Soul-scape

Nobody knows what the soul is

Mary Oliver

Nobody knows what the soul is.

It comes and goes
like the wind over the water
sometimes, for days,
you don’t think of it.

Mary Oliver

Image: Kim En Joong, Huile 1877_01

Thomas Moore says we connect with the soul through our complaints. The symptoms of emptiness, meaninglessness, disillusionment, loss of values, yearning for personal fulfillment, a hunger for spirituality – all these can alert us to our soul’s true hunger. These symptoms reflect loss of soul. They tell us what we truly thirst for. Yet we can get what we want, and still not be satisfied. Soul is the spark of eternity within us – the restlessness which alone finds its rest in God.

Spend some time noticing the symptoms of soul within you.

Rather than being afraid of them, see them as God-signs, signals pointing towards your need for what truly satisfies.

Such dissatisfaction or restlessness;

any attraction towards living with more freedom or courage;

all these can be signs of the gentle movement and invitation of God.

In religious language the inner life is called “the soul”, and the art of knowing it, healing it and harmonizing its forces is called spirituality. Religion should encourage us to become more aware of this inner life and should teach us to befriend it, for it is the source of our strength and storehouse of our wisdom.

Gerard Hughes

What are the things you find life-giving, or freeing?

What sustains and nurtures you?

What or who encourages you to care for this deep part of you?

Where are you at home, accepted just as you are?

Where are you at peace, least fragmented, most yourself?

Where do you find most meaning, most hope?

As you do this, you will also get in touch with where you are not at home, most fragmented, not at peace.

What deadens or inhibits your soul?

What causes you to get stuck or dry up?

What only makes life drain further away?

When I talk about soul, I get in touch with the often ignored and largely hidden and most sensitive and precious aspect of who I am. “’I am’ is God’s first gift to me: to be able to say ’I am’ is God-like”.

Alan Jones

Soul language is a way of saying that I matter, a way of saying “I am somebody”!

It is a way of valuing the human person.

It is evocative rather than merely descriptive language, calling us out as unfinished beings who are somehow made for more.

We are capax Dei – we are made with an inherent capacity for God.

We continue to see the beautiful abstracted works of Fr Kim En Joong in this post. He says of his work:

Ma peinture est un don gratuit qui ne m’appartient pas. Elle prend sa source dans le mystère du Dieu vivant et de la création… Je ne peins pas pour être un artiste de renommée internationale mais je peins le Dieu de l’Univers. Mon intention est de rendre présent de façon authentique ce que j’ai reçu de Dieu.

My painting is a free gift that does not belong to me. It has its source in the mystery of the living God and of creation. I so not paint to be a famous international artist, but I paint the God of the Unvierse. My intention is to render in an authentic and present way that which I have received from God.

Source: Interview with Kim En Joong

And as this meditation began with some words from Mary Oliver, here we listen to another of her wonderful poems.