Where your heart is there also is your riches

Incorporating The Invitation by Oriah

It is recorded in the book of Luke that Eashoa said, “ For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Does this ring true? Let’s see what do we treasure for there we may find our heart.

Immediately comes to mind ‘people’. People are what makes life for me. Although I value time alone life would not have much meaning without the people who excite me or who make living more enjoyable. True there are people who I avoid but I guess with anything there will be a downside. I would rather have the downside in order to get the upside than no side at all.

I value most those who allow me to be myself. I am not sure how people do that other than you pick up a sense about them that you can trust them, that they are safe. It is something to know that you are loved and that others care for you and your welfare. Again if I didn’t know this how different my life would be.

I was reminded at a recent funeral that when people talk about you when you have gone they remember the stories not necessarily the achievements. A person may well be a professor but her children are more likely to talk about an amusing moment in which their mother was truly revealed. We all want to know the person below the persona. The person who forgot to turn the taps off resulting in a flood for which they blamed the cat.

We do better when we recognise each other in our errors than the lofty heights of someone’s achievements. We want to see the true person revealed and that is most often done in the incidental, the spontaneous, the unpredictable, the uncontrolled. Oriah poem ‘The Invitation’ comes to mind, one of the best poems I have come across that gets to the heart or treasure that I seek.

The Invitation by Oriah

It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me
how old you are.
I want to know
if you will risk
looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me
what planets are
squaring your moon…
I want to know
if you have touched
the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened
by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know
if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations
of being human.

It doesn’t interest me
if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear
the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know
if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me
where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know
what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know
if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.

By Oriah © Mountain Dreaming,
from the book The Invitation
published by HarperONE, San Francisco,
1999 All rights reserved