Physically Distanced but Spiritually Connected
Soul Food

A recent contribution to our ongoing chalk talk at church.  Thank you Sue.

This is…how we inhabit the soul on Earth through a messy human life, living tenderly and authentically enough that we can be who we are everywhere and create a path to what matters.  (Mark Nepo, The Book of Soul)

Dear Mayfield,
The last Sunday that we were in-person with one another, March 8, 2020, the Second Sunday in Lent, we came face to face with Nicodemus in the third chapter of the Gospel of John.  Nicodeumus, who came to see Jesus under the cover of night’s darkness, wanted to know how one could be born again after one had grown. At the very beginning of his new book, The Book of Soul, Mark Nepo writes this: “After being born physically, we unfold within a second womb, meant to incubate our better angel. The second womb is an experiential one that, through the labor of a lifetime, births the soul of Earth.”  My long-time colleague and friend Sheldon is a UCC pastor and a Jungian analyst.  Once when a small group of us, all within a decade of one another in age, were having the I-don’t-feel-this-old-inside conversation, she simply reminded us that our souls are ageless. I have been pondering all of this since Diana texted Sue’s beautiful chalk talk illustration and am going to pose a few questions for us regarding soul and how it is nourished from day to day .  Questions open us up to exploration. They aren’t a quick fix. Or as Nepo suggestions, questions can be doorways.

  • How does your sense of kinship, of belonging to the earth, deepen your sense of self, humus and humanity, and your self’s connection to a wider web of life?
  • Parker Palmer often writes about a life soaked in your soul as an undivided life. Are you growing in your capacity to live life aligned with the inner truth(s) you carry? Specifics?
  • Are you comfortable or restless with the understanding that soul work is not about arriving but about continuing to grow?
  • What names do you give to your current growth from within or from the inside out?
  • In what ways are you attentive to situations, activities, and people who animate and energize you or to those that deplete you? The animating and energizing ones are soul food.
  • The prairie is a great communal landscape. What are your commitments to encouraging soul work in others?
  • Soul blooms differently in each of us. When and where can you remember wishing you were someone else and could bring to the world their soul rather than the beauty of yours?
  • In the children’s book Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney, the question is asked: What are you going to do to make the world more beautiful? Authentic soul work yields beauty in a wounded and weary world.

Blessings on your soul’s journey. Be fed in ways that will enrich you. And please keep the chalk talk words and drawings coming.
Peace, Martha

Reminder:  Peggy’s first Mayfield EarthTalk via Zoom is Thursday, July 23 at 6:30 pm — MAKE MINE A HUMMINGBIRD GARDEN.  The Zoom link will be sent out next week. Contact Peggy with any Zoom questions, myottersoul@gmail.com