Soulful Response
Have you ever caught yourself playing spiritual arithmetic? You observe the Sabbath by going to church/synagogue/mosque, you obey the fasts, follow the rituals, memorize the scriptures, you play by the rules of the community. Or maybe you shoot a prayer out every once in awhile when things get stressful. You buy a cute angel, an inspirational plaque, stick it on the shelf and pepper your language with God or Jesus every once in awhile in order to add weight to your statement.
If you’re not the church going kind, maybe you have an inner spiritual practice. You meditate or pray, read spiritual books, walk in nature and experience the sacred. You are on a journey of self-awareness and have been waking up to the gifts and the shadow that you previously denied. You are comfortable exploring your “inner terrain.” Perhaps you work with a spiritual director, counselor, coach or pastor as you deepen your spiritual path. You feel more grounded and centered.
Perhaps you are engaging in some self-care for the first time in a long time. You are discovering your passion, identifying your inner calling. Perhaps this includes shifting careers or shifting relationships that are draining your soul. It may mean discovering a new talent that you do as a profession or hobby. I have seen friends and clients who begin to hunger for some sort of creative outlet to nourish the soul. When they find it, they feel a surge in their life force.
These measuring sticks of our life journey are vital gauges of spiritual and personal development, but they are partial. The full measure of wholeness lies inside the terrain of human community. When we sit in a pew, a quiet meditation chair or beside a rushing stream, we allow ourselves vital moments of stillness and repose. We recharge our batteries. But, a truly contemplative life always calls us back to others. We carry our insights and wisdom and embody them as we live, work and play with those around us.
This does not mean we bring a sort of faith based bullying into the workplace or into our personal relationships. We have seen plenty of that in the past decade and we know that simply serves to divide us from one another. Francis of Assissi, a man whose life was rooted in the Christian tradition, said, “Preach the gospel and if you must, use words.” In other words, the wisdom you gain in solitude or worship must always translate into compassionate action. Gandhi wrote, “BE the change you want to see in the world.
So, what is a soulful response? It unfolds in every moment and tests your mettle in the most surprising of ways. It leads you to confront your demons. When you are challenged by someone who is inflexible and stubborn, you will have to confront your own intransgiency. You meet someone who seems cold and uncaring and you face the parts inside of you who want to close the shades to others’ pain. You hear a call from someone who is sick or dying and you face your own fears of your physical limitations and loss.
Soulful response happens in personal and professional relationships amongst the people we love the most and the least. Joan Chittister writes that “Our response to the human race becomes the measuring stick of the quality of our souls.” How are we responding?
In the past six months, we have witnessed an election divide our country, so we are called to respond with reconciliation and healing even if it is in the smallest of ways.
In my local community, we experienced the loss of a young mother and community volunteer and had to face our own sense of helplessness, loss and vulnerability. We are called to respond to the family in the lonely months that follow long after the shock has dissipated.
Recently, a new movie was released that details the holocaust of our time in Rwanda. It shares the story of the region’s own Oscar Schindler who saved countless souls when the world was silent. We all bear this burden-the challenge is not to wallow in guilt, nor become defensive or accusatory.
Soulful response demands that we reflect once again, open our hearts once again, and allow life to be our greatest teacher. What can I learn about myself from the stories in the newspaper?
We are called to ask ourselves, how can I be a voice for justice when a piece of me wants to close my eyes because I cannot take on the world’s suffering. It’s just too much. My kid is fretting over exams, my family has the flu, my work is sucking the lifeblood out of me and I’m worried about my Mom.
Soulful response never demands you backburner the needs of your family. Nor does it require you to neglect self-care. When we are weary from compassion fatigue, it is time to rejuvenate our own souls. Real love grows from a foundation of self-love and self-care.
Yet, care is not limited to just me (egocentric care) or People Like Me (ethnocentric care). Yes, care for oneself is foundational for human wholeness. Care for People Like Us, generates strong families and communities. The spiritual circle is truly complete when we care for all regardless of race, class, creed, culture or gender. This worldcentric care is the greatest calling because it summons us outside our comfortable insularity.
My butcher understood this when he said to me as his eyes filled, “Y’know what I was thinking when I watched the news last night? Those people in the tsunami were parents, just like me. All they want to do is love their kids and they had to helplessly watch them be swept out to sea, screaming their name.” This single father, raising a young son by himself, allowed his heart to be cracked wide open-such courage heals a wounded world.
The greatest courage is when we respond with action. My friend, Joyce, reaffirmed this to me one night last week. She left on my doorstep a gift. She had quilted me a beautiful handbag as a gesture of gratitude. Tucked in the bag was a note. She wrote that she was enclosing a Wall Street Journal article to respond to last month’s e-column request for stories that opened your heart and mind to others. The article, written by Suketa Mehta, was a poignant cry for help for victims of the tsunami. It closed with these lines:
“There is only one way to bring back some faith, some hope, some belief to those people who have lost it all. God wasn’t there when the tsunami struck; but God lives in us, better late than never. We must let Subhani and Seenu and Mahalingam keep their sanity, their sense of moral order in the universe, by reaching out to them. Even more important than the scale of the help is the simple gesture, of a human hand reaching out across the giant ocean, with money, with medicine, with technical expertise; in its own way as powerful, as majestic, as unstoppable as the tsunami itself.”
Joyce’s soulful response engendered my family’s soulful response to the tsunami victims. You see, it begins in the simplest of ways when the light in one soul strikes the match and lights the soul of the other.