Journal of Sacred Work

Our task is to care for the soul, but it is also true that the soul cares for us.
   -Care of the Soul – Thomas Moore

   Public Television periodically re-runs a documentary on Dick Proenneke, a man who lived in solitude in Alaska for more than a quarter century. Parts of this kind of existence seem appealing to many of us. At different times in our lives, we may crave the notion of living in a hand-crafted log cabin perched on a spring-fed lake in the wilds. There would be nothing to bother us, we imagine, but the occasional owl crying from a tree at night or the growl of a Grizzly stopping to scratch his back on the edge of a nearby tree while we remain safe and cozy by the fire.
   Alaskan solitude is the way Dick Proenneke lived most of his adult life. He claims he never got sick and never had a bad accident. "You’re more careful in a canoe by yourself than you would be with someone else," he says, "because you know if you have a problem there’s no one to help."
   No one to help. This is not the kind of loneliness I crave – not only because I like to have help from others, but because I consider it a blessing to be able to help others and to be with others in life’s communion…

   Mr. Proenneke was careful for his physical safety and he was also fortunate.
The rest of us often need help. And, although we may enjoy periods of
solitude, we also need each other.
   What about our souls? What do they need?
   Thomas Moore writes eloquently that, "When we relate to our bodies as having soul, we attend to their beauty, their poetry and their expressiveness. Our very habit of treating the body as a machine, whose muscles are like pulleys and its organs engines, forces its poetry underground, so that we experience the body as an instrument and see its poetics only in illness."

   Proenneke, like Thoreau more than a century before, had ample opportunity to relate to his body at both a physical and a soulful level as he communed with the wild beauty and occasional terror of solitude in Alaska (click on photo to enlarge.) At the same time, he claims that he maintained his health partly by staying consistently busy. Is it possible than in his busy-ness he had a less soulful experience than we imagine?
   I know so many people who are preoccupied with staying busy. The idea of resting in silence is not only difficult for them but it seems stressful and "a waste of time" rather than a chance to commune with soul.
   It is, of course, not for any of us to pass judgment on the values of others. It is for us to know what we each believe our souls need from us. Some feel the need to be constantly active. For others, some period of quiet reflection is essential for balance and for the appreciation of life.
  For anyone involved in care giving, we can see the truth of Moore’s statement that the "poetics" of the body may seem especially clear in illness. Illness forces us to stop what we are doing and to pay attention to parts of our bodies we have taken for granted.
   Anyone who has ever experienced a broken limb looks in envy at those who walk freely just as they once did. We notice the beauty of movement when we are suddenly confined to bed. We notice the gift of nimble fingers when ours are slowed by arthritis or an injury. We discover the power of clear sight when our own vision is, for a time, disturbed by something as simple as eye drops given by the ophthalmologist to examine our vision.
   With the last example, we know that our normal function, like the feeling in our jaw after novacaine, will recover. How much more valuable our temporary disability would be as a teaching to us if we were unsure our ability would be restored?
   The plea I regularly make to care givers to find time to rest, slow down, and experience art often falls, I know, on deaf ears (and on other senses.) Other priorities seem so much more demanding.
   Whenever someone says to me they "don’t have time" for a trip to the museum or to read a book or to take a one hour walk through a park I know this is because they have chosen other priorities.    We all have time to spend with the arts and nature if we decide that enriching our lives is a priority.

   The arts nurture the soul. And the soul needs nurturing because, as Moore writes, the soul seeks to take care of us as well. We can see ourselves as beautiful when we accept that we do, indeed, have a soul.
   Our souls are the source of the greatest power we have – our power to love. That is why our souls are so precious. Our souls are the well-spring of divine self-love. They care for us by enabling love of our own sacredness and, in turn, the sacredness of all others. That is why we need to listen for the song that plays deep within our hearts.  And why we need to care for our souls with respect, reverence and awe.

-Erie Chapman