“Get out of your head and into your heart.” I can’t count the number of times my spiritual director has said that to me over the last thirty years. I’d go to him with a problem or I’d ask him, “What’s the right answer?” or “What should I do?” He rarely gave me a direct answer and almost always said, “Get out of your head and into your heart.” He still does. It’s his usual response when I start spinning thoughts, when I’m stuck, or when I want answers, reasons, and explanations. 

You probably know what that’s like. Haven’t there been time when it felt like you were running on the hamster wheel of your thoughts and getting nowhere? You were stuck. You wanted answers, reasons, and explanations for your life or a set of circumstances but nothing came and if it did it wasn’t satisfactory. When has that happened to you and what was it about? In what ways are you experiencing that today? “Get out of your head and into your heart.”

I’ve come to realize that my spiritual director isn’t rejecting the rational, logical, and linear way of thinking. It’s just that those aren’t the only way of thinking. Sometimes we need an additional way. 

Some things can’t be known or understood with the head. They can only be known and understood with the heart. That’s why Jesus says that the pure in heart will see God. (Matthew 5:8) That’s why on most Sundays our first prayer asks God to “cleanse the thoughts of our hearts.” (Book of Common Prayer, 255) 

We not only think with our head, we also think with our heart. It’s not one or the other. It’s both. Whether we are speaking of God, others, or ourselves, there is head knowledge and there is heart knowledge. Our head can understand and engage facts and explanations but it’s our heart that understands and engages images and experiences. 

Most of us, however, default to our head. We educate our minds. We focus on facts and gather information. We want answers, explanations, and understanding. We reason through our problems and conflicts. We reward those who have a good head on their shoulders. Most of us have been taught to believe that clarity of thought comes from the head and not the heart but “the heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.” (Blaise Pascal) 

Take love for example. We don’t reason our way into love, we imagine and experience our way into love. How many of you have ever drawn a heart and given it to the one you love? I have. Most of us probably have. Who has ever drawn a head and given that to the one you love? No one. And why would you? We don’t give our head to the one we love, we give our heart. It’s a different way of knowing. 

When I speak about the heart I’m not talking about the sentimental heart, the Hallmark heart. I’m talking about the deep heart that knows what the head cannot. I’m talking about the deep heart where we find our true self and our vulnerabilities. The deep heart holds our faith, hope, and love. It’s the place of imagination, creativity, and dreams. It’s where we wrestle with God and our demons. It’s the doorway into Mystery. The head searches for what it knows, the heart finds what is unknown.

Maybe that’s what the chief priests and elders in today’s gospel (Matthew 21:23-32) are missing. Maybe that’s why they challenge Jesus’ authority. They are way up in their head. There’s no heart. They simply want the facts. 

“By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” They want Jesus to defend himself and justify why he cleansed the temple, why he drove out all who were buying and selling, why he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves, why he cured the blind and the lame who came to him in the temple. (Matthew 21:12-15)

They want answers, reasons, and explanations. But facts can never explain or justify why Jesus cleansed the temple. For Jesus cleansing the temple is a matter of the heart and, as I said a minute ago, the heart has reasons the head cannot know. 

Maybe they need to get out of their head and into their heart. I wonder if that’s, in essence, what Jesus is telling them when he asks, “Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” 

The religious authorities immediately make it a head question. They reason, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘Of human origin,’ we are afraid of the crowd; for all regard John as a prophet.” It may be good reasoning but they have reasoned themselves into a corner. “So they answered Jesus, ‘We do not know.’”

That’s often what happens when we are stuck in our head. We create binaries; it’s either this or that, heaven or earth, heart or head. We live bifurcated lives. It’s either divine or human, spirit or matter. We’re either good or bad, right or wrong, in or out, saved or sinner, worthy or unworthy. And the list goes on and on. That’s happening all the time. It happens in the church, in our politics, in our relationships and lives. It’s the source of most of our divisions and conflicts within us and between us. We do it to ourselves and we do it to each other. But I don’t see or hear Jesus doing that. 

So what do you think? “Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” How would you answer that question? 

Here’s what I wonder. What if the answer to Jesus’ question is yes? Why does it have to be one or the other? Maybe the baptism of John was from both heaven and earth. That’s what Jesus will say later in Matthew’s account of the gospel about his own authority. “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. (Matthew 28.18) Jesus refuses to bifurcate his life.

In what ways is your life bifurcated today? What binaries are you creating or being controlled by? And what would it take and be like to say yes to the contradictory parts of your life, the life of another, the life of the world? What if we could stand in and hold the tension of opposites?

It just might be the start of getting out of our head and into our heart. It just might be the yes that makes a difference for you, another, or Uvalde. 

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Image Credit: Photo by Aziz Acharki on Unsplash