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How to Listen to Your Heart
“She’s gonna listen to heart. It’s gonna tell her what to do.” Tom Petty
When I wore a younger man’s clothes, I read more Philokalia than Tom Petty’s girlfriend did lines of coke (“You think you’re gonna take her away/with your money and your cocaine” Id).
I don’t know if it did me any good. It’s fascinating stuff, but part of me says it’s all just navel-gazing, and then when I look at the biographies of modern saints like Benedict Groeschel and Mother Teresa, I see they spent no time with their navels.
They spent lots of time praying, but they didn’t seem concerned with their spirituality.
They just were.
They were active. They were busy. They were spiritual. They were prayerful.
My hunch is, they never thought of themselves as any of those things.
Which would be pretty surprising about Groeschel. He read a ton about psychology and the workings of the mind. He probably knew everything the Philokaliacs did and then some, but he didn’t live like those Eastern monastics.
His everyday life was a whirlwind of activity, living monkishly in the south Bronx, running operations for the poor, writing books, hosting his weekly EWTN program.
