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Friday, January 18, 2008

Searching for Soul
By webmaster @ 12:49 PM :: 355 Views :: 2 Comments :: Rev. David Lewicki

I've been thinking a lot about matters of the soul recently (actually, more than is probably good for my soul!).

Ed Mulder, who until December was serving as an interim minister at Marble, had a habit of asking the staff "how is it with your soul?" It's not a question you can ask--or answer!--lightly. Soul matters are by nature deep matters.

One challenging part of my inquiry is the extent to which body and soul are connected. I find myself reluctant to accept the "traditional" Christian teaching (which comes to us from Augustine, via Plato) that we have souls that join our bodies at conception and separate from our bodies at death. I'm much more inclined to see the enduring wisdom in the creation story of Genesis 2, in which the "earth creature" Adam is en-souled--body and spirit blended together in a unity. Bodies and souls together are what matter to God--not one over the other.

But if that's true, I nevertheless find it hard to accept that there is a direct correlation between body and soul--as in, if the body is sick, so the soul must be sick, too. As Arthur briliantly preached last Sunday, the soul can deepen and strengthen in profound ways when the body suffers.

Marble staff member Frank Gauthier reminded me last night of a poem that show how integrity of soul can transform even the most infernal of prisons. Richard Lovelace, in "To Althea," writes,

Stone Walls do not a Prison make,
Nor Iron bars a Cage ;
Mindes innocent and quiet take
That for an Hermitage ;
If I have freedome in my Love,
And in my soule am free ;
Angels alone that sore above,
Injoy such Liberty.

I'm going to pick up this idea in my sermon next Wednesday night, so if you have thoughts or stories to share about the relationship between your body and your soul, please post them here or send me a note!

Comments

By Bflood27 @ Friday, January 18, 2008 3:30 PM

I certainly don't know the answer to the soul question. However it seems to my limited mind, that it must be one or the other. In other words, the soul must either be intwined with the body and be in unity (thereby if your body is sick your soul is) or the soul is seperate from the body in the traditional Plato sense. I don't know which is correct, but maybe someone can post another option than just my two.

By eyesonGod @ Monday, January 28, 2008 3:02 PM

Hey David, I'm compelled to share that I was just reading 2nd Corinthians, Chapter 12. Paul talks about taking glory is his infirmities and Gods strength made perfect in Paul's weakness. I realize this doesn't hit on your topic directly, but your reference to the body being sick that the soul is too, and Arthur's reference to spiritual growth in physical sickness is what had me post. Personally, I think of the body along with personality and instincts as tools for our growth and well being in this earthly existence. These are tools for our soul perhaps. What's striking to me about this is how often I and most everybody I've ever met mistake themselves as our bodies for who we really are. My cut is we mistake ourselves as being the tools; the body, the instincts, the personality (which in this state is ego) and we lose sight of our true being, our souls and the Source of who we are which is God. Its mistaken identity. Maybe our distinguishing this in our life time is part of our mission? But for example, clearly when we die few people say "there goes Bob", or "Joe". Its more like there's Joe's body (tool box), but clearly Joe has gone some place that we can not perceive. Some how we get that. That being the case, the body like the personality and other tools are illusions or false prophets. Meaning they are here today, gone tomorrow. So when the body is weak or sick maybe its a natural function to find ourSelves and in some way recalibrate our souls by taking our thoughts away from our tools and its ego driven demands for attention (its life source?) and put our attention on our soul and or God within. And perhaps if we get what ever the message is we are then returned to heath physically too?

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