Feed your Soul

I’m probably the last person who should be writing about feeding the soul lately.  It’s been a tumultuous time in that crazy game of life and I find myself sighing a lot lately.  One of the things; however, that I love about the soul is that it is connected to the mind.  What the mind thinks, the soul feels so to speak.  So if I can think about forgiving myself and starting over, the soul will start to compensate.

The other day I needed some ‘soul food’ rather badly.  Things are sketchy (as usual) within the economy, the job search, and the weather.  The rain has been relentless and it has derogatorily affected my mood…and so has the fact that many of my friends and I are still searching for jobs.  It’s easy to be soulful and content when things are going well and even when things go sour for just a little while.  But let things spiral for weeks on end and – whew- suddenly the chin weighs a thousand pounds and keeping it up is virtually impossible. 

So off I went in search of healing and I went to the one place I knew would provide comfort – the Benedictine Abbey in Richmond.is a small adoration chapel where one can sit in relative silence and reflect on life without fear of interruption.  It’s a place of devotion and a place of prayer. 

The chapel is a special place to me – I pilgrimage there once a year on Christmas Day to consider the past and contemplate the future. I make plans and make right with God.  It gets me off to a good start for the year to come.  But this year, I gave it up.  This year I had a sudden change in plans.  My children, who were supposed to go out of town with their dad on Christmas afternoon as they do every year, ended up being at home with me.  We went to walk dogs at the SPCA instead.  I figured that it would be equally good for my soul to help out the animals on a day where workers and volunteers would be minimal.  Boy, it might have been good for the animals but for me…not so much.

Don’t get me wrong, I had a great time with the dogs and the cats.  It was pretty quiet compared to normal there and the animals loved getting some attention.  But my soul needed attention too and I only do it once a year so I really missed the spiritual connection that came with taking an hour to sit still and reflect. 

So here I am five months later, making my way again to the place I missed going on Christmas.  On my way over to the Abbey that morning, I started creating a mental list of reasons why I should be doing something other than going there. I had laundry to do, I had groceries to buy, library books to return, and just in general – there was stuff that needed attention.  How could I take time for myself when I could be…when I should be… doing something else?

When I arrived, I found I couldn’t pray.  My only option was to just sit in silence and contemplate what I was doing to myself by not taking time to feed my soul.  And not taking the time wasn’t the only factor, forgetting how to feed myself spiritually, through quiet contemplation, through music, books and art, was becoming a really big issue too. 

I began to think about Mother Teresa who attended mass every single day while ministering to the poor in Calcutta.  She knew the benefits of receiving communion and the daily blessings from the priests.  She knew how important this was to her soul; therefore, she stopped everything and went.  She put nothing else before this even though she might have been thinking her time might be better served tending to the poor and hungry.  But I think she valued her soul enough to know that she needed to make it a priority in her life if she was going to be able to show up and help those in need every day. 

In the event of an airline emergency, you are told to put the oxygen mask on yourself first before attending to a child.  That makes sense because if we don’t, we couldn’t possibly help the child or anyone else.  I can’t be of service to anyone if I am spiritually or emotionally bankrupt.  Taking the time to feed my soul through contemplation, through prayer, through books, music, nature, art or through human contact will give me the energy to rise above a crisis and the strength to move forward toward what I am supposed to be doing next. It’s a gift I should give myself once a day, not once a year.