Talking to Cats and Trees

Seeing with the eyes of your heart

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Our dear cat Nerys is a tortoiseshell (my son named her for Kira Nerys of Star Trek Deep Space Nine). Nerys is extremely social, running to the door whenever friend or stranger arrives, yet she is also cautious, staying out of reach until she is ready. She is affectionate, soft, and a total purr-machine. Nerys has a practice of leaping up on the back of my chair, as I am at the computer, and gently tap-tap-tapping my shoulder until I pay attention and motion her to hop onto my lap for a snooze.

Yet because of her coloring, dark fur and slanted yellow eyes, her appearance can be off-putting. People have commented. Her resting-cat-face is judge-y. For our Christmas picture one year I had to place her on a light blanket with a brightly colored pillow, and have her look up so her eyes wouldn’t appear as scowl-y, and her setting more cheerful, so people could see her as I see her. To me she looks like love and affection. These days my phone has more pictures of the cat than of my children.

It is like the passage describing the calling of King David. The prophet Samuel assumes God will choose one of Jesse’s older, stronger sons, not the smallest and youngest. But in the end, God tells Samuel to choose David.

“For the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” – 1 Sam 16:7b

God sees and evaluates the world differently than most of us. We are often caught up in the flesh, the material world, the ego, the surface. God goes deeper, to the heart, to the soul, to the essence of ourselves. The part of us which is eternal. We too do this when we love someone. After a while, their visual appearance and quirks become irrelevant, because we see the love, we experience the love, and that becomes the level at which we interact with and know them. Heart to heart.

In a similar way, in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians he says that he hopes God,

“may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may perceive what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power.” - Ephesians 1:17 – 19a

I love that expression! “With the eyes of your heart enlightened.” Again, there is insight available to all of us that is beyond the physical, beyond what our eyes can see. The wisdom of the eyes of our heart. To see the way God sees.

Have you ever met someone who warmed your heart, even if you just met them? Or had an experience which made your heart leap with joy? Where you had some deep knowing about someone or something because of a welling of emotion in your heart? This is why Nerys always looks charming to me. I see her with both my eyes and my heart.

We think of vision, wisdom, and enlightenment as attributes of our brains, but Paul writes about them as attributes, of the heart. How does our heart know things? How does our heart “see?” Perhaps there are different kinds of knowing?

Science now seems to support this. The "Three Brains" concept highlights that we have a cephalic brain (in our head), a cardiac brain (in our heart), and an enteric brain (in our gut), all of which communicate and influence our decisions and overall well-being. There is linear knowledge as found in our brains. There is the seat of our subconscious and sixth sense as found in our gut. And there is insight and emotional knowledge which is found in our hearts. Remarkably, the Bible points to this 2,000 years ago!

Jesus also speaks about this.

^“Now the disciples had forgotten to bring any bread, and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. And Jesus cautioned them, saying, “Watch out—beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.” They said to one another, “It is because we have no bread.” And becoming aware of it, Jesus said to them, “Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes and fail to see? Do you have ears and fail to hear? And do you not remember?” - Mark 8:14-18

In this passage the disciples are caught up in a challenge of the physical world - they forgot to bring food. They had just watched Jesus multiply the loaves and fish, twice, but suddenly they are worried about having no bread. In response Jesus warns them of the yeast of the Pharisees and Herod, those who live solely in the earthly realm, whose non-spiritual perspective can grow and affect the disciples themselves, like yeast. Jesus is pointing out that the disciples’ physical concern about no bread makes no sense. Did they not just see him make bread? The disciples promptly prove that they have, in fact, been affected by the yeast of Pharisees, by completely misunderstanding Jesus and answering, “It is because we have no bread,” as though Jesus’ concern is because they messed up and forgot the bread. The disciples are solidly grounded in the superficial aspect of the physical world and missing the big picture.

Jesus gets annoyed because they apparently completely missed the point of his miracles. The spiritual and physical are intertwined and he can manifest food anytime he wants. They saw him do it twice! Have they forgotten? The fact that they are concerned about not having food means they don’t get it. The transcendent world is real and active.

To make his point, Jesus questions their eyes, ears, memory, and hearts. What I want to underscore here is that Jesus is pointing out that these four are sources of insight and wisdom. The heart must be open, not “hardened,” in order for it to perceive this spiritual insight. In other words, Jesus sees the heart as a source of spiritual wisdom.

Our bodies are finely tuned spiritual instruments. They are accessing linear and non-linear knowledge for us to use on our earthly journey. It is a waste not to use them. In fact, I suspect it is more than only our brains, hearts, and guts which are involved, but our whole body is responding simultaneously to both the physical and spiritual realms, if only we care to listen.

One of the ways I personally experience this is when I take a walk in the woods. I open up my spirit within my body. I’m just walking along, but I intentionally open up my senses throughout my body to feel the trees reaching back with their senses. We communicate not in human language, but in something else. My nervous system is involved, I think. I feel tingly all over. I send out love to them. There is a knowing of them as distinct beings. My heart is involved, but so is the rest of my body.

If any of you have ever had an experience of using your heart, gut, or body in ways to access transcendent insight, I would love to hear about it in the comments.

We in the Western world are largely divorced from our bodies, and see them mostly as an ornament or a physical tool. We don’t tend to listen to them, feel them, or access their spiritual depths. What is your body telling you? Start with the heart. I invite you to practice “seeing with your heart.” Pay attention to what it is telling you. Invite God to enlighten you with the wisdom that is found there. It is by practicing an awareness of the heart and its message that we learn to access its insight.

All Scripture quotes are from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition.

And here are more pictures of Nerys because she is cute.

Nerys kisses, sleeping on my lap at the computer, sleeping on her bed