“Purity of heart,” Soren Kierkegaard famously said, “is to will one thing.” That pronouncement didn’t make much sense to me when I first heard it. The world, after all is “vast and beautiful” and there are many things to want and plan and hope for. It took a bit of living before I came to appreciate that “willing one thing” did not mean abstemiously whittling down and excluding, but rather being wholly present—mindful, intentional, and aware—in the moment one is living.
That level of mindfulness can’t be maintained without retrieving energies easily scattered by the chronic overstimulation most of us live with. We learn to live with divided hearts and split-level minds as we multi-task. Meditation, centering prayer, or simply finding quiet times and places where we can, as Wendell Berry put it “rest in the grace of the world and be free” are indispensible to the recollection that makes us mindful.
The term has achieved new currency in recent years, perhaps as a response to “mindless” TV shows, vapid entertainment, incessant ads and soul-killing time-killers. Widely associated with Buddhist teaching of “mindfulness meditation,” or sati, it has come into common use among people of other faith traditions and people who claim no faith tradition, but embrace mindfulness as a way to emotional well-being, mental health and, as has been well tested, physical health.
Any of us who has experienced the blessing of being deeply listened to, given the gift of undivided attention, or witnessed with trust and comprehension knows something of what mindfulness looks like. When we are mindful ourselves, we become more capable of giving that gift of whole presence.
I remember one such gift we received when our daughter was dying several years ago: a woman we didn’t know showed up at the hospice house and quietly asked if we would allow her simply to sit in meditation by Shona’s bedside when we needed to be away for a meal or any other reason. “I feel called to do this,” she explained simply. “I just try to be an available, calming presence.” Once or twice in the course of our hard days there, we did ask her to come sit, and she came, and sat. She made no particular claims for the efficacy of what she was doing; her gift was simply to be wholly, mindfully present to the mystery we were all witnessing in a young woman’s going.
Prayer matters to me, and my understanding of its transformative power is deeply rooted in Christian tradition, itself a rich trove of approaches to the life of the spirit. Mindfulness practices supplement and amplify what I have learned there in ways that have helped open up new avenues of reflection. At their best, both the prayer practices I know and the mindfulness practices I have learned help me in the long learning to “will one thing.” I return to that learning again and again because I know that the “pure of heart” are blessed.
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