A gaggle of neighborhood children who had
attended our church for some months were put into foster care after
their parents’ friend shook one of them. While they were in foster
care, the children’s mother died—of an enlarged heart, we were told.
I don’t know what an “enlarged heart” is, medically speaking. I picture St. Paul Cathedral
in London when I think of an enlarged heart. Attending Easter service
there several years ago, I closed my eyes and listened to the organist
playing undulating arpeggios as myriad feet shuffled up and down every
aisle.
It sounded to me like blood moving inside a giant heart.
The communicants were like blood cells pumped along tight capillaries
to the altar in need of new life. After communing, they, the blood,
squeezed back into place. I imagined the strain on a human heart if it
sustained a comparable amount of flow.
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