Reflection for August 16

Over the next few hours, I went by the laundry room. Each time I meant to wash [my shirt recently stained with coffee], but there was always something else to do. So the shirt, my favorite shirt, just sat there. I really did mean to wash it, but it was two days before I actually got to wash the shirt. When the shirt came out of the machine, there was my shirt — and there was the stain. Washed, but not removed.

I had waited too long to remove the stain. The stain had set in. Oh my favorite shirt.

That’s when it came to me: our hearts are like this too.

Sometimes we get a stain on our hearts. An injury, an insult. A sadness, an anger. A frustration, a resentment. We could wash it away right then and there, with some kindness.

But we wait.

We postpone the washing, the cleansing, the forgiving. We move on to some other task, a new guest, a new emotion. The “stain” of that negative emotion sets in our hearts.

If something as simple as coffee can set in a shirt, how much more can anger and resentment set in our luminous hearts? Our hearts are the seat of the spirit, meant to hold God and naught but God.

Instead we stain our heart. We stain the hearts of others. We fail to remove the stain. We wait too long to remove the stain (Omid Safe, “We Wait Too Long to Remove the Stain, On Being blog).