Today in an early morning dream I was addressed by a voice. It asked, “What are you doing?” and I answered, “I am hulling my heart.” The voice asked “Why?” and I answered, “I have need of a hulled heart.”
I awoke, as I have so often this year, knowing that in my sleep I was at work on my life, convinced that if I dug in its soil long enough, deep enough, it would yield me a liberating truth. Is that truth in the metaphor “hulled heart”? I think only of pulling off the green leaves of strawberries that the fruit may be eaten. But hulling means more than that. We strip corn and peas of husks and pods to reach the inner fruit. What are the hard, protective casings around my heart that must be stripped away to reach the hidden grain? What must I give up to lie bare and exposed like peas in a pod or corn on a cob? What are the wrappings that keep the essence of my life from becoming bread for the world? “This is my body broken for you. Eat you all of it.”
All this year, old occupations have not had the same meaning. They are husks that wrap me too tight around. I want to throw them off in one grand gesture, but I am afraid of falling into the ground and dying. I am afraid of discarding the threadbare garments I huddle in for fear that I will stand cold and shivering in the dark, waiting for an angel that may not come. Nevertheless I am haunted by the biblical fact that it was the people who sat in darkness who saw a great light.*
–Elizabeth O’Connor, Cry Pain, Cry Hope, p. 16
[The gospel text for this week speaks of the Holy Spirit as a “winnowing fork” on the “threshing floor,” metaphors which are far from our modern lives, but it reminded me of this passage from Elizabeth O’Connor’s book, Cry Pain, Cry Hope, and so the reflections for this coming week follow the thread of call which she has introduced here.
-Marjory Zoet Bankson, Editor of InwardOutward.org]
