The Pioneering Heart

If the only thing constant in the world is change, who better to forge a path forward than someone for whom change is the only constant?

From the Fall 2022 issue of Sacred Heart University Magazine

By Charles A. Gillespie

I just love looking up the origins of words. It feels almost magical—like cracking open a book of ancient spells—to discover how words have gone on their own journey over centuries. Words sometimes carry these almost secret meanings that shine new light on the world once I learn them. Here’s a great example: despite years of reading and watching and loving The Wizard of Oz (and I’m a Broadway nerd, so Wicked, too), I never realized the connection between courage and heart beyond the wishes of a cowardly lion and a tin man. The word courage, however, derives from the Latin word for heart, cor. Courage relates directly to our heart, and language remembers (if it only has a brain).

I’m not entirely sure that Dorothy counts as a pioneer, which is what we’re really here to discuss, but if a theater kid can be allowed one more Wizard reference, anyone walking around the SHU campus can see “we’re not in Kansas anymore.” There is, of course, the amazing growth of a nationally ranked university that only 60 years ago started out as little more than a commuter college. But it’s more than that. Sacred Heart University was founded during the Second Vatican Council, both events directly addressing the challenges of the modern world—those “joys and hopes, griefs and anxieties” that fueled the winds of change then and have only continued to grow in the decades since. We are all still heading into an uncertain future that is waiting for us to have the courage to make it our own.

And isn’t that what pioneering is all about?

Think about it. Pioneers need to have enough gumption to pack their whole lives into a covered wagon (or rickety boat or spaceship or U-Haul) and be reflective enough to decide what to bring and what to leave behind. I think that blending of old and new is what differentiates the pioneer from the colonizer. The colonizer imposes and extracts; the pioneer adapts and creates. Standing on the shoulders of giants, empowered by the long tradition of what came before, pioneers open themselves to learning and integrating all sorts of new ideas: new languages, new landscapes, new ways of relating. That’s what’s special about pioneers: they find a way of staying true to their roots without being bound by them.

Something else: while we often use the word pioneer to describe an independent thinker, pioneering was and is a team sport. No matter what image comes to mind—a gamer dodging dysentery while playing “The Oregon Trail,” a chemist examining a sample in her laboratory, an astronaut taking a giant leap onto the lunar surface—pioneers need to work together. They need to be willing to listen during disagreements, to struggle through difficult conversations, to keep an open mind, especially when the going gets rough and problems seem insurmountable.

It’s far too easy to romanticize the great pioneers of history, those folks brave enough to set off for a new life in a foreign place. It can be easy to overlook the literal pioneers of the present. How scary must it be for any migrant to make the impossible decision to leave home for an unknown land of rumored promise? Pioneer journeys are not for the faint of heart.

Luckily, when it comes to courage—that cor-age, that fullness of heart—we have a few examples. In the Catholic tradition, the Sacred Heart most often refers to Jesus, though in some older traditions it refers to Mary, as well. In either case, it always calls to mind a divine love rushing outward, overflowing beyond human imagining. Believe it or not, some translations of a line in the New Testament (Hebrews 12:2) even call Jesus “the pioneer.” Personally, I find it hard to think of a better word for the exemplar of the love story between God and the world.

But pioneering means more than just a reference to a single journey, however arduous, of the past or present, or even a scriptural allusion to make sense of a name. I think being a pioneer, in many respects, means committing to a life characterized by both reflection and courage. That’s the great balancing act of pioneering: to choose to forge ahead toward somewhere or something undiscovered, pioneers know they are up to something new and are willing to think and talk about it; sometimes they might even obsess about it. At the same time, pioneers need to have the courage to apply what they learn from reflection and turn it into action. Whether caulking up the covered wagon to ford a stream or preparing for blastoff to Mars, there’s a significant element of intentional reflection that powers the journey. Pioneers don’t wait for a bandwagon to hop onto and ride. They tap into a beating heart that’s yearning to explore, and they go.

There’s surely a bit of good old-fashioned wanderlust in packing up and striking out for a new land of new opportunities, but there’s a literal restlessness in pioneers, too. It’s dramatized in the movies where great scientific discoveries and breakthroughs always seem to happen late at night, but it’s more than just the stuff of fiction. Restlessness gives pioneers a drive to keep pushing, to keep dreaming, to keep trying, to keep walking.

In fact, everybody might have a heart that desires more than the world can give, at least according to St. Augustine of Hippo. This North African professor of rhetoric turned bishop turned Doctor of the Church composed a book of his confessions in the fourth century. (My own confession? This book is one of my favorites.) Augustine rather famously thought about human beings as creatures with a restless heart. That restlessness can play out in a lot of different ways. Maybe we recognize a restless heart in that awkward feeling that something is off about our world. Our hearts might be restless to correct all the injustices around us, to help repair lingering social wounds. Maybe some of our insomniac hearts are restless with wonder. Our hearts may keep us awake all night asking questions and dreaming about how there must be more to the universe than only what we can see and touch. Or maybe it’s the restlessness that comes from staying awake to keep reading that good book. Or maybe restlessness describes when our heart skips a beat, struck like a lightning bolt by the beauty of a sunset or the sight of our current crush walking into the room. Maybe it’s all of this—and more.

Which leads Augustine to reveal another side of restlessness. There’s an inner dimension to pioneering; the greatest journey may be within ourselves. The Latin word we translate as restless is inquietum. I love the way that word conjures images of a stormy heart struggling against any calm. It is the sort of heart haunted by anxiety, a feeling surely familiar to any pioneer. Moving your heart and your life into a new place—whether it be a log cabin in the wilderness or working at the cutting edge of research or even starting a new year of college—has to be a little lonely sometimes. Especially now, as we live in a moment in time when sharing our heart’s longings has become both incredibly easy and remarkably dangerous.

For Augustine, our human heart, with all its infinite longings, will only find lasting peace in the infinite love of God. But another antidote to inquietum might be the rumble of ongoing conversation. Indeed, those most fundamentally human acts of really talking and really listening might be exactly what can help save the world. Surely part of what it means to be a pioneer in the third millennium will be rediscovering the simple joys of being people together—of being in company, of community. It’s not earth shattering to note that technology’s capacity for bringing the world together has also been key in keeping it apart. After years of masks and distance, talking to another person in 3D can be utterly terrifying. All the more frightening when we are asked to share something personal, in person—when we try to talk from our heart. The cascading and unprecedented crises of the present prove a desperate need for better conversation. They demand bravery. Pioneers might be the ones who can teach us how to be courageous enough that, as St. John Henry Newman said, cor ad cor loquitor—“heart speaks to heart.”

A 19th-century English convert to Catholicism who became a cardinal, Newman pioneered ways of thinking about the liturgy, about language, about national identity and about the way church teachings develop across history. He also wrote a deeply influential book sharing his ideas about universities where he called higher education “the great and ordinary means to a great but ordinary end.” No degree grants Marvel-worthy superpowers. Yet there is something great about what a university can teach and research and do for the common good of our society and the planet we share. Universities can still be, if we let them, communities where heart speaks to heart about those truths that matter most, those questions that burn brightest, those ideas—ancient and new—that will transform how we live in the world and seek to make it better.

And again, as I asked earlier, isn’t that exactly what pioneering is? To pioneer, in any sense of the word, is to stand at the edge of what we know and courageously venture off into what we don’t.

And isn’t that exactly what we hope education can be?

Indeed, some say that the word education itself relates to the words for “leading out.” If that’s the case, education shouldn’t be anything like installing an iOS update. It should be so much more than completing a series of obligations to earn a piece of paper, and it should never be considered a destination in itself—there is no point or place where an education is complete. It is the beginning of the journey, not the journey’s end.

Hearts speaking to hearts embraces the unknown as no longer a barrier or a boundary, but an invitation. It turns the twisters of inquietum into wind for our sails.

Education, in its fullest and truest sense, can be a pioneer’s journey—if only we have the heart and courage to let it be.

Charles A. Gillespie, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Catholic Studies at Sacred Heart University where he also serves as the director for the Pioneer Journey.