Soul Readings

SOUL READINGS 3/8/09

Poet Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote:

“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.”

In these few words the essence of the soul is described, far better than theologians or philosophers can do. The heart and soul within, though small, stretch beyond us to feel infinite, and though isolated within us, connect to all that is, by unseen webs of grace.

As a word, ‘soul’ can be used casually, but more often it is used to describe what tends to be indescribable….the essence of a person or a thing.

Plato set the stage for much of Christian understanding of the soul by stating that the soul is imperishable, and survives the perishable body. In Christian theology, the soul is something akin to having a chip implanted in the body at birth that is reattached to a great motherboard after this life.

We are not likely to be able to put a finger upon part of our body, and declare, “Here is my soul.” A soul is more of a melding of imagination, feeling, character, will, mystery, personality, enthusiasm… all intangibles, and all essentials to being human.

One of our Peterborough residents, Thomas Moore, has written many books about the soul, The Care of the Soul, The Soul of Sex, Soul Mates, and The Religion of the Soul. His writing centers the soul in the feelings, in relationships, and in culture.

Our own Unitarian explorer of the soul, Ralph Waldo Emerson planted a flag upon the ground of the American Soul with much of his writing. “The soul,” wrote Emerson “is the perceiver and revealer of truth.”

“The soul’s health consists in the fullness of its reception.

For ever and ever the influx of this better and more universal self is new and unsearchable.

Within us is the soul of the whole; the wise silence, the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal One.

When it breaks through our intellect it is genius; when it breathes through our will it is virtue; when it flows through our affections, it is love.”

Americans have been accused of having restless souls. We are rarely content or satisfied, always stretching out for the new.

President Kennedy once wrote that “Goethe tells us in his greatest poem that Faust lost the liberty of his soul when he said to the passing moment, ‘Stay, thou art so fair.’ Americans risk a similar fate Kennedy warned if we pause for the passing moment, if we rest on our achievements, if we resist the pace of progress…those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.” (quoted from TIME magazine, 7/7/08)

The UU minister, Meg Barnhouse says; “There comes a time in your life when the effectiveness of what you have been doing so far, fades. The way you have gone about things wears out. The creative energy wanes. The music in your head gets repetitive. You need something. Some people describe a restlessness; others more poetically call it ‘divine discontent.’ It’s that divine discontent that keeps your soul from starving to death. You have to start tearing up that safe cocoon to get to what you’re hungry for.”

Tom Koecke says that “The difference between one’s spirit and one’s soul is the difference between light and gravity.” Others describe the soul as like a sail on a boat, and the spirit is like the wind that fills the sail.

Nikos Katzanzakis puts these words in the mouth of the main character in Zorba the Greek: “What is the soul, then, I wondered. And what is the secret connection between the soul and sea, clouds and perfumes? The soul itself seems to be the sea, cloud and perfume…”

Marilynne Robinson in her book, Home, has one of the characters pondering….”…she had no certain notion what a soul is. She supposed it was not a mind or a self. Whatever they are. She supposed it was what God said when looking upon any of us….Say we love and forgive, and enjoy the beauty of another life, however elusive it might be. Then we have some idea of the soul we have encountered.”

One of the characters in Alice Hoffman’s book, Three Angels, ponders her state of mind after a horrible experience; “Trauma can cause one to feel as though a part of one’s soul has been taken away.”

In another of her books, Illumination Night, she describes one of her characters; “Vonny is an empath, very sensitive, easily overwhelmed. She thinks of her empathy as a flaw, like a scratch on her soul that lets in vibrations. She stays clear of people with strong vibrations.”

Thomas Moore writes in a chapter called, “Crafting a Soul”, of the similarity between crafting and soul-making. He quotes James Krenov, a woodworker and the similarity between crafting a soul and crafting in wood: “You have to get acquainted with the wood, a wood’s colors; its hardness or lack of hardness; whether its grain is ornery or not. It’s a very personal thing, and not everyone pays such close attention. But if you do, you are more in harmony with the wood and the work. And the results flow from this harmony, even though it is connected with periods of stress and doubt.”

The wood of one’s soul is one’s personality, one’s observations, one’s feelings and needs, one’s requests of oneself and of others.