On Touching Hearts

...and receiving gifts...

Photo courtesy Mary Scholz

I’ve been thinking lately about the sometimes uneasy connection between money and commerce and the Christmas holiday. The theme drives a lot of what happens with the miserly character Scrooge in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Money also plays a central role with what happens with George Bailey in the movie It’s a Wonderful Life. Likewise in the classic TV special, A Charlie Brown Christmas — and granted it’s easy to overlook after seeing it so many times — a core theme in the story is the commercialization of the Christmas holiday. People think of it as a children’s show but it’s really a cultural critique. When Charlie Brown asks Lucy what she wants for Christmas, Lucy replies, “real estate." When little Sally asks Charlie Brown's help writing to Santa, she asks for “tens and twenties.” And meanwhile Snoopy enters his doghouse in a Christmas “lights and display contest” with the ad flyer enticing participation with “money money money”. Each one of these is a laugh line. Charlie Brown isn’t laughing, though.

Interesting how in this society we can consider ourselves “realists” as we think and talk and scheme and plan about money. Can we remember please that money is a thing magically created out of thin air by such conjuring practices as deficit spending and fractional reserve bank loans? We tend to lose sight of this fact, but if people were to collectively lose faith in money, it would cease to exist. Money is really just a big poof, but thanks to cultural conditioning and large institutions whose function is to enforce and reinforce our collective belief in it, people think of it as hard reality, including many folks who see religion as belief in antiquated fables. One way of looking at A Charlie Brown Christmas is that it puts a magnifying glass over the points of disunion and friction between these two superimposed systems of values and belief.

The bigger thing I’m thinking about is how all this points to the commercial colonization of the mind itself. This has implications extending far beyond any particular religious faith or holiday. This colonization takes on many forms, but it mostly boils down to the habit of seeking to satisfy deeper human desires through exclusively material means and putting a mental price tag on everything, often while ignoring or devaluing things that cost little or nothing simply because they’re free. “Free” isn’t a concept the commercially colonized mind has a category for.

My postings here on this growing little library of online writings often focus on such free things, and precisely because they do tend to fall into cultural blind spots. In my observation and experience, that’s where some of life’s biggest gifts are. But we do have to be open to receiving them.

So here’s a little story about one of the free things that tends to fall into a cultural blind spot. See if you find a place in yourself to receive it.

Some years ago I was at a fall equinox observance in our community and, sitting in a circle, it being fall, we were invited to share about what our “harvest” was from the previous year. I said that for me it was about heart. I suggested that we can, through heart, know just about anything we need to know, and that building a connection with one’s own heart can open doorways unimagined by many. I’ve written about this here on Substack and I’ll re-link a post here in case you missed it. During the equinox observance I ended my share by suggesting that a good place to start is by bringing one’s hand to one’s heart. It’s a simple, powerful technology.

(Psst! If I call it a “technology,” will more people take this seriously?)

Odd, really, that here in the United States the one time we’re culturally expected to perform this spiritual practice – yes, I’m saying that placing one’s hand on one’s heart is a spiritual practice – is when facing the U.S. flag and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. That’s worth an essay in itself; it just says so much. The idea that doing so in other situations might be worth exploring… well, let’s just say I don’t hear much talk about that. Cultural blind spot again.

Anyhow, at this equinox gathering I shared about that and then looked around the circle. There were maybe 25 of us gathered there, and precisely one other person was moved to place his hand on his heart, right then and there.

There was instant receptivity for the offering. And that’s when things got fun. For months after that, every time I ran into this guy, he’d place his hand on his heart, or touch his heart briefly with his fingertips, and I’d do the same. Our eyes would meet. We’d smile. We didn’t have to talk for the connection to be felt. But sometimes we did talk, and some of those conversations went deep. I recall at a later gathering I suggested that things seem to happen faster and easier out west sometimes. Last I heard, that’s where he’s living. Heart connections are mysterious and often profoundly consequential. And they’re mostly free.

But at the same time, I also understand how difficult it can be to see and pursue such culturally invisible paths of development. A couple birthdays ago a friend of mine blended and gave me a special scented body oil and suggested I apply it regularly. I tried it a couple times and I loved the lemongrass smell, but then basically ignored it. The bottle sat on the dresser. Then a couple weeks ago this friend again suggested that oiling can be a helpful self-care practice, and I reminded her she’d given me that lovely oil. I decided to put it on my feet once a day just to get started. The effect, even in a short timeframe, has been dramatic. Since the oil was a gift, the practice itself cost me nothing. All I had to do was to do it.

Fact was, when the gift was given, I think I misunderstood the whole idea. I thought since I would be applying the oil to my skin that the skin was the primary reason for applying it. I was literally thinking on the surface. The person who prepared and gave the oil to me was coming from a much deeper place of understanding around this practice. She knew how the oil penetrates the skin and how the skin is fully integrated with nerve function and much else. Applying it can change how the energy flows in the body and between the body and the environment. It’s actually kind of a big deal.

“All surfaces are deep.” I’ve been saying this for more than 40 years, but I seem to have overlooked the surface of my own body in this instance. How could I not see that for so long? The gift sat on our bedroom dresser for over a year. But who knows what I’ll discover as I keep up this practice?

So I get it. The gifts are right there. They’re free. That’s why they’re called gifts. It’s more about opening up to receive them. And that’s the journey. That’s the story we create by living it. That’s the practice. When I first started bringing my hand to my heart on a regular basis it produced some subtle but immediate effects, yes. But nobody could have prepared me for what would happen when I kept at it. In time the outward gesture became internalized. All surfaces are deep. Even the surface of time. Seems I keep learning these things over and over.

Then again, we live in a new time. Right now. It’s totally possible for dramatic demonstrations of heart’s intelligence and power to show up instantaneously! Totally possible. I can bear witness to that. In fact, it’s quite possible that even the thought that we might touch our hearts has already set things in motion. I can pretty much guarantee that our hearts are always listening, All we need to do is return the favor.

And going back to the characters in the stories we started this essay with —Scrooge, George Bailey, the Peanuts gang, we might as well throw in the Grinch as well — isn’t it funny how it’s the moments when their hearts are touched that they touch ours? Seems that way to me. It’s the change of heart that makes all the difference, and the climax in each of these stories is the better reception of that gift and the realization of that possibility. In the end it’s worth noticing that the biggest change agents in these stories appear free of charge, too: Scrooge receives a series of house calls from ghosts. George Bailey gets an intervention from an angel. And the Peanuts kids get straightened out by Linus’s spontaneous recitation of the Christmas story from the Bible. And as for the Grinch, I seem to recall his heart grew three sizes that day. The stories are all about the journey toward better inner reception of such gifts.

And there are so many gifts. Hard to keep up. I wish nothing more for you this holiday season than that you receive those gifts that are right for you.