I wasn’t attending a ritual, luckily, but a lecture by Dr. Thomas Moore, about whom I was curious. For one, he was a professor of religion AND psychology, meaning he should know a few things from outside of religion that I could relate to. Also, he had written a famous book called Care of the Soul. A year or so earlier, I had flipped through the book in a bookstore, attracted by the curious idea of “soul”, as opposed to the possibly-more-religious term “spirit”. What could that distinction be? And could the idea of soul be some kind of a doorway for an agnostic like me? My idea of soul had always been simply that it was a reverential term for our feeling of who we are, our consciousness. But maybe here in this ancient setting, from this bright guy, this psychologist who had spent twelve years as a Catholic monk, I could find some connection between that secular idea and the Christian one.
Well, I didn’t. Not exactly. But what I did walk away with was something maybe even more meaningful to me. Moore said, “The soul is who we really are, not who we try to be.”
And so, to live a soulful life, all we have to do is stop trying to be someone we’re not. Does that sound easy?
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Comments
Linda Eva Williams I like the image of the building having been being pushed out of the ground - like a flower in a crack of pavement, or a mushroom in the woods. I think I already asked you: why on earth did you leave Vancouver (though London, which nobody I know has visited, also sounds like a nice city? But leave Vancouver??
Like · Reply · 12 January at 21:31
Stan Burfield Well, Linda's relatives all live around here, including her four grandchildren. And it was costing us more than we could afford to fly here every year for Christmas. Way more. So here we are.
Like · Reply · 12 January at 21:36 · Edited
Linda Eva Williams Too bad, if you had purchased a house. Real estate is unaffordable now, I need not tell you. But I can understand the pull of family.
Like · Reply · 12 January at 21:39
Stan Burfield Yeah, we could never afford a house in Vancouver. But anyway, if we had bought a house, we would still both be working paying for it, or at least the upkeep etc.
Like · Reply · 12 January at 21:54