Keeping Your Heart Clean

Some Midwest Pondering on a cool, breezy, and moody New England summer night…

There are people in this world who mistake sharpness for intelligence, volume for authority, and suspicion for wisdom. They usually announce themselves early, which is considerate of them.

But the trick is not to become their twin in order to answer them.

A rattlesnake has its nature, and so does a porch light. One warns, the other welcomes. Both have their uses. But if the porch light starts rattling, the whole neighborhood is in trouble.

So keep your warmth, but do not lend out your foolishness.

Be kind enough to remain human.

Be wise enough to keep a chair between you and the snake.

And perhaps that is where Christ, or Muhammad, or Buddha, or any enlightened teacher, would gently point us. They might use different language, different stories, different roads through the woods, but they all seem to arrive at the same clearing eventually.

Christ might say: Love your enemy, but do not become your enemy. Forgive, but stay awake. Turning the other cheek does not mean handing someone the keys to your peace.

Muhammad might remind us that mercy and dignity belong together. That strength is not found in humiliating another person, but in mastering yourself when you are provoked.

Buddha might quietly observe that anger is like carrying a hot coal in your own hand while hoping it burns someone else. Notice the sting, yes. But do not become the sting.

And maybe that is the real work of adulthood.

Not winning every argument.
Not exposing every snake.
Not hardening yourself into stone because somebody else arrived carrying bitterness in their pocket.

The real work may simply be this:

Keeping your heart clean.

Not naïve.
Not blind.
Not foolish.

Just clean.

The world will hand us plenty of invitations to become cynical. Plenty of opportunities to become suspicious, sharp, performative, cold. There are whole industries built on outrage now. Entire personalities constructed around always having to be the loudest, smartest, most offended person in the room.

But enlightened people rarely seem frantic.

They observe.
They discern.
They bless what they can.
They step back from what they must.

And they do not surrender their spirit to every difficult encounter that wanders across their path.

You may bless the rattlesnake.

You simply do not have to pick it up.