The Heart Unstructured can be described as a love story, a romance… but it infinitely transcends that genre. The book itself is an allegory, and the author, as a master of metaphor, paints a vivid picture of the tragic truth of mere religion, and the way it compels its adherents to conform to its rituals and rigidity while silencing the voice of the heart, which longs for authentic, dynamic relational connection with the Creator and the whole of creation.
In our zeal to be “right,” we so often sacrifice the mystery and deep wonder of relational intimacy for which we are designed.
This is the conflict the two main characters in the book find themselves in as expressed in the following excerpt from the book:
‘Standing on the steps of our respective religious cultures each Sunday morning and fixing our gaze upon one another just across the narrow street, our hearts could not accept that I could love God as a Roman Catholic and she could love God as a Baptist, but we could never love each other.’