The Shape of the Soul

There is within each plant a drive, an energy that propels it forward to achieve its purpose:  to produce a flower that will in turn produce either a seed or a fruit containing the seeds of future generations.  We look at the flowers; we see the fruit.  What we do not see is the energy, the "soul" of the plant that forces it to grow and develop to maturity, the drive within whose goal is the flower and the fruit.

In American culture, we tend to think of aging physiologically, rather than spiritually.  We see the flower -- the bloom of radiant youth.  We see the fruit in our reproductive power.  And then we see the plant beginning to wither and die, and we call it "sad."

But we are more than flowers and more than animals too.  Spiritually, aging is no accident, no "leftover process" after we have achieved our primary purpose for living.  Rather, the aging process is necessary to the spirit, intended by the soul.  Has it ever occurred to us that there is a reason why we continue long after fertility and even after muscular usefulness and sometimes sensory awareness?  There must be some purpose to aging beyond wearing down and running out of steam.

St. Paul had this to say: ...we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that His life may be revealed in our mortal body...though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day (2Cor. 4:16).

When we die, what people remember is not the principles we lived by, or our ideas, but our character:  The beauty of the soul is harder to see than that of the body, yet it is the soul that is concerned with goodness and beauty, with justice and courage, with friendship and loyalty.  People will remember us as wise, knowing, kind, timid, intellectual, vacillating......etc.  I told someone the other day that when she dies, no one will ever say, "She was a wonderful housekeeper!" (or at least, that's what I'm hoping!)

It is the qualities of our character that reveal "the shape of the soul." And it is the shape of the soul that patterns the movements of our body.  And it is the movements of the body that gives shape to our world.  Think of the recent "revelations" on tv of the hoarding phenomenon.  Psychiatrists and psychologists are trying to medicate and cure the disease of hoarding.  But hoarding is a sickness of the soul, not of the body.  It can be treated spiritually, but I doubt that our psychic conditioning or physical medication can touch that sickness. 

Robert Bly wrote "My Father at Eighty-Five:"

His eyes blue, alert,

Disappointed...suspicious...He is a bird

Waiting to be fed,--

Mostly beak -- an eagle

Or a vulture...Some powerful engine of desire goes on

Turning inside the body.

 

What we know is that longevity reinforces character, so what we get in old age is more of the same. 

 

I think we live longer than necessary because our soul has an inner drive to produce what the spirit is craving -- beauty and goodness, truth, justice, kindness.  But it is hard for us to give up the throne.  WE have been "in control" for so long that we cannot relinquish our desire to be recognized, to be acknowledged, to be thanked, to "be fed." 

 

Vulture or dove?  There is a driving energy inside of us, giving shape to our souls.  What kind of fruit will the tree produce at the very end?