Monday, August 30, 2010

When the mind and heart are one

This echos so much of what I said in my last talk at church - I agree wholeheartedly and find that comfort with which we divide ourselves is so commonplace that we don't even question it any more.

Richard Rohr:

When our brain is separated from our heart we will invariably think dualistically, because we ourselves are split. The last 500 years, when we came to rely upon printed words for truth, rational thinking was idealized into what we ironically call “The Enlightenment” (largely beginning in the18th century). This period separated the mind from the heart rather totally, and we might add, since this time war has been almost non stop, and Christianity began to divide into all head people or all heart people, as we often still have today. Both lose half of the picture.

When the human person is split, we find ourselves either in a “war culture”—or in the culture wars that we have in America today—or both. It seems we have to hate somebody or something when we cannot resolve the contradictions that are everywhere—first of all within ourselves. As Jesus said, “the lamp of the body is the eye” (Luke 11:34). And the eye sees most truthfully when it looks out from that place where the mind and the heart are one.

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