Soul – care

Fr Philip and I have enjoyed sharing this blog with you over the past year. We will be taking a sabbatical over the month of January and will look forward to meeting you online again in February of next year, 2022.

What is the greatest gift?
…That you have a soul – your own, no one else’s

Mary Oliver

What is the greatest gift?
….That you have a soul – your own, no one else’s –
that I wonder about more than I wonder about my own.
So that I find my soul clapping its hands for yours more than my own.

Mary Oliver

Image: Kim En Joong, Huile 1084_01

Living soulfully means

Being rich towards God

choosing life

letting heart speak to heart

living from the depths.

Wisdom is knowing that where the action is for me – e.g. increased feeling, energy levels (up or down), heightened awareness – there God is. It will also mean a richer sense of “otherness” – of connectedness with your sisters and brothers. It will mean that we realize that we are persons-in-relation. “I cannot be me without you, and we cannot be us without them”.

And knowing that whatever is going on for me, there will be a difference between the God I live with and the God I believe in!

Julian of Norwich is helpful here:

Some of us believe that God is all-powerful and may do everything, and some of us believe that God is all-wisdom, and can do everything, but that God is all-loving and wishes to do everything, there we fail.

Image: Kim En Joong, Huile 1502_01

Get in touch with something in your life at present which causes you to get stuck – and picture God looking at you and feeling something. Part of me simply wants God to be all-powerful and fix me up – but imagine God not only loving you but wanting to do everything good in you and for you and with you.

Soul-care touches our deepest desires, our long-held dreams. It will not set a higher value on never being hurt than on life itself. It will face the underlying reality of “unreconciled pain and unexhausted compassion, the history of men and women and the history of God with us”.

Rowan Williams

This is an opportunity to stay with your pain –

or the pain of another –

or the pain of the world (be as particular as you can) –

and imagine God’s “unexhausted compassion”,

or God’s “inexpressible closeness”, or God’s “cherishing presence”.

Stay with this for some time,

holding together the “wound” and the “promise”

…let be…and let God.

Caring for the soul draws out from us what is most true and deep within us. Without soul we are life-less. Soul charges us with energy to reach out beyond ourselves in self-transcendence. It makes sense of our deepest longings.

Our final post in the series on the soul is again accompanied by the translucent paintings of Kim En Joong. He says of his work:

‘Une œuvre ne peut pas vivre seulement des messages qu’elle doit délivrer. Elle doit innover, donner à voir, donner au cœur et à la pensée, transcrire le présent et s’inscrire dans le futur. Dans la dimension infinie de l’art non-figuratif, la tradition s’incarne dans un dessein sacré où créer devient une forme d’« action de grâce », une façon de poser son regard sur l’au-delà.’

Source: Interview with Kim En Joong

A work cannot live only from the story it must tell. It must innovate, give to see, give to the heart and thought, tell the story of the present and be part of the future. In the infinite dimension of non-figurative art, tradition is embodied in a sacred design where creating becomes a form of “thanksgiving”, a way of looking beyond.

And for our final piece of music for the series and the year here is a community song, led by Chanda Rule as a community participation song.