Synchronized Heartbeats
From Amelie with Love
Dear Friends,
This past week, I ran across a 2011 article from The New York Times reporting on a study of small town that bore intriguing results. San Pedro Manrique in Spain is known for its annual fire-walking ritual, which draws the entire village and spectator-tourists. Researchers were interested in exploring how people connected around community ceremonies, and whether there were any physical/biological responses to the experience. They enlisted several fire-walkers, people who were related to fire-walkers by family or friendship, and spectators who were from out of town to wear heart rate monitors. The results surprised the scientists.
The heart rates of friends and families were very closely associated with those of the fire-walkers, while the heart rates of the spectators were not. This was true before, during, and after the ritual. One conclusion that might be drawn from the experiment is that when we know people well, we have deeper empathy for them and their situation. Our hearts literally beat as one.
You’ve seen this if you’ve ever attended a music recital or youth sporting event. When your own child is at the piano, you listen for every note; if he hits a wrong chord, you feel it in your bones. When the teen at the free throw line is your daughter, or niece, or a neighbor, you watch more intently and feel the success or failure more deeply.
In our reading from the Gospel of John for this Sunday, Jesus is sharing his last meal with his disciples, which concludes with a prayer that he says on their behalf. At the very end, he expresses his deepest desire to God, that “they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one."
What would it mean for us to be “completely one,” today, we who call ourselves Christians, and even more, members of the human family? What would it mean for our hearts to beat as one with the heart of God so that our hearts are joined together? Especially as we face yet one more mass shooting that has stolen the lives of children and broken the hearts of another community?
Now more than ever, we need to remind ourselves of the spiritual, emotional, and social peril to the human family when we fail to empathize with people of another race, nationality, sexual orientation or gender identity, income status, or religion. If we view news footage of mass shootings and we don’t feel anything, we have silenced the heart of God that makes us one. If we hear the stories of people who are struggling from the actions of others and we don’t sense a connection to their pain, then we have some reconnecting to do with God’s heart.
It is the heartbeat of God that makes our hearts beat together, that brings us into unity despite our differences to care for both neighbor and stranger. It is this union of hearts that I have witnessed in our collaboration with 22 diverse congregations to provide solutions to our city’s most pressing issues through Richmonders Involved In Strengthening Communities (RISC). These congregations may not agree about doctrine, or who gets ordained, or what it means to be saved, but we do agree on which things are most important to the heart of God. And the safety and health of children, families, and communities is most certainly one of them.
As our hearts learn to beat in union, let our prayers turn into action, so that our human family will grow closer to the solidarity and peace every heart desires.
In Christ,
Amelie
