Beatitudes: Happy are people who have pure hearts

Happy are people who have pure hearts,
because they will see God. 
Matthew 5:8

When the eye is clear.
And the heart is unified;
The sacred is seen.
HAIKU

Psalm 51 (excerpt, as rendered by Stephen Mitchell)

Create a pure heart within me;
            let my soul wake up in your light.
Open me to your presence;
            flood me with your holy spirit.
Then I will stand and sing out
            the power of your forgiveness.
I will teach your love to the ignorant;
            the lost will find their way home.
Lord, open my lips,
            and my mouth will declare your praise.

This beatitude is a bit of a challenge for me, and perhaps for many of you.  What, exactly, do we mean by “pure in heart”? And how do we “see” God who is not a visible being in the ordinary way?

I resonate with the “will see God” part in the sense of my desire for this – a constant longing.  Though, to be honest, there is some fear in this as well, for deep down I know that to see God – whatever than means and if we can survive the seeing! – is to be changed profoundly, and I’d like to know about that change ahead of time and, perhaps, negotiate some of the details.

And the “pure in heart” part: who could argue against the desirability of a pure heart, a fine thing in the abstract, but do I really want it?  I have my habitual faults and am not so keen on giving them up. 

So, What Is This Thing Called a ‘Pure Heart’?

“Heart” itself is a difficult word.  Definitions abound and they are not all consistent.  We moderns may equate it with emotions, and that would be appropriate as far as it goes.  We also tend to separate the mind from the heart as though they were two distinct aspects, often at odds with each other. The ancients had a more nuanced understanding that placed all our key human faculties in the heart: mind, will, psyche (including emotions), senses, soul.  For our purposes, let’s lean toward the older understanding of the heart as, well, the “heart” of who we are as humans in the fullness of our being.

What is it then for the heart to be pure?  In our normal understanding of “pure” we mean something that is fully itself without being diluted or mixed with anything else.  Think of pure gold, or pure water – no polluting elements, not muddied.  As applied to the heart, we might say a pure heart is fully integrated, united, single in purpose and orientation, innocent, undivided, unconflicted.  To “will one thing” is to be pure in heart; to be utterly sincere.  Its opposite is hypocrisy, being two-faced, being oriented simultaneously toward different and often conflicting ends.  For example, really wanting to help out someone in need, but not being willing to be too inconvenienced in doing it (a tension I own up to).

Yet we must also consider that it matters toward what this singleness of purpose is oriented.  Being singly oriented toward self-aggrandizement, accumulation of wealth, or power might be undivided, but would not be the purity of heart that opens our vision to seeing God.  Actually, these three – power, possessions, and prestige – are often present in us to some degree and can be at war with one another.  Rather, purity of heart is oriented toward such things as truth, beauty, and goodness, which are compatible partners.  Beneath them all is love, the ultimate orientation of the pure heart.

What’s So Important About Having a Pure Heart?

When our hearts are divided and pulled in multiple directions, our attention is distracted, our focus is blurred, our energies are divided, and our integrity is undermined.  None of our objectives or values are well served; our fruitfulness is diminished on all fronts.  This can be true even if all the foci are “good” in some genuine way.  But when a good orientation is combined with a harmful one, the conflict undermines even the good intention.  It lacks integrity. 

Purity of heart, I believe, goes deeper than what goals, objectives, or values we choose to live by.  For me, it is grounded in a sacred love that undergirds my whole life and orients me toward relating to others and to all creation in the same loving way.  In each of us this manifests in unique ways.  It could even be expressed in multiple goals, as long as the loving orientation underlies each.  Then the heart is not divided and one’s energies are all flowing in the same direction, whether by serving in just one way or multiple ways.

Purity of heart also clears the inner eye to see the sacredness inherent in all things.  Would this not be to “see God”?  When we see from this loving ground, we are seeing with the eyes of our sacred source.

How Do We Cultivate a Pure Heart?

There is a certain irony in the notion of cultivating a pure heart.  We cannot purify our hearts by our efforts alone.  Purity cannot be an objective (worthy though it is) that we can attain by our will through ego control.  Ultimately, purity of heart is a gift, one that we must wait for and be open to receive.  Like love, it is given to us, not produced by us.

But this does not mean that we have no part in moving toward purification of heart.  We can cultivate a willing stance, an openness, and especially a desire for this.  Disciplines such as prayer, meditation, study, even good works prepare us to receive this gift when it arrives, and to be aware of it when it comes.  I might liken it to the desire to experience a truly beautiful sunrise.  It is a pure gift when it comes, we can do nothing to produce it.  It arrives whether we want it or not or do anything or not.  But we are way more likely to experience this gift if we cultivate the practice of getting up early and going outside to a good viewing spot.  Waiting in expectant trust; this opens us to receive a pure heart

As the Psalmist said (the quote from Ps 51, above):

Create a pure heart within me;
            let my soul wake up in your light.
Open me to your presence;
            flood me with your holy spirit.

What Does It Mean “to See God”?           

“See God”?  Really?  What can this mean?  Even the Judeo-Christian scriptures acknowledge that no one has “seen” God.  And so we fill our imaginations with images and metaphors for God that fill in the vision.  Some of these may be helpful as far as they go, but as soon as we start trying to capture God in an image or metaphor, we limit our vision for the infiniteness of this Unnameable One. 

Yet we are concrete beings, incarnate, made of stuff and energy.  Our perception is at home in the world of things and movements that we can experience through our senses.  Even our inner senses are largely mediated by our physicality. Our entryway into “seeing” God, then, can be through our senses.  We can see God in the beauty of creation – the ever-changing colors of the sky, the shapes of trees and flowers, the brilliance of sun-lit leaves, or of the smile on the face of a friend.  We can sense God in the goodness of human relationships – the love between friends, and within a family, and the compassion for those who are hurting or oppressed, or in need.  We can understand God in the basic truths of our moral world – our desire for justice, for neighborliness, for human kindness.

At a deeper level, to see God is to perceive that which is most real in the moral and physical world.  Ultimately, this is perceiving how Love is present everywhere (even though not fully realized).  The nature of the whole cosmos is one of relationship and connectivity.  From the smallest particles of which we are aware to complex human social structures.  That there are flaws particularly in the human sphere of relationships does not negate that the most real is the love that undergirds everything.  To see this is to see God.

As our hearts become more pure, in the above sense, our capacity to see the Divine in these ways is expanded.  For example, instead of taking offense at the anger of another directed toward us and reacting defensively or with anger in return, we see deeper to the woundedness of the other that sparked the anger (it might really be we who provoked it!) and respond with understanding and openness. The blessing “namaste” means essentially “the God in me greets the God in you”; this is to see God in each other person regardless of their circumstances, appearance, beliefs, or behavior.

Though the beatitude as written indicates a direction of movement -- if our hearts are pure, then we shall see God – I suggest that the movement can be in both directions.  When we practice seeing God in more and more ways, our hearts become more pure.  It works both ways, like a positive feedback cycle.

A Personal Story                        

A particularly challenging experience for me was when someone was deeply hurt and offended when I did not act as they wanted and expected.  I had known what they wanted (though not the strength with which they held the expectation), but also had other obligations that I felt committed to and I could not fulfill both.  I had a choice to make and chose the other obligation.  When confronted with the anger and hurt of the one whose expectation I did not fulfill, I tried to apologize as best I could, but also insisted on justifying the correctness of my choice.  I did not fully see the hurt in the other.  My heart was divided as I also focused on my own self-justification.  My capacity to see the humanity and the divinity in this other person was significantly clouded by my divided heart.  The consequences were severe and long lasting.  Healing has come slowly and, for my part, only as I saw how my desire to be seen as “having done the right thing” got in the way of the deeper, purer desire to be in loving relationship.  To see the woundedness in another is also to see the woundedness of God.

Some Alternative Renderings         

This beatitude can be and has been expressed in a variety of ways.  Some alternatives that may open the beatitude to the fullness of its meaning include the following:

·      You’re blessed when you get your inside world – your mind and your heart – put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.  (The Message paraphrase)

·      Blessed are …those focused on goodness, the self-disciplined, the genuine, for they shall see God in everything. (Brian McLaren)

·      Blessed are those who practice seeing God, for their hearts will be further purified.  (My paraphrase)

Pause and Reflect                         

And now I wonder how this beatitude strikes you, and how my reflections may have sparked your own wrestling with its meaning in your life.

o   Where do you struggle with or wonder about the application of this beatitude?

o   What experiences have you had in which you would say you “saw” God?

o   What is the feeling you have when you notice your heart softening, expanding, becoming more clear?

o   How might you write this beatitude in your own words, out of your life experience?

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