yet sometimes, numbness creeps back in anyway.

Peer pressure. Grief. The sheer weight of being alive in the modern world.

To try to dissect how I got here is to miss the point. I’ve undergone tremendous transformations in the past several months. I’ve been asked to lead where always I’ve followed. I’ve lost dear friends—some beyond reach. This season has dealt me some hard blows alongside some serious upgrades—both of which require new learning and constant adjustment. And everything I’ve lived has left me feeling as if the ground has dropped out from beneath me.

Still, I am not closing my heart to run from anything right now (at least not anything I know of). I am grateful for these opportunities to grow. I take the setbacks and challenges in stride as part of being human on Planet Earth. I accept that some lessons are hard-won, and I love dancing down my Path.

In the end, all the analysis in the world leads me back to the same place:

I am closed. I want to open. I don’t know how.

I’ve done this many times before, but each time the landscape is different.

I could use my magical will to wrench my poor dear heart open, but I have no desire to traumatize my spiritual body. My system has closed to protect me, and I trust my system. My body and spirit are brilliant beyond anything my rational mind could imagine. To rip myself open would be to ignore and undermine a system that ultimately has my best interest at heart. No—if I hope to coax myself from this shell, it will take more than brute force.

I must somehow find the key to unlock my heart.

Yet I do not know how this creature I have become now opens to the numinous.

So I take the first step—

I pray to open. I am willing. I admit to myself and the world that I am closed and that I want to feel it all. I ask for help—I ask the trees and the lake, the sun and the vast invisible Divine force of Everything around me.

A loon calls from across the lake, haunting and insistent, as if in answer. I set down the paddle and stop trying to drive the boat of my life where I want to go.

Suddenly, I am afraid.

A familiar fear—one that has led me home time and again.

Without my oar in the water, the current pushes me where it will. The wind is high, and I drift quickly away from my family. I can no longer see my husband’s line as he casts it into the water. I can no longer hear my daughter’s insistent questions. I want to paddle back to them. My hands grip the oar as if to argue with Godde.

I can feel the way I have been driving my life. The tension in my body rises with the need to do be in action. My summer flashes before my eyes.

Friends. Pool. Dinner. Sun.

Run. Run. Run. Run.

Don't be late…

Don’t forget…

Can you do this?

Can you do that?

My body is taut with busyness, and I can feel the way modern culture lives on top of Nature, heedless of Her immediate and tangible presence. Here, surrounded by lake and forest, She screams that the sun is not another commodity to be used and enjoyed. Summer does not simply exist for my pleasure but has a presence of its own that I have not present been to.

I sense a vast loneliness in my boat.

I would feel it if my heart were not dead.

The whole world is dancing around me in gleams of sun off water…
The forest is watching me with wide and wild eyes…

I am invited to the party, but I am afraid. I feel certain I will fail. I am a beginner again.

How many times will I return to beginner to make the climb again at a new level?

It is endless.

My heart still sits like a stone in my chest. Somehow I know I must jump into the lake. But I am far out beyond shore.

How will I climb back into my boat?
What will my husband say?
Where will I set my drink?

All the tiny fears of everyday surround me. Life always objects to the pulls of the Soul. Culture keeps us safely in our lanes.

There is no logic to the call.

Why would I jump in the water? What difference could that make?

Yet I can feel the deep dark reaching up for me and I know I must.

Listen.

That is the request.

I asked to open my heart and reconnect. Now, something deep inside and all around me asks me to jump into the deep. Beyond reason. Beyond understanding.

Readying myself, I chug my drink and tuck my bag away, certain it will be drenched… my phone ruined… my fears justified.

None of that matters.

I listen. I all ways listen. That is the vow I took. I never promised I wouldn’t go kicking and screaming, but I vowed to go. Here on the wide blue, I dared to ask for something. How my prayers are answered isn’t up to me…

So I leap.