Director's Reflection (March 2017)
I learnt something every day when I worked with children and young people. At first, if something went wrong and the students told me they hadn't done it, weren’t involved, didn’t know, I believed them.
As time went on I developed some intuition for identifying the spoken truth and I have observed that some people – age is no barrier to this – have a remarkable capacity for looking straight into the eye of another and speaking the untruth with an indignant 'I did not!'.
On one such occasion a colleague and I were working with a group of students around a challenging issue and after a highly charged meeting, my colleague turned to me and said 'we have to break them.' My immediate reaction was that this seemed a little harsh – but she was right. We had to find a way of breaking through their bravado so that we could work with them and enable them to reflect on their actions and on their impact. It was only then that they would be able to accept responsibility for what had happened, repair the damaged relationships and move forward. I am reminded of this story as I prepare for Lent. I think Lent is about breaking the state of our hearts.
It is rare that we allow our hearts to break. Most of us spend a lot of our lives making sure that we construct a world with safety nets in this regard. But it is not really possible to ensure a life without heart break. Often our hearts break as a result of something that happens to us – a relationship breaks down, we experience the death of a loved one, there are so many reasons. I wonder if the collective Church heart is breaking at the moment as we are called to account as a result of the Royal Commission. But perhaps the Lent heart break is self-initiated and happens with the profound support of a Tradition. We have the opportunity to examine our hearts in the safety of the ancient traditions of prayer, fasting and almsgiving.
In these early weeks of Lent we are reminded that the God of the Old Testament is not only interested in the state of the heart, but lies in its midst. On Ash Wednesday we are urged by the prophet Joel to return to God with all our hearts (Joel 2:12) and we are encouraged by the words of the Psalm to create a ‘pure or clean heart’ (51;10). Sprinkled through the weekday readings is advice not to ‘harden our hearts’ (Ps 95:8), to remember that God will not scorn a ‘broken, humbled heart’ (Ps 50) and that the Lord is close to the ‘broken-hearted’, saving the ‘crushed in their spirit’ (Ps 34:18).
John O’Donohue writes that the each of us carries the book of life in our hearts and that our heart ‘dwells in unattended darkness.’ (Benedictus, p.119) Perhaps this is the task of Lent: to be attentive to our hearts and invite God into our darkened memories. This is hard! But there is a safety in doing this: because we know that the darkness is not the final word.
Brené Brown, a researcher who studies human connection in her
‘Manifesto of the Brave and Broken-hearted’ writes that we can: 'craft love from heartbreak. Compassion from shame. Grace from disappointment and Courage from failure.’ So, let’s allow God to join with us as our hearts break a little in the safety of Lent so we can, in Brown’s words be ‘the brave and broken-hearted’ who are ‘rising strong’.
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Cathy Jenkins
Director