I will not break faith with my awakened heart

Photo of Jim Finley.

Lately I’ve been really drawn to the idea of inner stability, probably because I’ve lived a lot of years totally scrambled and because the world feels so scrambled. This feels like an important task that is on my plate right now.  

One of my spiritual teachers, James (Jim) Finley, is a clinical psychologist and a teacher of contemplative spirituality and christian mysticism and he talks a lot about creating a kind of inner sturdiness or stability so that we can have a stable foundation from which to move and live and serve and love.

One of the statements Jim often repeats in his teaching is this: “I will not break faith with my awakened heart.”

Jim says, “…so that in my most child-like hour turning to see a flock of birds descending, or reading a child a good night story in the arms of the Beloved; or, in my darkest hour where everything seemed lost, I was granted a taste of a mystery without which I know my life will be forever incomplete, and I will not break faith with my awakened heart. I will not play the cynic.” —James Finley Turning to the Mystics, Thomas Merton, Session 3

After we’ve had those little (or big!) moments of reckoning or awakening (for me, these glimpses often happens in nature), we commit to not turning away or forgetting.

And what happens when we don’t break faith with our awakened heart? I think we sink into this deeper inner sturdiness.

Jim talks about how if our base of operation is nothing deeper than the self that things happen to, with our fight or flight, we will be unstable. He says, “So, how can I, as a human being, sink the taproot of my heart in a presence that transcends my ordinary humanity, and at the same time utterly permeates it through, and through, and through, and through, and empowers me to be present to do the best I can to be a nurturing person, a protective person, a healing person, in a peace that isn’t dependent on how that might turn out specifically for me or my loved ones?” (from Turning the the Mystics, Sink Into the Taproot of Your Heart)

I’m grateful to know this is a question I can hold. And I keeping running this phrase through my mouth—I will not break faith with my awakened heart.

What about you? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

With care,
Brianna