I’ve neglected my heart. I have ignored it. In the business of life and the collecting sediment of the ordinary, I have ceased to notice it. When it screams, I don’t hear. When it burns, I’m oblivious. It is only the gnawing and restless absence of joy that alerts me. Sometimes, silence can be so loud as to be deafening. I’ve become neglectful of my heart.

In moments of lucidity, I panic and marshal resources to defend the walls. But then I sleep and I wake up to another quiet nothingness, another ho hum day. It’s usually only after my own selfishness flares up under my nose do I release the ever-present stench of rotting desires in a neglected heart. Otherwise, my indifference is on autopilot.

I suspect a casual approach to crowded out spiritual disciplines has contributed a great deal to my current plight. When I need a spiritual shot of adrenaline, I run to two different reservoirs: the Puritans and the Eastern Orthodox. John Flavel, writing in his beautiful little treatise, Keeping the Heart, describes my situation well.

The heads and hearts of multitudes have been filled with such a crowd and noise of worldly business that they have lamentably declined in their zeal, their love, their delight in God, and their heavenly, serious, and profitable way of conversing with men.

Such a crowd and noise. Screens all the time. Endless scrolls of scrolling endlessness. Numb, dumb, and so ho hum. Rather than littering my imagination with good things, I mindlessly smear it with the latest nothing to cross my feed. And so it goes.

The Eastern fathers speak of “watchfulness”. According to St. Hesychios, watchfulness is “a continual fixing and halting thought at the entrance to the heart.” It is a way of seeing more of Christ’s radiance and God’s sweetness in the soul. It leads to a sort of stillness in the heart; peace that transcends all understanding.

There are dozens (if not hundreds) of tools to help, but right now, I’m working on watching. And listening. And trying to be still.

That’s the tough part.