All Together Now

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The Olympics provides us all we need to know in the value of diversity.  Diversity on all its forms makes the Games such a fantastic event.  Unitarians and Universalists have been at the forefront ot religious diversity for many years.  In our Service today we looked at that religious approach, but also at the values in taking a welcoming and embracing approach to all people, irrespective of differences, religious or otherwise.  If God is found in our hearts and our being, then God is also in everyone else's hearts and beings.  Everyone.  

A free MP3 download of the sermon be found through clicking the link at the top of this post.  Alternatively, the text is set out below:

“As Unitarians it is our intention to be a beacon of light in the community, to be a community ourselves, ready to embrace new members and fellow travellers on this journey through life.” 

‘Oh no’, they all say, he’s missed his place and gone to the call for the collection already

No I haven’t.  But, yes, those are the words I use each week to announce the collection.

“As Unitarians it is our intention to be a beacon of light in the community, to be a community ourselves, ready to embrace new members and fellow travellers on this journey through life.”

And I am very sure we mean it.

We are a community ready to embrace new members and fellow travellers on this journey through life.

But why?

Why is it we see ourselves are needing to welcome others?  Why do we believe we should?  And what makes our welcome any different from any number of churches in this town or across the country, indeed, across the world?

I wonder whether we might look a little more carefully at what we might mean when we speak of our willingness to welcome others.

In our first reading, a piece on Universalism, by the late John Andrew Storey, John spoke of the need to embrace all people of all faiths.  He spoke from a primarily Christian viewpoint, but was convinced of the need to welcome, to listen and to learn from, people of other faiths. 

This is something that Unitarians have had in their blood for many years.  Whilst it is true that we emerged from the dissenting Christian tradition in the 1600s and beyond, we have usually been in the forefront of inter-faith and multi-faith activities.  We were even known as the English Mohammadans in the 17^th Century, given the apparent closeness to Islam – one God, and one God only.  The comment was of course meant as an insult.  But I think it may be something we might be proud of.

But it goes further than just being accused of being different, or even a passing interest by Unitarians in the work of other religions.

It was Ralph Waldo Emerson who made the first real, explicit link from other religions to Unitarianism.  The great transcendental controversy of the 1850s.  Emerson was fascinated and nourished by Eastern religion, but could see that, in their pure form, they would not provide sufficient contextual relevance.

So he adapted them.  He brought new ideas from Hinduism and other Eastern traditions into his Unitarian worship.

And many Unitarians today do not question the concepts that Emerson and others introduced.  The notion that God is not just ‘there’, but is instead ‘here’.  And ‘there’.  The idea that God may or may not be a controlling force, or that God instead might be some great Spirit in which we live and breathe our very being.

In his words:

“I grow in God.  I am a form of him.  He is the soul of me.  I can even with mountainous aspiring say, I am God”

Many Unitarians will agree with that view.  Some will not.  That’s the great thing.  But whether you agree or not, it is unlikely anyone is shocked or surprised with this view.  A coalescence of Eastern and Western religious ideas has long been a part of our Unitarian heritage.

And this openness continues.  We welcome readings from many traditions.  We welcome thoughts on God, the world, our connections and our relationships from a wide range of sources.

And that is good.

We are each of us on a unique spiritual journey, and each of us must recognise the value and benefit of other spiritual truths and possibilities.

However.

I wonder whether this is a little ‘third-hand’ when it comes to real tolerance and embrace of new ideas.  And different ideas.

And different people.

London 2012, the Olympic Games, are underway.   Thousands and thousands of foreign visitors have flocked to the capital, either as spectators, or competitors, or coaches, or journalists.  Or any number of other possibilities.  I read that the American NBC Broadcasting company has flown 2,700 staff over here to cover the games.  Yes, you heard me right.  2,700.

And that means there are a lot of different and new people here.

Without whom, very little of the wonder of the Games would happen.

There are people from nations across the world.  Hundreds of nations. 

People from all walks of life.  Sportsmen and women, of course.  But also, and including, rich, poor, fast, slow, old, young, pretty, big, small.

Thousands of people coming together to make something unique.  Something special, something worthwhile.

No-one would question the value of all those different people.  Many people who have views and ideas quite different from our own.  This doesn’t make them any less important and vital to the spectacular that are the Olympic Games.

And that is where we must be as individuals.  Recognising the differences, embracing the differences.  Welcoming the differences.

Our second reading was that wonderful Welcome Notice (Click Here) from the Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Community.

They made very clear in that notice that they welcome all.  Not just people like them.  Not just those looking for their kind of church.  Not just those ready to join their religion.  They welcome all.

I found this approach to be a good test for my own life.

I sat with this notion of ‘all are welcome’, and challenged my own approach to life.

Are my friends all similar people.  Similar to each other, and to me?

When I meet someone for the first time, do I judge them?  Do I make a snap decision on whether I can trust them, or whether I am likely to want to know them better?

If approached by someone in a café, someone asking for money, clearly on drugs or a recovering addict.  How do I respond?

I see someone in the street covered in tattoos and earrings – inked and pierced as the Welcome Notice put it.  Do I judge?

If I see a group of bankers outside a bar, table littered with champagne bottles.  Do I judge?

Am I open?  Do I make snap judgements?  Do I judge or assess someone one first impressions?

Luckily, I discovered I was perfect, and that I never, ever allowed such things to colour my judgement. 

Or did I?

And how would you truly assess your own position in these things?

Yet we know the value of diversity.  We know the impact that a many-splendored thing might have. 

Tom Owen-Towle, an American Unitarian Universalist Minister has said this:

“We live in a world where people are damned in the name of religion because their views are different, are verbally and physically attacked because either the hue of their skin or the manner of their loving is different.  Those of us who are held fast in the grasp of a loving faith must demonstrate an alternative way of being – the Universalist way of unqualified acceptance.”

And for me, this is the challenge and the goal. 

I know the difference that the Unitarian faith has made to my life.  And this is a faith that is, at its very core, open and embracing of all traditions and spiritual paths.

As someone who was brought up in the Church of England, and still has a soft spot for Christianity, I know those tales of Jesus and the tax-collector, Jesus and the fallen woman, and the parable of the Good Samaritan.  I know they tell me a truth that is hard to follow, yet essential if we are to make this world a better place.

Some of you may recall a story I told a year or so ago, when I wore a dog-collar, a full vicar kit, into town.  The reactions were varied.

However, one of the most important and sobering lesson of that day was the way the collar provided a signpost for the lonely, for the lost, and for those looking for someone to talk to.

I did it again this week.  I went to Tonbridge on Monday.  All collared-up.  I walked around town, I had my hair cut, I sat in Caffe Nero for two and a half hours.

The barber revealed a dislike for organised religion.  I explained the more open approach of our Unitarian faith.  She then went on to describe belief in spiritualism.  She’d not been able to talk about it before, and it gave her a link to her grandfather, a man she clearly missed dearly.  She thanked me for the opportunity to talk.  I had said very little.

In the café, I made a conscious choice to say hello to anyone, and everyone, who looked in my direction or sat at a neighbouring table.  I had short conversations with several.  But a very long conversation with a greying, tattooed biker.  He looked slightly menacing, and was tucked into a corner.  Very clearly alone.

We talked.  We talked about life, and the good and bad fortunes that come with it. 

We talked about the poetry he writes.  And the visits he makes to local sheltered housing.  Talking to people.  Taking Christmas gifts to those without close family.

This man, Dave, was an inspiration.  He lived and breathed a life of unconditional love.  If I’d been looking to choose someone to talk to – would I have chosen him?  I doubt it.  Yet by remaining open, I did.

We can learn so much from others.  From all we come into contact with.

The Olympics of course provides all the evidence we need that diversity, tolerance and a welcoming embrace to all, no matter who they are, will lead us to a greater event. 

It is celebrating the richness of this diversity that can nourish our lives and help us to bring peace to this troubled world.

Emerson told us that, in us, lies God.  And if this is so, then God lies in each and every one of us.  Including the people you might find tricky to like.  But that is facing up to God.  That is facing up to the reality that our own little worlds are just that.  Little worlds.  This greater reality, this all encompassing world, this all-that-is.  This is that which we are all a part of.  We are part of God, and so is everyone else. 

And it is this, if nothing else, that must surely drive us to recognise the importance of togetherness.  The importance of welcome.  The importance and necessity of opening our arms to embrace all.

Unitarianism is a faith, like Universalism, that welcomes all.  Welcomes all people, welcomes insights from people of all faiths and those of none. 

Not just here in the Meeting House – although this is of course where we act together most obviously.  But also in our day-to-day lives.  In taking our art of the all-that-is out into the world, we must surely recognise the all-that-is in every other person we meet.

For me this is the lesson of the Olympics.  The lesson that comes from every single person I meet. 

Enjoy the Games.

And let us welcome the world into our hearts.

Fame, Flame and Mary

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Today, 22 July, is the traditional Feast Day for St Mary Magdalen.  Our knowledge and understanding of Mary has been confused and muddied through centuries of misrepresentation.  Yet here is an unofficial disciple, a woman, far better known than many of the 'official' 12.  

In our Service today we reflected on the values of Mary Magdalene as we might really know her, and the way in which her quiet inspiration and example can provide a lesson to all, in a world where fame and speed are seen as essential.  The words to reflect upon are below, or a free MP3 download of the Sermon can be accessed by clicking the link at the top of this post.

As I mentioned at the start of our Service, in the traditional Christian church, today is the Feast Day of Mary Magdalene.  Mary is recorded in the Bible as being a follower of Jesus, a woman who, in more enlightened times, would most likely have been recorded as a disciple.  But, of course, in the Bible – and most other sources from that time, Christian and non-Christian alike, women were not accorded the same status as men.

But, many if not most of us have heard of Mary Magdalene, and I suspect there are many, if not most, here today who could not name all 12 male disciples.  So there is perhaps something memorable about Mary.

 

The Oxford Concise Dictionary of the Christian Church has this to say about Mary Magdalene:

"A follower of Christ out of whom He is said to have cast  seven devils.  She stood by His Cross; with two other women she discovered the empty tomb; and she was granted an appearance of the risen Lord early the same  day.  Western tradition long identified her with the woman who was a sinner who anointed Christ’s feet, and with Mary the sister of Martha who also anointed him, but both identifications have now been abandoned.  In several Gnostic texts she appears as a mediator of revelation or in conversation between the risen Christ and His disciples.  According to an early legend in the Eastern Church she went to Ephesus and died there; in the West a legend arose that she came to Southern France with Martha and Lazarus."

  

That’s quite a long description, but lets look again.  Only the first two sentences refer to Biblical quotes about Mary Magdalene – that is: the healing; and Mary’s presence at both the Crucifixion and the empty tomb.  The remainder of the piece: the stories of the woman who was a sinner; the feet washer; the sister of Martha; the travelling to France; the travelling to Ephesus – all conjecture, all invented.  We seem to know more about who the Mary from later recording and legend than the total knowledge we might pick up from the Bible.

Go to a large bookshop, or scan through Amazon on the internet, and you’ll find lots of books about Mary Magdalene.  Some, reasonably, are about the symbology and myth, and how we might interpret that today.  However, there are also lots that claim to tell the full story, the true story, the indisputable record.

And from a couple of passages in the Bible, and a handful of fragments from other writings around the same time, there is nothing on which to base these supposed ‘facts’.

In an article in The Inquirer a few years back, Cliff Reed sought to answer why these additional stories about Mary Magdalene had arisen.  How did she become the whore, the prostitute whose ‘sinfulness’ demonstrates the supposed moral weakness of all her sex?  This story is found nowhere in the Bible.  It is an invention that arose from the erroneous and wilful conflation of two quite distinct biblical passages about two quite different women.  All we are told of Mary’s past is that she came from the town of Magdala and that Jesus had cured her of ‘demon possession’ – a description given to all manner of physical, mental or emotional disorders.

We know Mary became a disciple.  She also appears to have been a woman of independent means.  We know she was present at the Crucifixion, the empty tomb, and, according to John, the last, and more symbolic and mythological gospel writer, Mary Magdalene was the first to claim witness of the risen Christ.

No wonder some in the male dominated early Church decided to bring in some bad rumours – Mary is perhaps a more important figure in the Christ story than any other.

The Catholic Church didn’t help Mary’s cause.

It was from a homily by Pope Gregory in 591 that the first direct connection was made to Mary Magdalene as a prostitute.  It wasn’t until 1969 that Pope Paul VI rejected the idea.  But it may be suspected that the 1400 years in-between the two statements were long enough for the idea to stick.

So, Mary Magdalene, a woman who plays such a pivotal role in addressing Jesus’s humanity and holiness, becomes the fallen woman. 

Interestingly, this is not the position of the Eastern Orthodox church, who see Mary Magdalene as being ‘virtuous’ all her life.

If only she’d known all those years ago how her life would be analysed and reported then perhaps she would have tried to ensure she got her own version of events more accurately recorded in the editing process – or at least the 2^nd Edition.

But of course, life isn’t like that.  We cannot be certain how we will be remembered.  We cannot even be certain IF we will be remembered. 

Indeed, it’s a fairly good assumption that even the most prominent members of our communities will be long forgotten in a few hundred years – and those individual cases will be rare.

 

It was Andy Warhol who famously claimed:

“in the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes”

And in the world of X-Factor, Britain’s Got Talent, NOW Magazine and You Tube, perhaps he was right.  But it’s still just 15 minutes.

And that is not always a bad thing.  On Friday, those who were able to be here for the Torch Parade, will remember the runner standing outside, with the unlit Olympic Torch.  We were lucky enough to be the location for the ‘Handover’, the ‘kiss’, where the flame was passed from one Torch to another.

Michal Dreczka by James Barry

The torchbearer lucky enough to be stood outside our Meeting House was Michal Dreczka.  I know who he is, because it says so on the internet.  Michal is from Pali – but we don’t know which one – there is a Pali in the Czech Republic, another in Italy, one in Poland, and also Slovakia.  There is little further information our there about him. 

Michal certainly had 15 minutes of fame on Friday.   

He features on lots of pictures.  He was very happy to be in those photos, endlessly agreeing to put his arm around people and to share the torch.  Very kind and welcoming.  Many had their pictures taken with him and the Torch.  And in those pictures, Michal now forms part of several hundred memories of the day the Torch came to Bessels Green.

We could make up lots of stories about Michal.  But we don’t.  We stick with the facts we know. 

He played a part in a story that will be replayed for a couple of generations at least.  If not by name, Michal’s image will remain in many peoples conscience as part of a story.

We all play such a part in people’s lives.  We all of us have an influence, conscious or unconscious, in the development and journey of another’s life.

There are the obvious – our family, our close friends.

The less obvious – friends of friends, people whose lives are affected by those you have influenced.  And it happens.

And then those far away, or in places you would rarely venture.  Those provided with shelter as a result of your purchase in Oxfam.  The prisoners who will be supported in learning to read as a result of the money raised at the Shannon Trust lunch.  The children from difficult backgrounds who will benefit from holidays in the Peak District with the Send-a-Child-To-Hucklow  campaign.    

These are the ways in which we can help improve.  Where we can make a positive impact.  Where our very existence is not even known by the recipient.  By our actions we are able to help.  By our actions, not our personality, we are able to play a part in creating a world where people matter, where love triumphs tragedy, where life might flourish where death seemed the only option.

And this, for me, is where the stories of Mary Magdalene come to the fore.  Mary was a close companion of Jesus, and Mary plays a significant part in the final moments of Jesus life.

Mary Magdalene, with Mary, Jesus’ mother, stayed at the foot of the Cross.  When the male disciples had long fled, the two Marys stayed.  Providing, perhaps, an element of comfort in Jesus’s agonising final moments.

According to the Gospel writer known as John, Mary Magdalene was also the first person to see the risen Christ on the Third Day.

For Unitarians, this element of the stories is very hard to comprehend.  If we approach this looking to see a story of fact, most, if not all, of us will question the story – challenging the idea that Jesus could escape physical death, and that he was a literal Son of God.

However, John’s Gospel is seen by many as being written in a series of myths and allegories.

Instead of challenging the truth or otherwise of the story, might we not instead see this part of the story as reflecting the ability of Mary Magdalene to see beyond the death of Jesus?  Perhaps this might instead be an indication that Mary, who stayed with Jesus at the final moments, is instead seeing the glorious potential in all life.  She alone is the one who first recognises the continuing power of Jesus message.  And the longer-lasting influence that his teachings and actions in life might have on others long after his death.

To learn this message is to learn and understand the selfless nature of true love.  The ways in which we can, as common-or-garden human beings make a difference in the world that is far beyond our immediate realisation.  That through generous and unselfish commitment to truth, and realisation of the lasting power of love, we can truly make a lasting impact on the world.

It was not through seeking her 15 minutes of fame that Mary came to be known.  It was instead through her unconscious part in another’s story that her influence has followed. 

Mary sought nothing for herself but guidance and wisdom from others.  Yet she herself, two thousand years later has provided her own guidance to millions.  And can continue to do so.

Mary Magdalene is famous and renowned for many things.  Most of those are ideas and stories that have been invented and built upon many years after her death.

However, in the few short passages we do have about her – and, let’s face it, we don’t even know for certain that they are true – we can see a woman who provides a guide to us all.  Selfless, willing to give herself to others, loyal to memory after death, and symbolic of all those who seek to carry legacies and memories of great teachers onwards for the benefit of future generations.

I don’t care for Pope Gregory’s presumptions of Mary.  I don’t know all the facts.  And I never will. 

Yet I can find inspiration in her story to help me renew and refresh my life.  To have the courage and purpose I need to start afresh, and to live a life for others.

Gold Against The Soul

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Inspired by readings, worship and lectures in Oxford this week, our Service today, weaved ideas around the soul and the importance of worship to our soul's development.  With works by Tolstoy, Emerson, Thomas Aquinas and Ezekiel we explored this most impossible of notions.  The words of the Sermon are set out below, or click the link at the top of this post to download it as an audio MP3.

Gold against the soul.

Would you be willing to trade your soul for a fiddle made of gold?

So went the proposition from the Devil to Jonny in the Charlie Daniels Band recording of ‘The Devil Goes Down To Georgia’.

‘A fiddle of gold against your soul.’

Gold is of course representative of a thing of great value.  In a few weeks time we will be reminded again of the value and importance of gold – the gold medals at the Olympics are a sign that you are the best.  The best in the world.

We describe great things as being made of gold, or coloured with gold. 

The Golden Rule – a favourite of many religious and secular traditions, first known in the sayings of Confucius, but equally often ascribed to Jesus:

         ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’

The simplest, most important rule in a loving society seeking peace with itself and its neighbours.  The best rule.  And so we call it the Golden rule.

Gold is so precious.  It’s given as a gift for the 50^th anniversary or event.  Because 50 is a landmark moment.  A milestone on a long journey.  50 is gold.

Would you trade your soul for gold?

I guess the answer is ‘no’.  Well, I certainly hope the answer I hear is ‘no’.

But why.  What is your soul?  Why on earth do we rate it so highly?

I guess, at its simplest, the soul is the determinant of our personality.  Simple as that.  It is our conscience, the decider of our thoughts, the piece of us that makes us who we are, not what we are, but who we are.

The theme for today’s Service has been building in me for a few weeks now.  But, in one of those great co-incidences that happen when you are preparing these things, I was lucky enough this week to attend a lecture in Oxford that shed a little more light on the Soul.

The lecture was titled ‘Neuroscience and the Soul’, and was led by Dr Aku Visala of the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion, part of the Theology Faculty of Oxford University.

Dr Visala’s work has been around the ways in which science and religion can sometimes work together on discovering how the world works.  I shall not go too deeply into his lecture – as fascinating as it was – but I would like to refer to some of his conclusions on the existence of the soul.

Dr Visala was summing up some of the philosophical notions of the soul, the mind, and the person.  And then looking to see where these ideas conflicted or were supported by current scientific studies.

The focus here was on how the soul might be separate from the mind, and/or the brain, and or a person.  The problem science has at the moment is that it cannot yet confirm how the brain uses common processes (ie. we all have electrical impulses that appear to determine our thoughts), but does not produce common results from these.  We are all machines that function in the same way.  Yet we are all different.

One of the strongest neuroscientific positions at the moment suggests that the mind is on some way comprised of soul and the brain working together.  They don’t use the word ‘soul’, but they do recognise there is something, something so far unexplainable, that works in concert with the brain to make our minds work.  It’s not a physical thing.  They think.  But it must exist.

Astonishingly, this is remarkably similar to the notions of the soul put forward by Aristotle in around 300 BC, and Thomas Aquinas in the 13^th Century.  This idea of something immaterial that works with our bodies and brains to make us who we are.  This fits very well with current neuroscientific theory.  The proper philosophical title is ‘Thomistic Dualism’, which sounds very grand.  But it really means there is a body and a mind.  The two are separate, but dependent upon each other.

Of course, many religions – notably Christianity, have made reference to the soul in many ways.  The soul is an immortal, immaterial ‘something’ that defines our personality, contains our conscience.  It is, in effect, the ‘essence’ of who we are.  Our soul is the thing that separates us from others.  Some religions, I’ve already mentioned Christianity, will normally suggest that only humans have souls, and that other animals are in some way lesser than humans.  Other religions, notable Jainism, will suggest that every living thing has a soul – plants included.  There are also branches that will claim that everything – living and non-living – has a soul of some kind.

I don’t know which, if any, of these are true.  That’s the beauty of Unitarianism, you’re allowed to not know.

However, I can recognise the notion that each of us has something that makes us different persons to each other – not just in physical looks, but also in non-physical essence.  We each have a soul – and that soul defines us.

Immanuel Kant – a name I do not use often up here – Immanuel Kant described the ‘soul’ as the ‘I’.  The soul is what makes you and I who we are.  And, importantly, the soul is able to experience things.  And these things, these experiences, will affect and change the soul.

In our first reading today, we heard the story of the prophet Ezekiel in the valley of the dry bones.  These bones are and were the most bare, physical elements of human beings.  We all have bones

But the bones by themselves are fairly useless.

We need far more than bare bones to describe and make individual people with thoughts, personalities and potential.

Ezekiel follows God’s instructions and ‘prophesies’ to them – a way of describing preaching really – Ezekiel is in reality being instructed to bring God to the bones.

And sinews begin to cover them.  So, we’ve got so far and managed to create some bodies.  More physicality. 

Yet they are still dead. 

We are still in the world of Dr Frankenstein. We have created the bodies.  But that does not being life.

So Ezekiel is told instead to bring breath, or wind, or spirit to the bodies.  And he does.  He calls for rauch – a Hebrew word meaning all those things – and the wind blows through the valley of the dry bones, bringing them back to life.

And it is this wind, this Spirit, that fascinates me.

Is this a way of describing that element of us that is the invisible conscience and life-force that leads us on?

Is this how we might think of the soul?

Whatever it is, however we might describe or know the soul, I know that there are times when I need my soul nourished and replenished.  The times I feel spiritually empty, in need of something good and uplifting.

And again, the parallels to the relationship of the body and soul are there for us to see.

If my physical well-being is diminished, I know I need physical sustenance to recover it.  If I’m hungry, I need real food.  Thirsty, I need real drink.  Cut skin?  I need physical protection or binding to allow it to repair.

Yet for the invisible, perhaps immaterial soul.  I need something intangible.  My soul can be fed by words.  It can be fed by feelings.  It can be fed by prayer – spoken words or, amazingly, silence. 

I can offer silence to a non-physical element of my being.  And I can use that silence to find nourishment, strength and fortitude.  Prayer – which in physical terms amounts to nothing – prayer can provide my soul with the food it needs to continue.

For religions of course, the soul is often even more than this.  The soul is our link to God.  It is the conduit through which we connect and share with the all-that-is.  Our souls are the true essence that help us to know and share this wonderful thing called life.

And that, perhaps, is one of the reasons we come to church.  One of the reasons we seek the refuge of this Meeting House. 

Yes, we will get that necessary physical boost at the end – when the coffee and biscuits appear – but the true element of uniqueness is for many the chance to connect.  To each other, and to the divine.  Non-physical and mostly invisible connections.  Yet somehow fulfilling and grounding. 

Through prayer, through a communion of silent contemplation, from readings, group singing.  Even the sermon perhaps.  We feed our souls by simply being, listening, and experiencing.

Something non-physical and invisible is added to something else, non-physical and invisible.  And we get something truly magical.

Confusing isn’t it?

Yet, as wonderful as this all is, it can of course be frightening too.  When we look deep into our souls.  When we look deep into the essence of who we really are – and I mean who we really, truly are – we can often find ourselves disappointed at the essence we find there.

Our soul contains, we’ve suggested, our conscience.  The invisible cloak that describes who we are, the type of person we are – under the skin and without the bones.  And sometimes we may not be too pleased or satisfied with what we find there.

It is this that Tolstoy was referring to in our second reading.  Tolstoy spoke of the need to listen to our conscience – to avoid muddying the waters of the soul and, instead, to focus on living up to our own true ideals.  Tolstoy suggests that our conscience is in fact likely to be the right course to follow.  Our soul knows the path through life we should be treading upon.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his well-known piece, The Over-Soul, suggested:

‘The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth.  Its communication of truth is the highest event in nature, since truth then passes into, and becomes, that person whom it enlightens.’

So, we’re now moving towards the idea of a two-way conversation with our soul. 

We use our time here to feed our soul.  Yet, we know deep down, that we must also spend time listening to our soul.  Our soul, if we believe our conscience must be this separate, non-physical thing, really does know best.  It is, surely, very rare that we would commit a terrible act because we believed it to be the right thing to do.  Mistakes, yes.  Deliberate, terrible things?  Rarely, I suggest.

For me, these notions of goodness and truthfulness in our conscience strengthen my hopes for the soul as being our link to the Divine.  Some will see the Divine as God, others as the greater something that binds us as beings on this planet.  But however you see that greater reality, the idea that the soul contains a piece of the Divine – that provides our link to a God of perfect and true goodness and wholeness is something I can find both life-affirming and utterly perplexing.  Our individual souls mingling with the universal Soul.

 

Taking the vision of Ezekiel that little bit further – we seek God to bring life and nourishment to our bodies, through contact with the Divine, with the Spirit.  And the ultimate purpose for this revitalisation is, if we are true to our consciences, is to take that Spirit of goodness back out into the world with us.  To allow that perfect love the opportunity to be made manifest in us and through us.

That is what the soul is for.

And knowing that, would you wish to trade your soul for a golden fiddle?  Would you really wish to trade your soul for anything at all?

Difficult question? 

No, I don’t think so.

The soul cannot be touched.  Or seen.  Or weighed.  Or measured. 

But we know it’s there. 

Even neuroscientists will admit there is something intangible that appears to provide us with conscience and individuality of mind.

I may not believe in the Devil.  And I know that no-one in reality is going to bargain for my soul. 

But perhaps to let the soul fall into disrepair – to fail to feed it, and to fail to listen to its wisdom – perhaps that might be the temptation we have – the golden fiddle of the song.

I’ll do my best to keep my soul against the gold anyday.