emotions, passions . . . and the well-ordered heart

Ever have a moment when you realize your self-image is a bit outdated? This happened to me recently.

When I was a teenager, I made a lot of my decision with my head, not my heart. Which was a great way to get through adolescence. It protected me from a lot of evils, and a lot of stupidity. But, I think it left me with an incomplete impression of myself. I'm capable of doing what I ought and not what I want, and that IS a great good gift, but . . . I think – well, what I want to say (it sounds idiotic, but let’s just try it on for size) - I think I’m actually a temperamental artist, and I ought to make my peace with that fact.

And I am at least partly because I've decided to be. One of the things I’ve done as an adult is allowed myself to tune in more and more to my emotions in order to write better - and also in order to be a better wife and mother. I've wanted to write better, and I've wanted to love better.

But being an emotional person is disconcerting! It doesn't feel orderly.

But I need to be this way in order to do what I do. Okay.

BUT. But I do not want to be drug around by the nose by my passions. I do not want to be ruled by my passions. How do I avoid that? (Asks Harriet Vane: "what if you're cursed with both a head and a heart?")

See, I think part of it is just recognizing who I am, and saying, “okay, I notice this feeling and I notice that feeling, and I’m supposed to notice – my job is to notice things and then use them as raw material for my art – but my recognition and my emotion don't have to have dominion of me.” Noticing, categorizing, deciding.

The well-ordered heart
But wouldn't the philosophers say that virtue is a matter of loving the good, the true, and the beautiful? In other words, isn't it possible to have rightly-ordered emotions?


I think so. What's the first and greatest commandment? "Love the Lord your God." Love is a verb, I know, I know, but it's also a matter of the heart. It's also an emotion.

I think if I start there . . . if I start with loving the Lord and obeying . . . I think then I'll find it possible to order my emotions aright.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell