A Kingdom for the Heart

A very popular song in my younger days said “I’ve been searching for a heart of gold, and I’m getting old.” This lyric expresses what this book is about as it traces an ancient epic story that looked for “a kingdom for the heart.” That realm took many centuries to come into being and then became lost or at least was not very obvious. I had searched for it before but because of new hardships, I had a need to find it again. This was not just a private matter. There were some major issues involved. By way of an illustration, let’s say someone wants to investigate a new book about cinematic film that turns out to be just pages and pages of technical facts: all about the inventions that made motion pictures possible, stuff about camera work, set-ups for sound and lighting, and all the latest advances in digital imaging. The newfound book does a great job of presenting the technology and technique of film, but it misses a really important item, namely, the story. Absent from that volume of cinematic techniques are the actual movies and why they were made, artistic trends and genres as these developed, together with the most influential productions and people. Our advanced technological age tends to reduce life everywhere to matters of technique, chemistry, formula, and money to acquire the newer technologies or to profit from their popularity. The benefits of technology and science, as useful as they are, seem to distract us from our deepest needs, feelings, and intuitions, and so we lose something of what it means to be fulfilled human beings. Technique and formula are great tools, and the creativity or sense of accomplishment is great for those who use them. So great is their benefit that we have an almost ingrained habit of worshipping our more impressive products, quickly falling into the belief that we can’t have a good life without them. But our tools can never replace our hearts. When applied without much genuine personal concern, empathy, relationship, or inspiration, technique and formula soon show their limits. Sensing that there is something deeper to life, many people go searching for their own soul, for an empowerment that can help them from within. Such a search is commonly called a spiritual journey. I’ve noticed, however, that many of the spiritual options placed before today’s searcher very much involve the use of …techniques. Contemporary spiritual conversation is often about how to do things in a particular way in order to get a certain benefit for oneself. The idea is that the more you do things as instructed, the better off you’ll be. Forms of spirituality do often reflect the society they are in. In itself, there’s nothing wrong with a technique-oriented spirituality, and even this book makes use of some techniques of investigation and presentation. But it seems really ironic to be focusing on techniques when a person is searching for something deeper than a technique-filled world. For myself, I had come to want more of the story of life and less of the “how to.” One of my preferred writers, C.S. Lewis, and also my son’s favorite author, J.R.R. Tolkien, both communicated to millions all over the globe something about interesting journeys through realms of technique that were evilly applied. They did so by inventing fictional quests that overlapped aspects of the ancient epic with the mood and images of Pagan or Medieval European cultures. That mixture made wonderfully entertaining stories that many of us have long enjoyed. The following quotation taken from the film script of Tolkien’s book The Lord of the Rings seems to appreciate the kind of search we are speaking of: History became legend, legend became myth, and some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. Lewis and Tolkien each gave their response to technique-centered modern life by writing very creative stories as part of a long epic. And like them, I set out to seek what got lost in life, not as an attempt to equal their wonderful efforts but simply for my own therapy, hoping to see if what I needed most was really there. My search involved a set of ancient documents belonging to the so-called “Abrahamic traditions” (Judaism and Christianity, and Islam’s revised version of these). Of course, organized religions also use these documents, as do religious cultures that support a certain political and social agenda. I was not impressed with religion, despite having been quite involved in it, and I never held it against anybody if they disapproved of my study of the old sources. I had become very disillusioned with many of the people, organizations, and politics of the Abrahamic religions. Yet, I wasn’t ready to dismiss the whole thing. I believed that somewhere along the way something had gone very wrong with the good Abrahamic tradition. There still was, I knew or hoped, a precious core, a heart of gold — largely lost, but waiting there for someone to find. It seemed a good idea to have a fresh look at the ancient sources in order to discern the thread in their stories, the epic in all these old writings, hidden as that had become amid millions of squabbles, theological interpretations, narrow agendas, and many strange applications. Maybe it was possible to take the sources seriously, to take pleasure in their epic story without getting caught up in either religious dogma or modern disdain. Was there truly an enjoyable story here of the creative scope of a Lewis or Tolkien, and could it provide a help and outlook on life without a reliance on techniques, religious or otherwise? I believed there was such a story and that it would be important to discover it. So what I needed to do was to go back over the old documents to get a fresh view of the whole forest, as it were, without pausing to investigate every tree. My work would be to try to trace the fascinating flow of life as the ancients began to notice it, the strong current of good sense among numerous confusing eddies, chaotic whirlpools, and stagnant inlets. To follow that strong current, I needed to allow the story to tell itself and just go with the flow of it. Setting aside the ongoing arguments of scholars about who wrote what and when and which document is the most reliable, I just needed to focus on the overall subject matter and see if there still was a heart of gold there. To me, this was all about self-therapy, enjoyment, and discovering why so much of the various religions that have taken their start with Abraham, the religions that have the most adherents in the world, don’t seem to be working very well. I’ve heard it said, “Religion is for those who want to escape hell, but spirituality is for those who have been there.” That is probably a bit oversimplified but I thought it carried a powerful kernel of truth: those who look for real personal redemption and recovery can never for long be satisfied with taking part in religion but will instead seek newness from the inside out. Organized religion may be necessary and somehow be tied to personal spirituality — but it is certainly distinct from that. Apprehensively, I made a start on my project, wondering how I would be feeling during the course of this search. Would I be happy to get close to a heart of gold, only mildly encouraged, cynical, devastated, or just continue questioning? The answer to that unfolds in this book.