Our
Nation's Soul
“...the
word 'soul' refers to that part of a human being that is more than
matter, more than blood and bones...the essence of what makes a human
being truly human, the inherent part of us that is more than meets
the eye.”
Caroline
Myss (“Crimes Against the Soul of America,” Huffpost website,
Nov. 17, 2011)
According to Caroline
Myss, my go-to spiritual teacher, the soul of America has been under
siege for decades. It has progressed through a series of elected
administrations that have actively lied to the public and served to
set American against American. The end result is that no one who is a
true statesman and leader wants to run for public office because it
has become a dirty, soulless business. Don't make the mistake of
equating soul in this context with any religious affiliation—soul
does not belong to any organized religion. Some of the most soulless
organizations on earth can be found under roofs with steeples.
Soul is the part of us
that yearns for justice, mercy and equality. When it encounters the
opposite of that, oppression, brutality and, what Myss calls “a
society that thrives on predatory instincts,” it can be wounded
and even broken. The soul is the author of our moral code; a personal
honor code strong enough to withstand challenges to its integrity.
When it is deeply wounded and scarred, it may lose the strength necessary to
protect us in an honorable way. Then, we lapse into the kind of
monstrous behavior we have seen, not just in the last week, but for
the last few decades. We turn on one another with a terrible desire
to inflict damage, both with words and with weapons.
We, as a people, must
recognize the forces in our midst that are intentionally driving this
fracturing. We all love what America stands for, what the soul of
this country can be and has been in the past. It is not a
white-supremacist, hate-filled, gun-hording soul. It is a beautiful,
generous, reach-out-to-help-your-fellow-human soul. It stands for
dignity, equality and honesty, and not the kind of ethic that pits us
against one another. We must remember who we are. Our individual
souls and our national soul hang in the balance.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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