THE BREATHINGS OF YOUR HEART

 "Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart."

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

Wordsworth was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom during the reign of Queen Victoria.  So long ago.  There is not a single poem he wrote that is not worth our attention. 

We all keep our heart's treasures somewhere.  In tangible mementos of course: your grandfather's war diary, your mother's wedding ring, family baptismal gowns, most of what we keep has meaning.  Artists put the breathings of their heart on canvas.  Look at the faces Rembrandt left us. Or Andrea del Sarto.  I keep a print we bought many years ago in our bedroom.  It's called simply "Study of the Head of a Young Woman," done in red chalk. I feel like it holds the breathings of two hearts, the artist's and the woman's.  Because I look at it every day with appreciation and wonder, it holds some of the breathings of my heart too.

by Andrea del Sarto, 1486-1531

Too few can put life on paper like the Romantic poets or Renaissance painters. But even absent Wordsworth's admonition, many of us have put the breathings of our hearts on paper.  Queen Victoria filled over 122 handwritten diaries, now kept in the Royal Archives in London.  

Some writers (and psychologists) believe that the more we write the more we develop our humanity.  Surely this is true of reading as well, which brings us into worlds other than our own.  Reading is the wellspring of empathy. Writing is closer to home; through our writing we can confront difficult personal issues, traumas and emotions.  We write to understand.  In troublesome times, I have literally written volumes. 

Robert Frost (1874-1963) said that "Writing a poem is discovering."  But not just poems, we reply. Creative writing, prayer journaling, diary writing, writing to heal--it's all discovery. When we read the work of great writers, we know that.  They give us their discoveries.  Think of any book you have not been able to forget and what you discovered in it, most likely about yourself.  The breathings of the writer's heart, the breathings of yours. 

Maya Angelou (1928-2014) wrote," There is no greater agony that bearing an untold story inside you."  As we begin to know someone, we often share the worst that has happened to us.  "I have cancer" or "My husband died recently" has to be told before a friendship can even begin. We may tell our story to a pastor, friend or therapist but when we write it, we take even greater care.  How can I explain what I'm feeling?  How will I face tomorrow?  Writing--whether for ourselves or for a wider world--is more deliberate than talking.  As we move from one written word to another, we find connections we couldn't see before. 

We each need ways to give time and space to our thoughts, our feelings, and our emotions, even if I just repeat in my notebook what I did today.   Writing helps regulate our emotions.  Through writing we come to understand ourselves better, and when we do, we have more choices. 

The young woman who sat for Andrea del Sarto in 1523 was the model for the repentant Mary Magdalene lamenting the dead Christ, whose body she looks upon in the Pieta de Luco, an altarpiece commissioned by the abbess of the monastery where Andrea and his family fled during a plague.  The breathings of our hearts are treasures in themselves, whether we write them, draw them, find them in a sketch from long ago, share them or keep them private like gold.  Each breath is a beat, a movement from now to now. A way of consolation.  

Pieta del Luco by Andrea del Sarto