It's more than walking in someone's shoes; It's also knowing where those shoes have been.

​There's an old saying - 'the more you know the more you grow.'

Often, that saying focuses on intelligence and book learning and the importance of growing our brains. It assumes filling brains with more of the 'right' stuff will make it more likely one will make more of the 'right' choices.

But yesterday, I saw the Parker Palmer quote below and I wondered - is it not equally important to grow our hearts? I wondered, are our hearts and our brains supposed to be as disconnected as they sometimes appear to be.

I think of the things we exhaustively research:

The stocks or cars or houses we buy.

The foods we eat.

The fitness or self-help plans we adopt.

We'll spend a year researching the one-week vacation we will take next year.

We'll start our days memorizing the scriptures in our bibles.

But how much time do we spend getting to better know the stories of the people we dismiss? How many people do we look at - we see the cover of their book - and decide that's enough?

I'll read no more of that book.

I wonder - at times - if we've become so good at memorizing the world that we've lost touch with what the world feels like. I wonder if we've gotten so good at making the smartest decisions in our lives that we've lost sight of what the most loving ones looks like.

Part of walking a mile in someone's shoes is getting to know where those shoes have been. It's getting to know what has tattered and warn the soles clean through to the feet on those shoes. It's getting to know what those shoes have run from and what those shoes long to run to.

It's that kind of knowing that connects the brain with the heart.

It's that kind of knowing that grows the heart.

It's that kind of knowing that connects the heart to the heart.

Mine - to yours....