The Superficial Heart*

We have a heart.  It welcomes love and prayer...when it suits us.  We have the energy for love and relationship but not the ability to persevere.  This is the superficial heart.  We have brambles of laziness.  We have the roadway stones of fickleness and fleeting desire.  What to do?  I have found that the answer to the superficial heart is to do something good when you don’t want to do it.  In recovery programs, the best time for a meeting or to make a contact with someone is when you don’t want to do it.  If you say it is a waste of time, that is because you think that love will bear fruit only if you are in the mood, or have the energy for it.  That is the error of a person who thinks their spiritual growth in love is under their control or power.  This is self-focus.  Love is about going out of ourselves.  So I pray best when I don’t want to pray and go to meetings when I don’t want to.  Whether I feel good at the moment of prayer or meeting is of no importance.  The fruit of the effort will come out later, when it needs to come out in service to others and feeling better myself.  I never judge things in the moment that I do them.  Spiritual fruits are often a delayed ripening.