Because of something that happened to me recently, Valentine’s Day takes on added meaning for me this year.
I dreamed that Nelson Mandela was talking to a group of people and making a point about how life should be lived. He had a bunch of stuffed “people figures” and used them to illustrate a kind of reverse “stick-pins-in-a-voodoo-doll” process. He held up a doll with a rip in its chest, removed a little doll heart, and held it in his hands. He said that life should be lived like this – that each of us relates to one another best when we realize that we hold each other’s lives in our hands. He concluded, “We can gently return a heart to the chest and massage it back to beating, give it life, or not.” He was implying, not so subtly, that every human relationship, at its best, should be considered using this imagery. It’s what love is all about.
I wasn’t sure if I was sleeping or awake, and I remember trying to get up to write it down. Instead, I decided that maybe I was conscious and, if I could focus on the dream long enough before falling back to sleep, I would be able to recall it in the morning.
So, I began to write about it in my mind. I thought about heart transplant surgeons who actually do hold living hearts in their hands and return them to human chests and kind of massage (or electric jump start) them to life again. I thought about friends who have used CPR to save lives. I remembered with thanksgiving people who have helped me the most in life and others whom I have helped. I produced what seemed like a most amazing story about those experiences.
Sadly for me, the story seemed much better in the night than it did the next morning. Now I wonder if I read about the image some place or saw it on TV or heard it in a sermon or if it was simply a God-given, gracious message.
And, why Nelson Mandela? Maybe my subconscious was influenced by previews for the movie Invictus, reminding me that in the early days of his presidency, Mandela, along with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, almost literally held in their hands the heart of South Africa. Their country was fragile and desperately needed a massive infusion of love if it were to survive. Of course, they succeeded with the end of Apartheid, the creation of a successful democracy, and the demonstration of one of the most astonishing acts of mass forgiveness in history through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
That history leads us to recall an unmistakable conclusion, doesn’t it? Whether I dreamed this or not, our world and the people in it are vulnerable to the many factors that can harm and destroy us. But the forces of divisiveness do not have to prevail. We can turn to one another in interdependence and mutual responsibility, each reaching out to others – to honor, love, and give life to them.
Is there any question that each of us needs to imagine, in every relationship, holding in our hands the heart of the other?