You have a soul

You have a soul.

Your soul is the essence of you. It is the deepest, most fundamental part of you; it’s like the blueprint of you, the proof that you are made in the image of God.

Your soul has a ground; a source.

In the ground of your soul you and God are not other than each other; you are one. Don’t go too far with that - you are not God, but you are not other than God either. One way to put it is this: If we could take God out of you, you would disappear from view.

I don’t want any of that to sound complicated. It’s simple. The essence of you is your soul, and your soul is infused with the Divine. God dwells within you.

You have a soul, and you also probably have a deep inner hunger that stays with you always. That inner hunger is a hunger for God. Only God’s grace and love will satisfy the inner hunger of your soul.

If that’s all true, then why doesn’t my soul lead out in my daily life? Why am I always chasing things that don’t satisfy my deep inner hunger? Because one of the things it means to be human is that I will stomp around noisily trying just about anything that is not God to satisfy my hunger.

The soul is like a shy wild animal that stays hidden while we stomp around in the woods of our lives.* It is hungry and thirsty and its food and drink are love, but the shy animal of your soul does not force its way out like your ego does. The shy animal of your soul stays hidden in the forest of your heart until the coast is clear.

The coast is clear when I stop trying to fill the empty, hungry, ambitious feeling that aches inside me with things other than the love of Jesus. The unconditional love of Jesus is the food for which we all hunger. 

Every cell in your body needs food and that food is God’s love. God’s love comes to us concretely in Jesus. The love of Jesus feeds your soul. Nothing else will do to slake your thirst and satiate the hunger of your soul.

If you feed your soul the love of Jesus everyday for a long time, one day you’ll realize that you don’t have a soul, you are a soul. The shy animal is now gently leading you through your life.

When you sit still and listen deeply you might hear or feel the voice of Jesus saying, “Come back to me.” You can respond saying, “Here I am Jesus. Feed me your love, then do with me what you will so that I might help others to allow the shy animal of their soul to come out from hiding and be fed.”

You have a soul. Don’t forget that. It’s really important information.

*The shy, wild animal metaphor is a wonderful Old Testament and favorite of teachers like Thomas Merton and Parker Palmer.