Notes from a different drummer
Learning the unforced rhythms of grace.
The glory of God is a human being fully alive.
- St. Ireneaus
The practical How
Soul Nurturing
Soul Nurturing
Living a contemplative life starts here. In this place, at
this time, with this body, mind and soul known as Me. It can happen in no other
way. Nothing more is needed. We have everything we need (and more) to move in
one instance from being nowhere in particular, to being on the contemplative way.
All it takes is a waking up to it, as we have pointed out in It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.
The notes from a different drummer, like rain, had fallen
onto the pregnant soil of your soul. Soon a tender shoot starts showing. The seed
of the Essential You is sprouting. How do we tend this into growing into a life
that will bear the incredible harvest only you are capable of?
By careful and deliberate nurturing, like you would a rare sapling or a new-born baby.
This is very important. All through our lives we are to be
both our own nurturer and nurtured. Please take careful note of this. We are to
love ourselves.
Jesus summarizes the whole of Moses’s laws into the love of God
and the love of self. Yet, early in life, most of us abandon our vulnerable
inner self, after first creating an almost impenetrable wall around it, and
spend our lives projecting our love outwardly mostly. We serve, deliver, pitch
in, support, carry and care with and for
others, hardly ever allowing ourselves to consider the abandoned child inside of
us. The Christian message of loving our neighours as we love ourselves became
distorted along the way and we have come to believe that this neglect is what it
means to show humility, to turn the other cheek or sacrifice our lives.
So estranged are we
from our inner selves that we imagine it to be the whole of us engaging with
the life we have created. It rarely is. A crucial part had been left behind
which now sits wide awake, waiting for us to break down the wall.
Augustine stated that the journey into the self is the journey
home to God. My personal experience is that this is true. The process of integrating body, mind and
soul is pretty much what the contemplative life is about. And progress along
this way of life is dependent on this.
Nurturing of the inner self will be as individual as we are.
Nevertheless there are a couple of universal tools that we will use to get to
the core of who we really are, while paradoxically all along growing in
awareness of God as well. In the next couple of posts we will look at each of
these:
- Wake-up notes;
- Treat time;
- Walking;
- Healthy habits (Cultivating a spiritual practice);
- Soul Friendship (Spiritual direction)
Have you noticed a quickening inside of you while reading
this post? A tiny flicker of nervous excitement like the night before going to
the circus? Get to know this feeling. It comes from your soul. Your inner
child.
Matilda
Notes:
- For more reading on Soul nurturing see Diagnosis: Serious lack of fun
- If you've just "tuned in" to our blog and want to get the background picture, have a look at the Page heading About our Approach
- Posts preceding this one in the series can be found under the Label: Notes from a different drummer
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