Home > CHRISTMAS Gifts > Christmas Gifts for Her >   A Heart Like His: Making Space for God's Love in Your Life - Virginia H Pearce - Hardcover Book Our Price: $17.95 Gift Options gift bag - optional: No Gift Bag CTR [Add $2.00] Child of God [Add $2.00] Time & Eternity [Add $2.00]    Qty:   LDS Grand Product Details Book Excerpt   by Virginia Hinckley Pearce The ability to feel God's love doesn't just make life nicer or more comfortable-it changes everything. When filled with God's love, we can do and see and understand things that we cannot do and see and understand on our own. As our own hearts are softened by these blessings, our overriding desire becomes to help others experience this joy also. But how do we do that in the normal course of our everyday lives? Presented in the form of an experiment undertaken by eight friends, this step-by-step guide helps us discover the one change we can make within ourselves that will automatically increase our ability to feel the love of God and to extend that love to others. "Yes, this book is written for women. Yet, Pearce makes its content graspable for women everywhere. I love that is has been easy for me to share this book with some of my Christian friends active in other faiths. We could use more books like this." Catherine K. Arvesth, Meridian Magazine "I believe A Heart Like His is a book for women in all seasons of life-a must read that has the potential to transform lives. It did mine. Buy it, borrow it-somehow get your hands on it." Catherine K. Arvesth, Meridian Magazine Hardcover. The following interview with Virginia Pearce originally aired on KSL Radio on March 5, 2006. Host: Doug Wright Doug: And a warm welcome to the program; great to have you along on Everyday Lives, Everyday Values. And we are so pleased to have Virginia Pearce back with us to discuss a brand new book, and it's called, A Heart Like His. Virginia, welcome to the program. It's great to have you here. Virginia: Thank you. It's good to be here. Doug: As we were chatting prior to going on the air I was just asking how your dad was doing. And I'm just curious, how is your father doing? President Hinckley. Virginia: He's recovering from surgery, and it's not a walk in the park but it's a walk he's doing. And we feel really happy about it. Doug: Well we are always amazed at his strength and his gifts, and at the age of ninety-five I would imagine having a tooth filled would be an experience. Virginia: It would for me at ninety-five. And it socked him in the stomach, but he's doing okay. Doug: Well we certainly wish him and the entire family well, and we're grateful that you are here with us. Let's talk about this book, A Heart Like His. I like this part, "What can I do, beyond keeping His commandments and praying fervently, that will help me fell God's love personally every day?" And that's pretty much the focus of the book. Take us back to the beginning. What was the idea, what was the genesis for A Heart Like His? Virginia: This book really chronicles a personal journey that I took with some friends. It began as we gathered together as a committee to put on a Stake Relief Society Conference. And we knew what the outcome was that we wanted. We wanted people to feel the love of God, the love of the Lord in their lives, personally, more often. And as we began to talk about how that happens and were there things that you could do that made it more likely to happen, we began to focus on something very specific. And we said, "Before we start teaching this, or before we start doing it, let's experiment ourselves. Let's see if this works. Let's just set up a little experiment." Doug: Yeah. And how did that happen? Tell us a little bit about the lab in which that occurred. Virginia: Well it was really quite exciting because it was so modest, really, in scope and so easy for us to do. We had talked an awfully lot about the condition of a person's heart. Is it an open heart? Is it an enlarged heart? Is it a softened heart? All the things that the love of God does for you and wanting that kind of a heart, not wanting a hardened, small heart. And we began to talk about it in physical terms and say, "Hmm. I have noticed something different about my heart when I'm open to people. I feel like it's closer to the surface of the chest wall." I mean, it may sound a little dumb to you, but remember in The Grinch Who Stole Christmas how his heart grew three sizes that day? Doug: Right. Right. Virginia: That's exactly what we wanted. We said, "Could we become tuned in that we could feel if our hearts were soft or hardened?" And so we said, "Well, let's just try it." So we made some rules for the experiment. The first one was that you would simply be more aware of the condition of your heart, and with that awareness try to open it up a little bit, try to enlarge it toward others. And the second one was that you had to do it in the normal course of your life. It was nothing extra. All of us were busy women with lots of resolves, and we were smart enough to know if it meant adding anything to your day it wouldn't happen. Doug: Mm-hmm. Virginia: So we said, "This just has to happen just as you're doing the normal things that you do." Doug: And you couldn't cop out and just go to the mountain top for a month or something. Virginia: No. Doug: Okay. Virginia: You couldn't cop out and go to the mountain top, you couldn't cop out by saying, "I'm going to spend all Wednesday afternoon visiting the sick in the hospital." It just had to be wherever you were. Notice the condition of your heart and what was happening and try to make a few changes. And then the third condition was that we would come back together and we would report honestly. We would tell each other if nothing happened, if something happened, and just see what would happen. Doug: That is so interesting. The whole chapter is called "What Is an Open Heart?" And it's interesting to think about, you mentioned something, I think of when I'm at a better place--I'll put it that way--in my life, it is amazing how close your emotions are to the surface, how you look at the world differently, you interpret things differently, you are less easily offended. It's amazing what happens. But sadly, and we see so much of this in the world today, we're seeing it in the world news this week where those who professed to be so religious and so in tune with God somehow have retreated and their heart is awfully deep in their chest somewhere. Virginia: Yeah. Doug: And that's awfully, sometimes it's hard to kind of prioritize and to focus on this. And for those who did experiment in this process, was there anything that can kind of kept it going? Was that part of the lab experiment? Not only how you can feel this, how you can incorporate it into your daily life, but how you can keep the motivation going? Virginia: One of the things that we found that was so exciting for us was that it was so easy to do, so, just the moment you thought of it, it happened. Doug: Mm-hmm. Virginia: And it was so fun, it made your life so much better, that there was a certain amount of momentum that it created that kept going. Doug: Sometimes when you've resolved to do something good, and good things are happening, it helps to have a support group. Is that in any way, shape, or form a part of this? Virginia: Well, that was what was kind of funny about it. When we started meeting, as I said we were a committee for another purpose, so when we started meeting in the beginning and sharing with each other as part of our committee responsibilities somebody said, "Oh, this is so great. Let's just keep meeting." And we said, "Wait a minute. Remember this is not about more time?" And this is something we can do at church. This is part of our church life, this is part of our community life. And in terms of the reporting, we still every once in a while call each other or my walking friends, we've talked about it a lot so every once in a while it comes up again. It's just informally we do that sort of thing. Doug: Before the chapter that I just mentioned and just after the Introduction is Chapter 1, "Splitting the Sky in Two." I love that title. Let's talk a little bit about where that came from and where this chapter takes us. "Splitting the Sky in Two," and it starts off with a very, very interesting little verse at the very beginning here on page 1. Let's talk a little bit about this. Virginia: That's a poem by Edna St. Vincent Malay, one of my very favorite women poets. And what she basically says is, well I'm just going to read a part of it. Doug: Please. That would be great. Virginia: "The world stands out on either side no wider than the heart is wide. Above the world is stretched the sky no higher than the soul is high. But the heart can push the sea and land farther away on either hand. The soul can split the sky in two and let the face of God shine through. But east and west will pinch the heart that cannot keep them pushed apart. And he whose soul is flat the sky will cave in on him by and by." Doug: Isn't that beautiful? Virginia: We loved it. And we loved the thought she expresses because it says, "We can do something about this, the way we look at the world and the reality of the world." Doug: Yeah. I love that line, "That soul can split the sky in two and let the face of God shine through." Virginia: That was what was exciting to us. When we began to just do this simple thing with our hearts, suddenly you become filled with the love of God. And then when that happens, of course, you want to reach out more, and it's just self-perpetuating. Doug: It's interesting how it continues on, "But east and west will pinch the heart." Basically I interpret that to be just the regular forces of the world. Virginia: Right. Doug: Just the natural things that occur in a human life. Virginia: Right. Doug: What a beautiful, beautiful sentiment on that. After we talk about the splitting the sky in two and the opening of the heart, we talk about "God's Love." How does God's love come into play here? And what does happen when you do allow your heart to become a little more vulnerable? Virginia: Ooh, those were lots of questions that were really fun for us to explore. We started talking about how we experience God's love. What does it feel like to us? And we said, "We always feel supported, we feel buoyed up, we feel energy-charged to go forward, we feel like we can change, we don't feel discouraged when we feel His love." It's very interesting. We feel motivated, we feel validated, we feel acknowledged. And when we started to make that list we said, "Oh, this is the way that we can behave toward other people." If we can mimic His love for us and how it makes us feel we can go out in the world and try to do that for other people. And then through us they can begin to experience His love. And, once again, it's that circle. Doug: Yeah, and that's the next chapter. Chapter 4 is "Extending God's Love to Others." Let's take just a brief break, and we will come back. We'll continue our conversation with Virginia Pearce. A Heart Like His is the book we are discussing, published by Deseret Book. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Doug: We're back on Everyday Lives, Everyday Values. We're talking about A Heart Like His: Making Space for God's Love in Your Life, a brand new book, and Virginia Pearce is our guest. Chapter 4, "Extending God's Love to Others," opens with this from the Doctrine and Covenants: "I receive you to fellowship, in a determination that is fixed, immovable, and unchangeable, to be your friend and brother through the grace of God in the bonds of love, to walk in all the commandments of God blameless, in thanksgiving, forever and ever." We've talked about opening our hearts, we've talked about splitting the sky, we've talked about welcoming God's love and making ourselves a better receptacle of that. But then, someone once said to me, or I read somewhere, that the greatest responsibility of freedom--once you have attained it for yourself--is to then extend it to others. Once we have felt a closer relationship with God, we feel more in tune with God's love, how do we extend that to others? It seems to me to be a natural extension of that same freedom concept. Virginia: It is. Like I say, it's a circle you can enter at any point. If you enter it by being flooded by His love, through prayer, or whatever, then you are going to extend it to other people automatically. But what we found is that if you extend it to other people it opened your heart up so that you can feel it. This verse from the Doctrine and Covenants is a particularly fascinating one to me. When the School of the Prophets was organized some many, many years ago, there was something of ritual to the way they entered the room every morning. And the teacher was to stand at the door and salute each member as they came in with this verse, "I receive you to fellowship...." Doug: Mm-hmm. Virginia: And then the person coming in said the verse back to them. As I think about that for a learning environment I just have to believe it is the best. Doug: Yeah. Virginia: I think we spend so much energy in learning situations worried about whether we're going to be judged, worried about whether we're going to be loved, accepted, validated, acknowledged, all of those things, that we can't have available to us the energy we need to learn. And I look at that School of the Prophets, and I think, "Oh, my goodness. If they understood that everyone in the room was fixed in brotherly love toward everyone else, imagine what that left available to them." It's just a safe place. Doug: Isn't it amazing how many times in the course of any given day we are just kind of watching out not to be heard, not to be judged, not to stumble, not to be perceived as foolish? Virginia: Yeah. Doug: You know, I have to admit, some of my days are wracked with those feelings. Virginia: And we often hear people say that about their experience on Sundays during the three-hour block, that that's what they're using their energy for. And I think, there is just no sadder commentary on us as a community when that happens. Doug: Boy, if there were to be a safe house in this day and age. Virginia: That should be it. Doug: Someplace where that spirit of the School of the Prophets would be in force it would be in our local wards and our local churches. Virginia: And it's a blessing we can claim. I think that we can, as members of the Church if we wake up on Sunday morning and pray to go to church in that spirit, we could change people's lives. Doug: Yeah. I love the title of this chapter, "The Reciprocity of Open Hearts." Let's talk about that. Where did you come up with the title for that because that is fairly, when you think about it, a very deep, all-encompassing statement. And what could happen with the reciprocity of an open heart is almost incomprehensible. Virginia: I believe that sometimes in religion, because we're so focused on helping other people, we get stuck in the idea of "Big me, little you. I have spiritual strength, I'm here to help you out." The reality, I believe the doctrinal reality is that we are all needy. We are all needy before God. And so there is a kind of mutuality, there's a kind of equality that is really very significant. So it isn't church leaders feeding me, it's we are feeding one another. Surely we have responsibilities toward some people, and all of us have stewardships and all of those kinds of things, but as human beings we are brothers and sisters, each of whom have needs and each of whom have things that they can give. Doug: Absolutely. It's an interesting concept that I'm still contemplating, the "Big me, little you" philosophy. And it is amazing how many times that can creep in when you're.... Virginia: You see it in yourself all the time. And I think this is the thing about the experiment that was so interesting for us, that there's nobody that does this right all of the time, and there's nobody that does it wrong all the time. Doug: Yeah. Virginia: But we sometimes think because we have lay leadership that we, if we're the Relief Society President or the Bishop or whatever, that that must mean we're farther ahead and that we can't open our hearts and say, "Boy, I struggle with this." Or, "I'm needy, too." Doug: I think of what the ultimate experience is, at least on this earth, for most Latter-day Saints, and that's the experience in the temple where everything is designed to where we are equal. Virginia: Yeah. Doug: In dress, in the way we address one another. Titles go out the door--it's no longer Dr. Somebody, or whomever. I always think that if the title Brother Joseph was good enough for Joseph Smith.... Virginia: Oh, don't you love that? Doug: I do. I love, you know, we occasionally will hear President Smith, we will occasionally hear General Smith. Virginia: But it was Brother Joseph. Doug: But it was Brother Joseph. And I thought, if it was good enough for him it's good enough for me. Virginia: Mm. Doug: The final chapter is, "A New Heart." And maybe that's a good place to wrap this up. We're almost out of time, but as we do have this evolution, as we do get this new heart, what happens? And what do you hope will happen with and for people who read this book, Virginia? Virginia: I hope that it will help someone--I don't know who it might help; I know it's helped me--to want to become something different, not to do something different. I don't want to get to be a better do-gooder. I'm just getting too tired for one thing. I can't run that fast. Doug: Thank you for saying that. Virginia: I want to be different. Doug: Yeah. Virginia: I want the new heart that the Savior has promised us. He said, "A new heart will I put into them." And I think, "I want a heart like His." Doug: Yeah. Virginia, this has been a delight. Thank you so much for joining us. Our best to your family. The title of the book is A Heart Like His: Making Space for God's Love in Your Life, it's published by Deseret Book. And we look forward to having you back soon. Virginia: Thanks.    Share your knowledge of this product with other customers... Be the first to write a review. 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