A few things my heart says are true

even when my head isn't so sure

(My current journal)

(You can listen to a recording of me reading this post by clicking above.)

When I was in middle school, I got a little spiral notebook to use as a journal.  And with my best 7^th grade handwriting, and the seriousness of a doctoral student, I declared that I was setting out to answer the question: “What is the meaning of life?”

Four decades later, I still have a journal (leatherbound now) I write in almost every day, basically still stuck on that question.

What is all of this, really? 
Who are we? 
What are we? 
What’s really going on here? 

Some days, exploring these questions feels like a fool’s errand.  Some days it feels like the only thing that matters.  I think, probably, both are true.

Over the years, though, I’ve noticed that my approach to the task has changed.  I used to spend a lot of time thinking about the big questions.  Trying to “figure them out.”  I studied what others thought.  I had deep philosophical conversations with friends.  I even went to seminary chasing answers to them. 

And I’m glad for all of that.  It gave me a sense of the categories, the terms, and the directions from which people approach such questions. 

But these days, I take my steps more by feel than philosophy.  I trust love more than logic.  I try to quiet my mind, more than stimulate it.  And I trust the things my heart tells me are true, even when my head isn’t so sure.  As The Little Prince said, “One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.”  

And today I want to share some of those ‘invisible’ things that have become ‘essential’ to me.  Things I suspect are true, but certainly can’t prove.  Things that may seem a little “out there.”  But of course, whatever is going on…is out there.  We need only look up at the infinite night sky to be reminded that this whole reality-thing is much stranger than we like to think. 

And of course, I’m not asking or expecting you to agree with any of this.  I offer it simply as food for your own reflection…journaling optional.  After all, we’re all wearing blindfolds and holding a different part of the elephant, right? 

So, in the “I Suspect” category, I offer the following:

I suspect we are more than just these physical bodies. 
And life/reality is more than just this physical plane.

And I suspect at the core of these more-than-physical bodies, each of us has a soul. 
“Soul” being a fill-in word for a mystery we can’t comprehend.    

And I suspect that everyone’s soul is beautiful, radiant.
And no matter how covered up with muck and sludge they may become, or how completely we have ignored them, deep down there is something exquisite inside each of us. 

I suspect these souls of ours contain what Meister Eckhart, 700 years ago,
called a spark of God. “God” being another fill-in word for a mystery beyond our grasp. 

And if Eckhart is right, that I’m a spark of God, and you’re a spark of God, and maybe even my badly-behaved (but very lovable) dog, Winston, is a spark of God…AND, if he’s right that we are not just made by God but made of God…well, that would change how we usually look at the world, wouldn’t it?

And I suspect our souls are on a very long journey.  One that started before we came into these physical bodies.  And one that will continue long after we’re done here.  Obviously, I have no way of really knowing this.  But I promise you, seeing life through that lens sure helps you take things a little less seriously.

And lastly, I suspect this journey our souls are on is important.  I mean really important.  Like more important than all those things we so easily get wrapped up thinking are important.

Life has such a way of sweeping us up into its busyness.  It’s easy to seek happiness by trying to get the conditions right out there, instead of in here.  To let our lives become almost completely about what’s going on around us instead of within us. 

But I suspect…we have it backwards.  And the outside world is not so much the end, as the means.  It is the water in which we are learning to swim.  It is the landscape on which our “spark of God” came to shine. And I suspect the work we do to attune our outer and inner lives, what I’m going to call our “Soul Work,” is what we really came here to do.  More on that next time.

Until then,

Ian