Soul is the place of the heart. Soul is interiority and stillness and spaciousness where the attention of the heart burns, where constant desire leaps forth like flames ... If we live in the depths, our soul listens with full attention to what is happening, cherishes what is meaningful as would someone about to die who must make every decision rich with the weight of right choice. The soul of a person receives everything, tries to understand or stand under what is given while at the same time realizes that no complete understanding is possible, so it remains awed and mystified. A pure and utterly poor soul receives everything without the resistance of a craving, clinging, self-important ego. Like a Mother Teresa, it opens wide its mouth and receives every blessing so that, in turn, it can transfer those blessings to all others ... The soul, which is utterly personal, trusts with all its might in the Force of the Divine Benevolence. It trusts that the Pneuma Christ is the strongest force at work in the world, mightier than all the most crude and cruel tyrants or any other violent destroyers of human dignity. That Supreme Force has won out. We must but tap into it, and surrender to it. The chief act of the soul is surrender. Surrender emanates from a soul stilled in quiet leisure and struck with holy awe.
Spirit, rehearse the journeys of the body
that are to come, the motions
of the matter that held you.
Rise up in the smoke of palo santo.
Fall to the earth in the falling rain.
Sink in, sink down to the farthest roots.
Mount slowly in the rising sap
to the branches, the crown, the leaf-tips.
Come down to earth as leaves in autumn
to lie in the patient rot of winter.
Rise again in spring's green fountains.
Drift in sunlight with the sacred pollen
to fall in blessing.
All earth's dust
has been life, held soul, is holy.