Heartbreak is the eye of your heart snapping open after long disuse.
Someone commented on Facebook about my last blog post and said an argument, no matter how rational or logical, will not on its own alter anyone’s belief found in experience (“nor perhaps should it”). While I do not believe this discredits the importance of reason and its capacity for helping us find truth or bring it more clearly into focus, I do agree with the statement. It takes an openness of heart, requiring a near complete break for the particularly obstinate, before any truths can penetrate the defenses one has been using previously to block them. This was and is certainly the case for me. A heartbreak embraced can lead to a more accurate perspective and understanding of the lessons to be found in one’s experiences, past and future. Once the most abused eye is open --often the heart’s, so willing to be misled in search of peace-- it can begin to see the reflections shining in the other two, the lenses of the mind and body.
Even in that scenario, it is almost dizzying to think how, with three eyes wide open --heart/faith, mind/reason, body/physical senses-- we are still incapable of knowing the full truth and wholly holding it with our human faculties. It is both frustratingly overwhelming and oddly comforting how little I know and how little I will know over my lifetime. In addition to poor choices I make, my ignorance is also made manifest to me even by something as simple and concrete as how many books there are to read and the impossibility of reading and contemplating them all in one lifetime, or how many questions I would like to ask people I admire and will never have the chance. It is also obvious in how inadequately I may have understood a universal truth yesterday --like for example that compassion is better for us than its opposite, or that money does not buy happiness, or that we should “love our neighbors as ourselves”-- compared to after having an epiphany building upon it today. And, that must demonstrate how rudimentarily I may understand a truth still, further epiphanies being possible if the past is any indication, and how much more there is to learn about it. We are most definitely limited in our search for knowledge. However, a person honestly trying to see is more joyful than one who is willfully blind: to that I can attest.
Over the years I have reflected on Viva La Vida by Coldplay whenever it is on the radio, harkening back to the devastation of my own false kingdom, years in the building upon carefully selected half-truths, the ruins of which I suddenly found my maimed self and family crawling over on a summer’s night in 2006. Despite the French-revolutionesque beliefs expressed by the songwriters in interviews, what resonates in the lyrics for me is not that there is no authority but that man is not it; it is a turning away not simply from authoritarianism but also away from its mirror mistake, permissiveness. For me the song unveils the decay that takes place when man –whether he be a literal king, a pope, a clerk or a housekeeper-- sets himself up as the ruler of his own pestilent, petty, dark inner kingdom, one inevitably centralized on deceit of self and others. This in order to collect whatever baubles he sees as treasure, ever rusting and needing to be renewed in mockery of his satisfaction; we all have our preferred poisons, each seeming to we, the seductees, like a chalice of exotic wine untasted by lesser men. I never want to rule such a world again. I am not the Ruler. Instead, I can only strive to be a good steward. That is what my heart destruction left me with, the reality of this bare truth told to me over my lifetime in great novels, in the words of wise ancestors, and by my elders, this truth which until the wall of my heart gave way I had thought did not apply to me. Man is not fit to rule himself and to be his own judge and jury. He is not fit to warp and direct even his own conscience but rather to allow it to be set straight and true by God alone, and to follow it.
Centering one’s life on one’s own inner "culture of death" is not just an oxymoronic phrase but a plain-moronic philosophy when it comes down to it. Love –infinite fulfillment-- is about living outside oneself for others: being a steward, not a tyrant. Many moments of many days I lean towards tyrant; but I know now in my happiest moments I am in my proper role of steward. When I give to others sacrifices of time and talent rather than horde them for my own gain until they rot; when I give and receive with a grateful heart, rather than selfishly take what I think I want; when I thank rather than self-congratulate; when I put myself last; these, paradoxically, are the times I feel most fulfilled and natural, like a bird taking to the sky. And, that's the truth.
Down with the culture of death! Viva la vida!
Viva La Vida
Songwriters: Guy Rupert Berryman; Jonathan Mark Buckland; Will Champion; Christopher A J Martin
I used to rule the world
Seas would rise when I gave the word
Now in the morning I sleep alone
Sweep the streets I used to own
I used to roll the dice
Feel the fear in my enemy's eyes
Listen as the crowd would sing
"Now the old king is dead! Long live the king!"
One minute I held the key
Next the walls were closed on me
And I discovered that my castles stand
Upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand
I hear Jerusalem bells a ringing
Roman Cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror, my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field
For some reason I can't explain
Once, you know, there was never
Never an honest word
And that was when I ruled the world
It was the wicked and wild wind
Blew down the doors to let me in
Shattered windows and the sound of drums
People couldn't believe what I'd become
Revolutionaries wait
For my head on a silver plate
Just a puppet on a lonely string
Oh who would ever want to be king?
I hear Jerusalem bells a ringing
Roman Cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror, my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field
For some reason I can't explain
I know Saint Peter won't call my name
Never an honest word
But that was when I ruled the world
I hear Jerusalem bells a ringing
Roman Cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror, my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field
For some reason I can't explain
I know Saint Peter won't call my name
Never an honest word
But that was when I ruled the world
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