Speaking of things of the soul - of spirituality and faith can be tricky at times. While claiming my own background - training, formation, and experience as a spiritual leader and ordained minister is the easy way into this conversation, my background might well muddy the waters, too. For all of the concepts of who minister ought to be, what a life of faith looks like in practice, and what it means in the world can sometimes get in the way of a deeper knowing.
This deeper knowing holds that is also a finer, more elusive heart at the center of it all - the heart of the Divine Web that some call God. To dwell there - to allow that place to animate life - to know it as our only true home... this is the core of what it means to be spiritual. In the best of circumstances, this is what being animated by a religious imagination looks like.
This poem by the 8th Century Sufi mystic Rabia gets at the heart of this mystery.
In My Soul
In my soul there is a temple, a shrine, a mosque, a church where I kneel.
Prayer should bring us to an altar where no walls or names exist.
Is there not a region of love where the sovereignty is illumined nothing,
where ecstasy gets poured into itself and becomes lost,
where the wing is fully alive but has no mind or body?
In my soul there is a temple, a shrine, a mosque, a church
Speaking of things of the soul - of sp
irituality and faith can be tricky at times. While claiming my own background - training, formation, and experience as a spiritual leader and ordained minister is the easy way into this conversation, my background might well muddy the waters, too. For all of the concepts of who a minister ought to be, what a life of faith looks like in practice, and what it means in the world can sometimes get in the way of a deeper knowing.