“A Place for My Soul”                                                                                 Vance L. Toivonen

READING                   Psalm 25:1-10

To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul. O my God, in you I trust; do not let me be put to shame; do not let my enemies exult over me. Do not let those who wait for you be put to shame; let them be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous. Make me to know your ways, O LORD; teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth, and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all day long. Be mindful of your mercy, O LORD, and of your steadfast love, for they have been from of old. Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for your goodness' sake, O LORD! Good and upright is the LORD; therefore he instructs sinners in the way. He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way. All the paths of the LORD are steadfast love and faithfulness, for those who keep his covenant and his decrees.

READING                   Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul

Tradition teaches that soul lies midway between understanding and unconsciousness, and that its instrument is neither the mind nor the body, but imagination…Fulfilling work, rewarding relationships, personal power, and relief from symptoms are all gifts of the soul. They are particularly elusive in our time because we don’t believe in the soul and therefore give it no place in our hierarchy of values. We have come to know soul only in its complaints: when it stirs, disturbed by neglect and abuse, and causes us to feel its pain. It is commonplace for writers to point out that we live in a time of deep division, in which mind is separated from body and spirituality is at odds with materialism. But how do we get out of this split? We can’t just “think” ourselves through it, because thinking itself is part of the problem. What we need is a way out of dualistic attitudes. We need a third possibility, and that third is soul.

SERMON

Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, The Supremes, Marvin Gaye, James Brown, and the Temptations are among those artists who share a genre of music that grew out of the rhythm & blues music of the 50s. This music emerged during my early childhood, and even though I was a white boy living in North Central Wisconsin, I still heard that music blaring from the radio, and saw the artists entertaining on the stages of The Ed Sullivan Show, The Merv Griffin Show, and, as I grew older and stayed up later, The Johnny Carson Show.

This was the music of Motown and Stax/Volt, and the people who produced this music were not like the people who sat in my church on Sunday morning, or walked the streets of a 1960s Wausau, Wisconsin. The people who created soul music were predominantly Black. Black folks were in the midst of what became the Civil Rights Movement when this music emerged into the culture of America, and the Civil Rights Movement was, and still is about the soul of this country.

This was not Pat Boone covering Little Richard songs and making them palatable to a white audience. This was all out funky, danceable, catchy, and rhythmic music. It was music you could not sit still to. One could not stand at a microphone and croon this music. This was not music one watched being performed. This was music that one participated in. This was music that the body could not help but get involved in.

White preachers in the south railed against this music because of its suggestiveness, calling it the devil’s music. But in Black churches throughout the south folks have always known that one moves one’s body when one worships the Lord, dancing and clapping and praising God with one’s whole being. When the choir sings, “marvelous,” we feel a tingle up our spines, and we want to sway to the music. The music itself invites us to get involved with our whole selves, not just our ears.

This is what the Psalmist means by soul. When the Psalmist says, “To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul,” the Psalmist is giving over to God her entire self, every nook and cranny of her being, from her toes up to the very top of her head, and everything in between. The Psalmist is worshipping God with her thoughts, feelings, and emotions. The Psalmist is worshipping God with her liver and her intestines. The Psalmist is holding nothing in reserve. There is total abandonment in the giving of one’s soul to God.

The dualistic tendencies of human beings, the tendency to divide ourselves up into different roles and behaviors, and to reserve a little corner for God is not the path of soul. I am not suggesting we avoid carving out a time for devotion or prayer, but rather that such times are mere rehearsals for the saturation of God into our daily lives. Soul is an ever-present, constant, undeniable convergence of all that we are. It is, to use an over-used word, holistic. We cannot compartmentalize or box up soul.

Gary Zukav, the author of The Seat of the Soul writes, “Your soul is not a passive or theoretical entity that occupies a space in the vicinity of your chest cavity. It is a positive, purposeful force at the core of your being.” Zukav goes on to tell us that the soul is about the authentic needs of humankind, to love and be loved, to create, to find congruence between your thoughts and your feelings; in a word, to be whole.

Our dualistic thinking about soul has its roots in the of works Greek philosophers who believed that the soul was trapped in the human body and could only be freed by the death of the body. The body was like a cage for the soul. The soul longed to be released to join again with its eternal source, its place of origin.

It is true, as Moore suggests, that in the difficult, painful times of our lives we tend to long for release, freedom from the pain and suffering. Those who suffer physical ailments, or the cerebral maladies of Alzheimer’s and dementia, long to “go home” to heaven. They often feel trapped in bodies that seem to have betrayed them in some way. As those who love them, and sometimes sit helplessly at their sides, we may also pray with them for this freeing to occur.

There is no doubt that soul can be complicated, as complicated as the human species. If we are a complete package. If our thoughts and feelings are tied somehow to our livers and kidneys, then there is a need to somehow pay attention to every aspect of our lives, every ounce of our beings; and some of us have more ounces than others. When I react in anger to a situation, my soul is crying out, screaming at the world that something is being neglected, that some dimension of my soul needs attention. In fact most, if not all of our acting out is likely tied to some underdeveloped aspect of our souls. Which leads Thomas Moore to write, “We have come to know soul only in its complaints: when it stirs, disturbed by neglect and abuse, and causes us to feel its pain.”

Gary Zukav lists the four qualities of soul as harmony, cooperation, sharing, and reverence for life. (Soul Stories). Even my mere speaking of those words probably resonates with our souls right now. Our souls reply, “Yes! This is what we want! This is what we need! Harmony. Cooperation. Sharing. Reverence for Life. Yes!” The process of attaining these things for ourselves comes through attentiveness to our own souls, consciousness of  the essence of our beings.

Zukav writes,

Communicating with your own soul gives you a glimpse of the most fulfilled, wise, compassionate, and intelligent person that you might become. That is the person you would be if you used all of the wisdom that you have available to you, and all of the compassion that you have in your heart, all of the time. It is you without any of the limitations of anger, fear, jealousy, doubt, sadness, vengeance, shame, or resentment. It is what you would be if your life were filled with love and joy. (Gary Zukav, Soul Stories)

The Psalmist suggests that humility is involved in this soul work. For me, this is where God comes in. I cannot help but be humbled in the presence of God. Without God, I can be the master of my own ship. Without God I can easily get caught up in that laundry list of anti-soul emotions and anxieties. Somehow, if I can accept that God is always at work calling me to what Zukav refers to as my “higher self,” then I can leave all of that stuff from my “lower self” in God’s hands.

There is no doubt that the place of the soul, that the path of the soul is an inward path. Gary Zukav tells a story which you may have heard before. Some have titled it “The Secret.” It may have Native American roots.

The Creator gathered all of creation and said, "I want to hide something from the humans until they are ready for it. It is the realization that they create their own reality."   The eagle said, "Give it to me, I will take it to the moon."  The Creator said, "No. One day they will go there and find it."  The salmon said, "I will hide it on the bottom of the ocean." "No. They will go there too." "The buffalo said, "I will bury it on the great plains."   The Creator said, "They will cut into the skin of the earth and find it even there."  Then Grandmother Mole, who lives in the breast of Mother Earth, and who has no physical eyes but sees with spiritual eyes, said: "Put it inside them." And the Creator said, "It is done."

Blind Willie Johnson asked, “what is the soul of a man?” No doubt we will still leave here today with that question on our hearts and minds. But whatever it is, we will do well to pay attention to it, both in ourselves, and in others.