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Soul Matters
January: STORY
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Pieter Bruegel the Elder c.1560
TALES WE TELL OURSELVES
By Robert Lavett Smith
In January, when the wind is shrill,
We contemplate its sad soliloquies.
As bitter weather bends us to its will,
Street trees embroider doubtful histories.
The spirit of the season faced both ways,
The future as uncertain as the past—
Both faces, so prevailing wisdom says,
Composing chronicles that will not last.
We shelter in the tales we tell ourselves,
Truths deeply rooted in the loam of time;
Our sense of narrative, if nothing else,
Inclines our common lives to the sublime.
And even if we never write a word,
Our stories rescue us from the absurd.
December:
Presence
Woody Allen famously once said, “80% of success in life is just showing up.” Showing up certainly matters. Studies of people who “are lucky” find that those folks who are out circulating in the world, making friends, and making connections “get more lucky.” Being there when opportunity arises matters. Friendships are formed, so often, by “time on task.” Presence—that quality of just being there, steadily, reliably—matters. And this month we want to invite you to pay attention also to the kinds of presence we can pay attention to, to how we can deepen our connection to self, to each other, to the miraculous, mysterious, and unknown, to purpose and calling. It won’t all happen in our services. You might find it in the poem of the month or a small group, a discussion of an issue in the world, a piece of music, or conversation over coffee some day in the courtyard. We invite you to be present to presence!
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​-- Soul Matters (www.soulmatterssharingcircle.com)
Photo by James Wainscoat
THE KIND ASSERTION
By Robert Lavett Smith
There is a certain presence to December,
Even in places where there is no snow—
The distant sun has dwindled to an ember,
but there is something holy in its glow.
The Druids knew its power long ago;
It promised passage through the longest night,
When cold enclosed the moonrise like a bow
And shadows shivered in the red firelight.
That promise lingers even now, despite
Pervasive smells of woodsmoke and wet clay;
The ground is brown here, but the sky is white,
The dogeared page of the diminished day.
The kind assertion that awaits us there
Disseminates its blessings everywhere.
November:
The practice
of Repair
Repair. In a world of fast fashion and planned obsolescence, of consumer mindsets and quick fixes, there is a parallel world of people and practices that are about how to pull things broken, frayed, a little wonky, back into usable, mended states, and even broken things back into wholeness. Repair is that work. Many of you are familiar with the Japanese practice of "Kintsugi." It is literally that practice—"kin" ” meaning golden and “tsugi” meaning repair—where a broken piece of pottery is mended back together and visibly so, even thought more beautiful for the broken seams and wabi-sabi beauty of it. And in this parallel world bent on mending, there is the underlying assumption that we try not to treat the world and its things, but also its people and institutions, certainly not the earth, as dispensable, as incidental to our forward motion. We are in a world in need of a lot of repair. This month we think about some of the aspects of what it means to be menders.
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​-- Soul Matters (www.soulmatterssharingcircle.com)
Let Us Rebuild
By Robert Lavett Smith
November is the season of repair,
Before the winter rains assert their claim,
When autumn is apparent everywhere,
The numb sun shrunken to a faded flame.
The brownest brittle leaves desert the trees
That never are entirely denuded;
Squirrels conduct their yearly inventories;
Songbirds depart, their business here concluded.
This is the moment to address the damage
We’ve carelessly inflicted through the year,
To speak of secret wounds with quiet courage,
The path before us difficult but clear.
Let us rebuild the ruins of the heart,
Drawing upon forbearance, faith, and art.
October:
The practice of
Deep Listening
Listening helps us find our way. The listening of therapists allows us to navigate our way through life. We turn to prayer to hear God’s guidance. We listen to experts so we can get ahead. Like a flashlight that leads us through the darkness, listening helps us stay on course. And yet maybe there’s more to it than that. What if listening doesn’t just guide us through the world but also creates our world? That sacred space of being deeply listened to isn’t just calling us home; it is home. We don’t have conversations; we are our conversations. Listening literally constructs the world we live in. And whom we become. One wonders if this is why the poet Joyce Sutphen says, “Listen carefully. Your whole life might depend on what you hear.”
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​-- Soul Matters (www.soulmatterssharingcircle.com)
September:
The practice of Invitation
What is in an invitation? It looks so simple—the envelope or virtual envelope we get with the invitation to join in some moment or adventure? A movie, a party? Or the hand extended from someone on bended knee and the larger invitation to join in a life together: Will you marry me? Seems so simple. Just an invitation. Want to join this church? Be my friend? Go climb a mountain? Get an ice cream? What is written and tucked in an invitation if it is real and with the potential to welcome the fullness of everyone invited to be in an authentic relationship? What does the practice of invitation, the spiritual practice of it, say about what we believe invitation requires of us?
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