Soul

I just finished reading Time of the Child by Niall Williams, 2024. Such a tender, lyrical, beautiful story set in a country parish in 1960's Ireland. It is a story of how an abandoned but then rescued newborn baby brought love to an old stern doctor and his spinster daughter. As the doctor feels his age overtaking him at the same time he experiences his soul expanding due to this miracle, he reflects "....perhaps the purpose of aging is to grow into your soul, the one you have been carrying all along."

What a novel concept! As we are settling slowly but surely into the sagging skin, feebleness, and pervasive aches of our aging bodies, our soul can grow--soar even--toward the fullness, goodness, and lovingkindness it was meant to exude. Despite the body losing vibrancy, the soul can shine wiser and stronger.

How hopeful is this! Our soul can expand despite the gradual but inescapable diminishment of the container of our soul. As I approach what I think of as the last two decades of my soul's journey in this body, I resonate with turning my focus from aging to growing. How should that happen? Where are the instructions?

I think the blueprint is imprinted in our soul. Smart creator, God. Like a complicated item that comes with directions in the box, our soul can guide us toward its evolution. We need stillness to listen, patience for its sometimes confusing timing, and courage to follow its directions. God embedded His very Selfness into our souls, so that we can grow like a plant toward His light. Toward the light of embodying love, compassion, forgiveness, clarity, creativity, and joy.

You know the awe you feel when you look out the airplane window and you see the beauty and vastness of flying above the clouds, thousands of feet closer to where we conceptualize heaven to be? That's what I imagine soul flight to be like.

Flying high, unfettered and free, our best self.