CONCENTRATING THE HEART

I enjoy riding the mountain trails of Colorado although it bangs my body around and occasionally scares me. The grandeur in the high country is nothing less than a display of lavish beauty and stark ruggedness. Mt. Antero, at 14,269 feet, is one such extravagant example that my husband, Dennis, and I recently explored by his KTM motorcycle and my Polaris quad. Once we had arrived near that gusty, barren peak, we felt ourselves on another planet.

After bumping over a few miles of boulders and then a talus slope to the tree line, the way climbed over switchbacks sometimes reaching a 30-degree angle. I had to work deliberately not to panic. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught glimpses of what a riding buddy, Kent, calls a “cat walk.” This is trail slashed across the side of a mountain with a drop off for a shoulder. I did not dare look off the trail before me or I could center, that is, fixate, on the plunging edge and head straight for it.

Within a few hundred yards of the very top of Mt. Antero Dennis helped turn my quad around when it became obvious I was on the verge of overreaching my skill level. In the struggle to dodge large rocks amid slippery, chalky shale and dirt, I was making small mistakes and could not accelerate enough to keep the quad from dying or sliding backward. On an increasingly narrow, steep trail with a huge drop off…well, one cannot make too many mistakes.

Riding the Rockies by ATV has a way of clearing the head. All concerns but the immediate become peripheral. My job at hand is to keep the rubber side down. When my mind starts to wander, the trail rises to meet me in rather unpleasant ways. And I must look just far enough ahead to avoid upcoming obstacles, but not so far ahead that I lose sight of what I need to handle at the moment.

The holy Church Fathers had a theory about what clears the head, or as they put it, concentrates the heart. One of them, Isaac, a Syrian saint of the fifth century wrote,

Blessed is the person who knows his own weakness, because awareness of this becomes for him the foundation and beginning of all that is good and beautiful.

For whenever someone realizes…that he is truly…weak, then he draws in his soul from the diffuseness which dissipates knowledge, and he becomes all the more watchful of his soul…

But no one can perceive his weakness unless he has been remiss a little, has neglected some small thing, has been surrounded by trials…Only then, by comparing his own weakness, will he realize how great is the assistance that comes from God. When someone is aware that he is in need of divine help, he makes many prayers. And once he has made much supplication, his heart is humbled…

As long as the heart is not humbled, it cannot cease from wandering; for humility concentrates the heart.

Whether maneuvering high mountain trails over boulders, slippery shale and cliffs, or making a speech, interviewing for a job, encountering marriage or parenting problems, starting a new business, or admitting an addiction, all unsettling challenges have this in common. We need to concentrate our hearts in order to stay the course. And nothing clears the head like a good dose of humility.