The Homing Instinct of the Human Heart (Chapter 2, The Way of Silence, David Steindl-Rast)
It is my conviction that at the core of every religious tradition lies an experience that is accessible to all of us, if we open our hearts to it. The heart of every religion is the religion of the heart. Heart stands here for that core of our being where we are one with ourselves, one with all, one even with the divine ground of our being. Belonging is therefore a key word for understanding the heart—the oneness of limitless belonging. A second key word is meaning, for the heart is the organ for meaning. As the eye perceives light and the ear sound, the heart perceives meaning. Not in the sense of the meaning of a word that we might look up in a dictionary. Rather, meaning as that which we have in mind when we call an experience deeply meaningful. Meaning in this sense is that within which we find rest.
The great teacher concerning the heart in the Christian tradition is St. Augustine. That he was an African may well have something to do with his awareness of soul and heart. Living during the collapse of the Roman Empire from the fourth to the fifth century—the collapse in fact of the known world of his time—he turned inward and discovered the heart. His Confessions have been called the first psychological autobiography. In Christian art he is depicted as lifting up a heart in his hand.
“In my heart of hearts,” St. Augustine wrote, “God is closer to me than I am to myself.” Paradoxically, he also wrote, “restless is our heart until it rests in you, O God.” The first of these two quotations expresses our deepest belonging, the second our restless longing for ultimate meaning. What we know at the end of our quest is the meaning of belonging. And the driving force of the spiritual quest is our longing to belong.
In order to check this out more concretely against your own experience, please try to remember now one of your most alive, most awake, most meaningful moments. Psychologists call these moments "peak experiences"; religious parlance speaks of "mystical moments." The mystic experience is an (often sudden) awareness of being one with the Ultimate-a sense of limitless belonging to God, if you wish to use this term. Suddenly, for a brief moment, you feel no longer "left out," as we so often do, no longer orphaned in the universe. It feels like a homecoming to where you belong.
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When we have a meaningful encounter, read or see something deeply meaningful to us, we are apt to say, “This speaks to me.” Whatever it is that has meaning for us tells us something, has a message for us; and under this aspect, I call it Word. Obviously, we are not talking here about a word from a vocabulary list. Word stands here in the widest sense for anything that embodies its meaning – for the candle, for instance, that you light on a festive table for a meal you share with a friend. It is not difficult for us to see that there must be something that “has” meaning whenever we “find” meaning.
It gets a little more difficult when we turn to a second aspect of every meaningful experience, one to which we tend to pay less attention: Silence. An example may help us. We can quite readily distinguish between a mere exchange of words and a meaningful conversation. In a genuine conversation we share something that goes deeper than words: We allow the silence of the heart to come to word. In contrast to an exchange of words, a true dialogue between friends is rather an exchange of silence with silence by means of words.
We have experienced Word and Silence in this sense. By focusing our attention, we are able to distinguish them as essential aspects of anything that is meaningful. But there is a third aspect to be explored: Understanding. To call something meaningful implies understanding. Without understanding neither Word nor Silence have meaning. What then is understanding? We may think of it as a process, by which Silence comes to word and Word, by being understood, returns into Silence.
There is a curious idiom in the American vernacular: when something, say a piece of music or a moving event (Word, that is) becomes profoundly meaningful to us, we might say, "This really takes me..." or "transports me..." or "sends me...." Language gives us a hint here. When Word deeply touches us, it takes us, sends us into action. Paradoxically both are true: Word, when it is understood, comes to rest in Silence; yet, this rest is not inactivity, rather it is a most dynamic doing. Thus, Understanding happens when we listen so readily to the Word that it moves us to action and so leads us back into the Silence out of which it came and into which it returns. It is by doing that we understand.
Reflections Prompts:
Does this quote from St. Augustine speak to you “God is closer to me than I am to myself” ? How so?
In your own words, how would you describe the relationship or interplay between Word, Silence, and Understanding?
Does this reading helps you better understand how meaning arises and comes about? How so?