Soulfulness

DO WE REALLY KNOW WHAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT, when we talk about the soul? Maybe not — probably not. In part because, whatever the soul is, it is ephemeral, elusive, even ineffable. That said, here are a couple of things that came up recently in my life and seem, upon reflection, to be surprisingly soulful.

Last Saturday, my wife and I celebrated my birthday by dining at Allred’s, the mountaintop restaurant in Telluride, Colorado. Every staff member I spoke with made a point of wishing me a happy birthday. Simple enough. Later, I realized that each staff member had to make a special effort both to remember from our reservation information that it was my birthday, and to offer me their greeting. That was soulful service, transforming routine, impersonal interactions into something sincere, personal and friendly.

The next day, I learned a longtime, long-distance friend had received a cancer diagnosis. While considering how I might be helpful in my online reply, I thought of the attitude that has helped me handle my own diagnosis. Early on, it came to me that instead of thinking “I have” cancer, I should think and say “I’m living with” it. That little shift, I now recognize, not only creates a positive attitude, but also avoids the dangers of both excessive optimism (denial) and deep depression (nihilism). It’s a “middle way” that feels both faithful and soulful.

So, what in the world is the soul?

“Soul” in Greek is psyche (which also denotes “butterfly” and names the beautiful, mortal wife of the great ancient god Eros, son of Aphrodite). The study of the soul, therefore, is psychology — but we’ll come back to this insight again, at a later date.

For now, listen to how we use “soul” in ordinary conversation: soul music, soul food, heart and soul, body and soul, eternal soul, saving one’s soul, losing one’s soul, and so on. (I’m sure each of you can add items to this list.) These common phrases tell us the soul has something to do with concepts like authenticity, deep emotion, wholeness, commitment, one’s essential life and being. It has something to do both with the body and with the spirit.

The definition of “soul” in my old Funk & Wagnalls Dictionary talks about a person’s “rational, emotional and volitional faculties,” about an “entity distinct from the body,” and about “the moral or spiritual part” of a person that’s believed to survive death. Here, soul is defined in relation to the body and the spirit — as distinct from the body in one definition, and identical with the spirit in another.

In both the common uses and the formal definitions, “soul” appears to occupy a conceptual space in between body and spirit. We can visualize the relationship like this:  body < soul > spirit. This is a shorthand way to say the soul is a mediating “entity” that participates in and engages with both the material and spiritual aspects of our lived reality.

When Sting sings, “We are spirits in the material world,” he implies the age-old notion that there’s an irreconcilable tension between spirit and matter. It is soul, however, that brings them together, making possible creative, abundant, fulfilling, embodied, human life — with all its ups and downs, all its joys and sorrows. Perhaps we should say we are souls in a material-spiritual world. That certainly would be more accurate. Unfortunately, it also would be a lot less poetic — and a whole lot less soulful.