Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place. – Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960)
What a gift we had, and have, in the life and work of Zora Neale Hurston. She is known, as a novelist, through her transcendent novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. She wrote the novel, she said, because "she had to." It was a story she had damned up inside her. A story she needed to tell.
She wrote so well because of a fact central to all great writers. She understood Love. And she let this love flow through her like a fire…
Hurston let Love do its sweet and powerful work in her life. And in so doing, she transcended the enormous and oppressive discrimination that afflicted her generation like a plague.
Hurston’s wisdom sings to us, if we will only listen. It tells us that the way to release our souls, the ONLY way, is by surrendering to Love’s energy.
Why do our souls hide? Society, the force that tell us early in our lives how we are supposed to behave, drives our souls into hiding. 
Caregivers understand this. Efforts caregivers make to live Love are so often frustrated by oppressive supervisors and oppressive regulations. These systems can be soul-stealing.
Hurston transcended her time, and all time, because she let her soul sing its truest music. As one of her admirers said about Hurston, "She let her soul come in with the rhythm."
What rhythm? It is the rhythm that every great caregiver hears?
Yes, we need to perform the rites of everyday life. We also need to surpass those rites of man-made rules when we live Love. We all hear the beat of true life, thumping in the background of the world with all the persistence of truth. Can we dance to this rhythm, or will we surrender to the mechanical droning of the forces which seek to frustrate our humanity?
Like so many who hear, and express, the voice of God’s Love, Hurston suffered the worst kind of calumny – apathy – during the later part of her life. Her later works, along with Hurston herself, fell away from the rhythm of her times. She was listening, of course, to the voice of eternity.
After Hurston’s funeral, a fire was set to burn many of her original manuscripts, thought to be junk. A Deputy Sheriff stopped the burning saying that he had heard she was a great writer and maybe the stuff should be saved. Thank God.
Hurston feared marriage because she was afraid it would "widen her hips and narrow her life." What she really feared was anything that would constrict her ability to express her truth.
Hurston said, "Love, I find, is like singing. Everybody can do
enough to satisfy themselves, though it may not impress the neighbors
as being very much."
How do you deal with the threats to your singing, your humanity – threats which may steal your soul? How do you release your soul from its hiding place?
-Erie Chapman
Journal of Sacred Work 
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