Earlier this year, I asked some friends a question:

What does “midmost heart” mean to you? 

For me, this phrase touches the source of our true life – that very real place where we stand, speak, share, and serve, rising again from our ruins, reaching in and out, toward beauty, justice and love.

Three friends shared their own definition of “midmost heart” with me. Below are their powerful insights.

I hope these words offer you solace and courage ~ AE

…

All of the above is seldom easy. It is how our journey is traveled that is most important.

…

2. To See with the Eye of Life

(by Debbie)

Midmost heart equals critical mass, that space and internal barometer that tips your vision to see with the eye of life – you balance your position in this universe whereby you can see and consider the most of what life offers.

It is operating from a place of plentifulness, gratitude and contentment,  with a certainty that every blade of grass, every molecule of water, every breath taken comes from the innermost reality of the Creator.

When you live and love from the “midmost heart” of God, there is detachment because there is inner knowing and connection to everything else in this world.

You can embrace the good, bad and indifferent because, in truth, these labels fall away revealing a new consciousness that everything around us is in a state of movement – either flowing towards or away from that point of rock-steady surety.

For isn’t a label of good, bad or indifferent but a metaphor for out of alignment from the centre or core of His Love?  Therefore, my purpose needs to be removing these outer labels – which are only the projection of my inner judgements – and seek to embrace the most that life has to offer and to see my actions and thoughts and belief system as symbiotically linked to the movement of what is happening around me, within me (i.e. to me) and for me.

I am consciously seeking after moderation in my journey on this path because to veer from this means I am outside of my security blanket and approaching the “guttering” on either side of the extremes of the path.

But, more importantly, the “midmost heart” cannot be lived or loved alone;  it must, it needs, to have collective engagement – think of a scale!  If the produce is placed on one arm of the scale it has no value without placing the corresponding weight on the other arm to achieve the balance.

Likewise, me attempting to move into and speak from and live in His “midmost heart”, alone as an individual, will be impossible because it requires critical mass as stated at the beginning.  But when I become aware of this law or truth or reality , however one wishes to term it, then this knowledge creates a yearning desire to move in that direction and that in and of itself generates an energy that can ripple into a new momentum as more and more individuals flow towards that protective all-inclusive shelter….

…

3. A Beautiful Mess

(by Audrey)

Pet sitting for my friends up the road is always an adventure, though sometimes more so than others. This past spring, while my friends were out of town, I made the trek up the winding rural road to their house at the top of the hill. The view of the surrounding farmland is breathtaking, or at least it is when it’s light enough to see.

It was a Murphy’s Law afternoon. The winters daylight hours were short and I was running behind, so it was dusk before I got the two dogs out for their walk. To make matters worse, I’d just come down with a cold and the temperatures were hovering around freezing. The dirt road I normally walked the pups down was half ice and half mud, so I improvised. What was my brilliant idea? Simply put, we’d trek instead through the newly plowed cornfield just to the side of the road.

At first, my plan seemed to work fine. Despite all the setbacks that day, our walk was proving to be a pleasant one. For the first time that day, I could slow down, take a deep breath (as best I could with my cold), and enjoy a relaxing ramble through the field… that is, when I didn’t have to stop one of the pups, Sadie, from eating clumps of dirt. The first two times she tried it, I was addle-brained enough to chalk it up to typical quirky dog behavior. By the third time I caught her chowing down, I started to have a bad feeling.

I looked more closely at the “clumps of dirt” only to find it wasn’t dirt. To my utter horror, I realized I was standing in the middle of a vast field that had just been sprayed with fertilizer. Of course, the word that involuntarily escaped my lips was, shall we say, a synonym of the four-letter verity. Yes, “it” happens, and, when you have no sense of smell and the sun’s just gone down, I discovered you can find yourself deep in it, literally.

Sometimes we find ourselves surrounded on all sides by that four-letter word, though hopefully in your case only figuratively speaking. Yeah, “it” happens. Life is messy, but somehow I always thought that having a better relationship with God would change all that. When I chose to live my life for God, I honestly thought the Big Guy would do me a favor and help me clean up the mess. Yeah, a loving relationship with God is great all by itself, but I figured one of the perks of having an in with the Creator of the universe would be that he could pull a few strings and magic away the cow patties.

When the metaphorical stench in my life stuck around as stubbornly as the very real stink wafting from the boots and jeans I’d worn that day in the field, I assumed I must be doing something wrong. I mean, if God is a loving God and if I’m on the right track, wouldn’t he fix things in my life to where they wouldn’t stink?

Well, sort of.

Yeah, it’s messy down here, but God wants us to know that he gets what we’re going through. We make light of the idea that God chose to be born away in a manger, that he didn’t have a crib for a bed. We sing about it every year in Christmas carols, but we like to cover up with glossy terms that Jesus was born in a barn, surrounded by farm animals and, you guessed it, that lovely four-letter substance. Now, couldn’t the God of the universe have arranged for a nice hotel for Mary when she was going to give birth? Sure he could, but he chose instead to be born surrounded by manure. Let me say it again, God knows what you’re going through, because he’s been there too.

God’s first Christmas present was his gift of love, his ultimate sacrifice wrapped in swaddling clothes on that cold Christmas night, but his second gift was hope. Two thousand years ago, in a smelly barn with livestock and their waste, hope was born. Yeah, there was poop everywhere, but, by being born where he was born, I believe God was deliberately trying to tell us something. God made something beautiful out of that barn, so much so that we hear its echoes in every Christmas carol and see its reflection in every nativity scene.

That is what God wants to do in your life. All you may be able to see is manure, but his plan for you is to take that mess and make something beautiful. You know the rot and decay in your life? God now wants to turn into compost. That manure you see everywhere? He wants to turn it into fertilizer. As the apostle Paul put it, “…we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him,” and he means all things.

He wants so much more than to simply magic away our mess. He wants to use it to make something good, a harvest of blessings.  Wait for it. God is working even when we can’t see. Like a farmer preparing his fields in spring, he knows with absolutely certainty that the best is yet to come.