The Heart is a Muscle

The heart is a muscle. Both the physical heart and the emotional one. Our feelings may really stem from a part of our brains, yet we say that feelings rise from the heart. Why? Because it pumps our blood which is a symbol of passions.

There is no life without the heart to drive the circulation of blood through the body.  There is no point to life without love. “And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me nothing.” I Corinthians 13: 2-3.

The heart is a muscle.

A muscle that is overworked aches and knots up. Sometimes it’s a dull ache. When injured, torn, or stretched suddenly the pain is searing, shooting through you. So it is with the heart. When this muscle is used wrong, it aches, it burns, it feels like it is being ripped in half. Sometimes it feels like a heart-attack. 

Like a muscle, the heart needs time to heal from its injuries.

Like a muscle, it needs to be strengthened by slowly increasing what it can bear. Something happens, testing its strength, it lives on through despite the pain, but now it’s stronger than before. Something worse happens, again it hurts, but it lives on though. Something even worse happens and it is ready to be stretched to that limit. If this even worse thing had happened at the heart’s original strength, it would have been too much for it.  You would have died of a broken heart or become as hard as stone.

The Road goes ever on and on without me

Photo Credit: Edana A.

"The Road goes ever on and on
 Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the road has gone,
and I must follow if I can,
 Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
 Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say."
~ from The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien

Photo Credit: Edana A.

Sometimes I want to just take a road and follow it all the way from it's source to it's end, wherever that may be, and just see what happens to it. Does it grow larger or smaller, what places does it pass through, does it meander through the woods and little towns, does it pass through big towns or open country? Where does it go?

Sometimes my heart cries out in restless desperation because I cannot follow all roads (usually when I am sight-seeing and exploring), I cannot go around every corner. On and on, the road and the land go, and I always wonder, "what's around the bend, what's over the next hill, the next stone?"

Just as in the poem, the road goes on ahead without me, and I chase it with my small feet, but then I meet a fork, or some side path, or I have to go back for I have neither time nor energy to keep going.

Bilbo spoke of being "swept" of his feet, and he told Frodo, "It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step into the Road and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.  Do you realize that this is the very path that goes through Mirkwood, and if you let it, it might take you to the Lonely Mountain or even further to worse places?"

Sometimes you leave the house and you don't know what will happen in the course of the day or were you will go, you may have a destination, but that may change, or other destinations are added, or a wrong turn will bring you to sights and places you didn't expect to go. It's like life.  

Like little hobbits, we live out our humdrum lives, but maybe we will be called to a higher purpose and go to lands we never dreamed of.

Photo Credit: Edana A.