Hi friends!

Apologies for long absence–Law school apps plus trying to finish novel #3 has not left much time for CC.

HOWEVER!

I recently went to my dentist, and on top of the wonderful news that I do NOT have tongue cancer, gum disease, or cavities (thank You LORD and Orawellness team), I got inspo for a blog piece!

See, as I was lying there in the dentist chair, a song from one of my favorite Christmas movies EVER came through the office speakers.

T’was “You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch”, and, feeling nostalgic, I went home and immediately deep-dived into film clips, lyrics, and Dr. Seuss book tidbits.

Full disclaimer: While I know the song and film reasonably well, the narrative proper is a bit murkier to me, so when I came upon this description of why the Grinch hated Christmas, I was intrigued!

The Grinch hated Christmas! The whole Christmas season!
Now, please don’t ask why. No one quite knows the reason.
It could be his head wasn’t screwed on just right.
It could be, perhaps his shoes were too tight.
But I think that the most likely reason of all
May have been that his heart was two sizes too small.

I thought that last explanation was interesting!

So I googled some more and found this gif:

And upon examination, the Grinch’s heart reminded me of a raisin–a shrunken, shriveled, dried-up husk that might’ve once been plump but now was… not.

As you can probably guess, I don’t like raisins.

Never have.

Probably never will.

They’re just not my preferred flavor or texture profile.

Not to mention the fact I grew up with Alvin & The Chipmunks, and anyone who’s seen this scene:

Looks at raisins and thinks,

Could be chipmunk feces.

ANYWAYS!

As I was kicking around the imagery of the Grinch’s shrunken, shriveled, dried up raisin heart in my head, I started to think about how #relatable that is.

Because I don’t know about you, but LORD knows, my heart is super prone to raisin-ness.

And so today, I’d love to chat about what I think are a couple causes, a couple consequences, and, ultimately, THE cure to raisin-heartedness.

Because I strongly suspect that no one wants to be a Grinch–least of all during Christmas 🙂

So let’s get to it!

Causes of Raisin-Heartedness

When it comes to what causes raisin hearts, I think there are two main things:

1. Where you’ve been AND
2. What you’ve been doing

With respect to the first, I’ve written before about how sun exposure is turning us all into wrinkled up craisins, and similarly, certain environments can cause significant heart dehydration.

A prime example of this can be found in Dashiel Hammett’s novel Red Harvest wherein the protagonist, a PI known only as The Continental Op, arrives in the town of Personville (known by the locals as “Poisonville”) to clean it up.

Now, admittedly, The Continental Op was already rough around the edges when he arrived on the scene, but by the novel’s summit, his methods of clean up have become notably extreme to the point that even he’s like, “This town has done something to me.”

His love interest, Dinah Brand, tries to reassure him,

“It’s not your fault, darling. You said yourself that there was nothing else you could do. Finish your drink and we’ll have another.”

“There was plenty else I could do,” I contradicted her… “But it’s easier to have them killed off, easier and surer, and, now that I’m feeling this way, more satisfying. I don’t know how I’m going to come out with the Agency. The Old Man will boil me in oil if he ever finds out what I’ve been doing. It’s this damned town. Poisonville is right. It’s poisoned me.“

Dinah demurs, but The Op is insistent:

“Look. I sat at Willsson’s table tonight and played them like you’d play trout, and got just as much fun out of it. I looked at Noonan and knew he hadn’t a chance in a thousand of living another day because of what I had done to him, and I laughed, and felt warm and happy inside. That’s not me. I’ve got hard skin all over what’s left of my soul, and after twenty years of messing around with crime I can look at any sort of a murder without seeing anything in it but my bread and butter, the day’s work. But this getting a rear out of planning deaths is not natural to me. It’s what this place has done to me.“

I’ve yet to plan any sadistic homicides, but there have 100% been times where the places I’ve been/the people I’ve surrounded myself with made me much more selfish, short-tempered, and mean.

I suspect my experience is not unique.

I mean, it’s pretty commonly said that you become like the places you frequent and the people you surround yourself with.

So when it comes to raisin-heartedness, it’s a good idea to be mindful of your posse and environment!

HOWEVER!

Lest you think I’m offloading all raisin heart culpability to one’s circle and setting, think again!

Yo girl was baptized Baptist 🙂

We sing songs like this.

Regardless!

From where I sit, the fact of the matter is while our surroundings can certainly dry us out, we also do a heck of a lot to dehydrate ourselves.

Examples of this tendency abound, but a particularly poignant one I found comes from a poem by famous “Liverpool Poet” Roger McGough.

The poem is called “The Act of Love,” and in it, McGough describes how the narrator, through his actions, wrung his own heart dry:

The Act of love lies somewhere
Between the belly and the mind
I lost the love sometime ago
Now I’ve only the act to grind

Brought her home from a party
Don’t bother swapping names
Identities don’t matter
When you’re only playing games

High on that bedroom darkness
As we endure the pantomime
Ships that go bang in the night
Run aground on the sands of time

Saved in the nick of time
It’s cornflakes and then goodbye
Another notch on the headboard
Another day wondering why

The act of love lies somewhere
Between the belly and the mind
I lost the love sometime ago
Now I’ve only the act to grind

I’ll be honest.

Reading that poem is like waving cut onions under my eyes.

And it’s not because I’m a prude.

Anyone who’s been here for any length of time knows that isn’t true.

It’s just I find it super sad to think about someone made for love becoming a person only capable of sex.

Just as I find it depressing how people (myself SO included) made for kindness and generosity so easily become raisin-hearted Grinches when given the chance.

I could go on, but the point I want to press is how could it be anything other than tragic for someone to make themselves less?

To simplify this argument:

Human Being Capable of Love > Raisin-Hearted Grinch/Lech/Etc.

∴

Human Being Capable of Love -> Raisin-Hearted Grinch/Lech/Etc. = 🙁

However, if you don’t think this change in itself is sad, ’tis time to consider the consequences.

Consequences of Raisin-Heartedness

While the downstream effects of raisin-heartedness are many, the two biggies I see (and experience) most frequently are:

1. Shrunken Love Capacity
2. Zippo Empathy

Concerning the first, there is no better quotation/illustration than the one penned by Solomon Northup in his seminal autobiography Twelve Years A Slave wherein he describes his sicko master Edwin Epps this way:

He respected and loved his wife as much as a coarse nature like his is capable of loving, but supreme selfishness always overmastered conjugal affection. He loved as well as baser natures can, but a mean heart and soul were in that man.

Edwin Epps loved his wife to an extent, but being a slaver/rapist/sadist meant his capacity to love was seriously diminished.

And here’s the thing.

Ostensibly, Edwin Epps wanted and tried to love his wife just like we want and try to love the closest people in our lives.

But it’s like Northup says,

“We love them as well as we can.”

And if we’re working with a shrunken, shriveled up raisin heart, supreme selfishness is always going to win out in the end.

That is, a major consequence of raisin-heartedness is that the people we want to love the best will be loved less.

Not an ideal circumstance.

But there is another consequence!

And it is this:

While the people we want to love will get loved less, the people we already don’t love will get treated like–

Because if your capacity to love is maxed out at the size of a chipmunk turd, your ability to empathize with and care for someone you’re indifferent to or hostile towards is going to be pretty close to zip.

In Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian, observing his former lover weeping after he jilts her unexpectedly, thinks this:

There is something always ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love. Sybil Vane seemed to him to be absurdly melodramatic. Her tears and sobs annoyed him.

Another, more extreme, example of raisin-heartedness can be found within Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived In The Castle wherein the narrator Mary Catherine “Merricat” Blackwood observes her fellow townspeople at the grocery store and thinks,

I wished they were dead. I would have liked to come into the grocery some morning and see them all, even the Elberts and the children, lying there crying with the pain and dying. I would then help myself to groceries, I thought, stepping over their bodies, taking whatever I fancied from the shelves, and go home, with perhaps a kick for Mrs. Donell while she lay there. I was never sorry when I had thoughts like this; I only wished they would come true. “It’s wrong to hate them,” Constance [her older sister] said, “it only weakens you,” but I hated them anyway, and wondered why it had been worthwhile creating them in the first place.

Clearly, in both Dorian’s and Merricat’s case, some pretty serious heart shrinkage had taken place!

And unless we want to turn out like them, I strongly suggest rehydration.

Cure to Raisin-Heartedness

Alright, friends!

At this point, I hope I’ve made at least a somewhat convincing pitch for why one should avoid raisin-heartedness, and if you, like me, recognize in yourself certain grinchy, raisin-hearted tendencies, I hope this final section offers some helpful tips.

Actually, I only have one tip 🙂

Because, in my experience, only one thing has made a dent in making my heart look less like a raisin, and that one thing, friends, is supernatural rehydration.

In John 7:37-38, Jesus stood up and cried out,

“If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. The one who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, will have streams of living water flow from deep within.”

Against streams of living water, dried up raisin hearts don’t stand a chance 🙂

And if you think the places you’ve been and the things you’ve done have turned your heart into not only a raisin but a fossilized one, in Ezekiel 36:26, we’re told,

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”

Take THAT, raisins 🙂

AND!

If you think a whole new heart might still be too small, Psalm 119:32 says,

“I will run in the way of Your commandment when You enlarge my heart.”

With God, heart enlargement isn’t an “if” but a “when!”

I think that’s pretty amazing 🙂

And truly, friends, I can personally attest that my heart is much less raisin-like since giving my life to Christ.

10/10 recommend!

Please do drop me a line if you’re at all interested in knowing more about Jesus or even just hearing about the coocoobananapants ways He’s worked in my life!

Always, always down to talk about Jesus Christ.

And to bring it back to the Grinch, in the film, his heart enlarged after listening to the Whos sing.

SO!

Here’s one of my favorite songs to end this piece 🙂

God, I’m on my knees again
God, I’m begging please again
I need you
Oh, I need you

Walking down these desert roads
Water for my thirsty soul
I need You
Oh, I need You

Your forgiveness
Is like sweet, sweet honey on my lips
Like the sound of a symphony to my ears
Like Holy water on my skin

“Holy Water” – We The Kingdom