My interest in a spiritual life began with reading, research, and meditation. I wanted badly to change my life. I purchased a small cabin on the top of a mountain close to the farm where I live now. I spent a year in this cabin with two Labs, Julius and Stanley, reading the journals of Thomas Merton, Thomas Aquinas,  St. Augustine, and a dozen other spiritual writers.

Organized religion – especially early Christianity – brought the very idea of compassion for the poor and vulnerable into a primitive, brutal, and violent world. The writing of those influential people seems remote and distant now; Christianity is divided, and much of it is more focused on political power than helping people in poverty. I see Pope Francis is working to change that and meeting fierce resistance.

Religious institutions, like political institutions, are slow to change.

But the original ideas of Christianity – Judaism and the Muslin Faith –  are compelling, all deal with compassion for the first time,  and have shaped my search for a spiritual life. I’ve learned a lot, and one of the ideas that sticks in my mind is the discipline of the Heart.

I’m not a Christian, but a pilgrim searching for faith.

In his book “Spiritual Direction,”  Henri Nouwen, an essential guide for me, wrote, “The first and most essential spiritual practice that any spiritual director must ask a person is the discipline of the Heart. Introspection and contemplative prayer are the ancient disciplines by which we begin seeing God in our hearts. Interior prayer is a careful attention to the One who dwells in the center of our being. Through God, we awaken ourselves to God within us.”

This was a big idea for me. In my approach to spirituality, I substitute the Heart for the many references to God in the Christian literature. I don’t worship the Christian or the Jewish idea of God; I see God as the spirit inside of me that wishes to be at peace, doing good, and living a meaningful life.

Standing out among the world’s religions, Christianity was the only one to make compassion a centerpiece of the faith, its primary purpose and obligation. That caught my attention, even when I was a teenager.

As I read Nouwen, the discipline of the Heart ensures that contemplation, introspection, meditation, and prayer are not just about listening but listening with the Heart. Like much in the spiritual realm, that’s easier said than done. But once I was able to do it, I was transformed. It was almost like being born again. It’s a practice.

No matter what the faith, there is no such thing as a disembodied spiritual heart, writes Nouwen.

This was the task of meditation, silence, and contemplation, a way to team up with my Heart, soul, and mind. To understand the need and importance of love in my life, the need and importance of helping vulnerable, poor, and hungry people, and the need to find a better way to grow and find peace than anger, rage, grievance, or political power. That doesn’t seem to work for me or anyone I know.

It’s easy enough to hurt other people and be hurt by them. Compassion and empathy – the foundation of spirituality –  take some hard work. I’m willing to do it.

I like the idea of the discipline of the Heart. I’m working on that. The “heart,” in the spiritual sense, is not purely a spiritual organ but this secret, deep, and invisible place within us where our spirit, soul, and body come together in a single unity of the self.

We are called to love God or our own idea of God and join our faith with our whole Heart, soul, mind, and strength (Luke 10.27). The discipline of my Heart is faith, hope, and the belief in a gentler, kinder world.