Soul
Time
“You
have the need and the right to spend part of your life caring for
your soul...To be a soulful person means to go against all the
pervasive prove-yourself values of our culture and instead treasure
what is unique and internal and valuable in yourself and your own
personal evolution.”
Jean
Shinoda Bolen
What is it that nourishes
your soul? Some of us find soul expansion in community,
some in nature, in relationships, in meditation, music, or art. I have a friends
who follow spiritual teachers; listen to their podcasts, read their
books. Whatever puts you in touch with your inner world is worth
pursuing. We busy people, who grew up with the Puritan work ethic,
find it difficult to make time for soul work. We are production oriented. It seems so
self-indulgent, so personally gratifying, even selfish to take time
every day to just listen to something uplifting, or to take a walk
with the intention of being, rather than powering. When is the last
time, for instance, you ambled through a botanical garden?
This time of year, when
we are hurtling head-long into the holidays, we layer on busy
activities. We work, we shop, we attend numerous parties and open
houses. I live in a commuter town where people come in to work, but
most still live out in the burbs. We have no reliable mass transit,
so right now traffic is absolutely horrible. I have not been on one
of the outbound roads in the past two weeks when traffic was not
bumper-to-bumper and angry. Horns blowing, people swerving in and out
of packed lanes, and always, the ubiquitous ambulance and firetruck
trying to get to yet another smash-up. What on earth are we
doing—what can be that important?
We have time to rush to
Trader Joe's for that bottle of wine and bag of cheese straws, but
not time to take a deep breath and check in with our souls? Really?
There was an old adage used when we were children learning how to
handle fire on our clothes—stop, drop, and roll. Remember that? It
was good advice. Here is my adaptation—stop, kneel and pray. You
will have so much more to bring to your busy life, more grounding and
less “hair-on-fire,” if you find a calm center within yourself
and visit it often. Give your soul a break and fifteen minutes of
your time, and it will give you a deeper, stronger, calmer existence
in this hasty-pudding world.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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