Soulfulness

Wherever you stand Be the soul of that place.

~ Rumi

Sometimes I want to flee. I want to do the fifty yard dash right out of my mother's home and keep on going until I reach the woods, where the trees are tall and the light is filtered and the smell of centuries-old soil slows my pace. I want to return to my senses.

In my mother's home I am slapped with the mortal reality of a loved one living with dementia. Sometimes unrecognizable, sometimes a mere caricature of her former self, my mother endures the long journey home. She alternates between ambivalence and ferocity. Physically, her grasp on life is firm. And with each hour of cortical demise her cognitive grasp on the world as she knew it diminishes. This disparity, the widening gap between the body and the mind is disconcerting. Life force pushes forward on a physical plane while consciousness retreats. Without a clue as to how deeply her felt experience lies, I look for signs that illustrate the contours of her emotional and spiritual landscape. Yet the mystery remains. I kiss her forehead sweetly. Perhaps the love will find its way through and bring light to the darkening frontal lobe beneath. Perhaps not. The great mystery takes my breath away, places me both in awe and in sorrow, and leaves me stranded. Sometimes I want to flee from the not-knowing and the lapses in recognition and the vast universe of intelligence that has designed a circumstance where a body can be split into the here and not-here all at the same time.

And what of the soul? In the hours of my visitations, I wait and wonder. The essence of a body, a place, a lifetime does not abandon us when it can no longer be articulated. It lies in rest, does it not? It is eternal, regenerative, evolutionary. Isn't our greatest hope the idea that our soul is impervious to our temporal nature, that life energy persists without end? And so, somewhere in that mysterious internal landscape, once so recognizable as mother and now so unknown, her soul abides.

What then are we to do when the soul of a person, a place, a situation is at rest or hidden? How do we elicit or minister to the soul of a thing when its soulfulness is unrecognizable? Rumi graciously offers us perspective. "Wherever you stand, Be the soul of that place," he divined. Be the soul. It's an invitation to stay, despite our impulse to flee. It's an invitation to bring more than mindfulness to a place, more than physical presence and attentiveness. It's the invitation to bring soul fullness to bear upon a place and honor that place with the whole of our being. The invitation is to drop down into the most precious aspect of our humanity, where we cultivate the qualities of precision of mind, gentleness, and the ability to let go. Pema Chodron speaks of this in her collection of dathun talks, "The Wisdom of No Escape and The Path of Loving-Kindness." To be precise in our meditation, Pema proffers, means to be with each breath, to be as fully with each breath as we can. To be precise in our soulfulness means to stay and greet each moment as fully as we can, without defense or pretense. With the whole of ourselves we are invited to rest lightly and gently with the soul that remains hidden, listening and opening, breathing into the space with the heart of a loving warrior. And then we are invited to let go of all of the limiting views we have of ourselves and the other and the way things should be. Letting go means releasing obsessive hope and fear and tuning in to the true nature of the moment. We are also invited through the fullness of our soul to be the best version of ourselves, by meeting the place we are in with compassion and equanimity. Storyteller Christina Baker Kline, in her novel, "Orphan Train," shares a lovely version of this theme: "I've come to think that's what heaven is - a place in the memory of others where our best selves live."

Here is a woman on her long journey home, there is a brother who cannot speak; here is a nation engulfed in war; there is a child without a home. Beneath the shroud of circumstance is soul waiting to be met. Have we not stood amid tall pines or beneath a star strewn sky and felt the collision of soul meeting the soul of a place? Have we not had our hearts cracked open by a baby's first laugh or an elder's silent tears? Soul meeting soul is the nourishing of the universe, perhaps our very reason for being. And we are invited to offer it up wherever we stand, even when the soulfulness of that place is hidden from view.

We are enamoured with the belief that all things are intimately connected. Many of us live with deep faith that there is unity, divine order, and supreme wisdom in the universe. Evidence is delivered to those who cultivate faith. And from that faith we base our lives. We develop morals and values and practices that reflect our sense of connectivity of spirit within and outside of ourselves. We choose partners and friendships and communities from that sacred place of faith and connection. That place is the seat of our soul, and it is not meant to be reserved for solemn or momentous occasions. It is meant to be lived in fully, in each moment, each place where we stand. When mortality or human nature or politics or tragedy have us taking leave, we can choose to stay and accept the invitation. To be the soul of a place creates fire from embers, it breathes life into the dimness of circumstance. To be the soul of a place allows us to feel the connectivity, to open our hearts so widely that only light can be seen and only love can be felt. It is healing and promise, purpose and privilege. To be the soul of a place is our greatest endowment, a way through to the essence of all things, a pathway lit for the long journey home.