Minding Your Heart

The church is the Body of Christ, and as such it has many organs. This week we consider how best the church can achieve a healthy balance between head, hand and heart.

The Hopi Indians have a tradition that contrasts "head knowledge" with "heart knowledge - a tradition that respects the strengths of both ways of knowing. Western culture has been less equal handed, for while it has recognized the existence of other ways of examining the world, it has steadfastly relegated any deviations from "head knowledge" to the back of the bus.

The sciences blossomed during the Age of Enlightenment, and with their successes came an increased admiration for the "scientific method." We entered the Age of Modernity totally smitten by facts and figures, by the hypotheses and data counts of a scientifically understood world. We have now confidently applied the methods of the physical sciences to our entire culture as we study social science, military science, and political science. What the Hopi called "heart knowledge" has generally been dismissed as untrustworthy and inferior. It was further illegitimized by confining it to one gender - i.e., "woman's intuition."...