Soul refers to depth, value, relatedness, heart

Freelance travel writer Colleen Friesen declares that soul is her goal for 2013 in her post "Care of the Soul", while acknowledging "But this, of course, is exactly what Moore is saying NOT to do," in his book with the same title. She continues, "Caring for my soul is not a goal-oriented exercise, but rather, a way of living deeply in our world however it presents itself. It is not something I can work at so much as be with."

She suggests, "Bringing awareness and curious consideration to all that we do, risking connection by being open and vulnerable, daring to voice our thoughts, paying attention to ourselves, our surroundings and others is a recipe for a more soul-filled life."

Friesen shares, "I haven’t quite finished this book, though it’s apparent (based on the exclamation marks and underlined passages) that I’ve read it before. But I often need to read books over and over; absorbing, reflecting and relearning. Sometimes what was interesting and necessary to know at one time is not what I’m looking for during the next reading."

Psych Central writer recommends Care of the Soul

Introducing today’s Best of our Blogs for Psych Central, associate editor Brandi-Ann Uyemura writes, "I picked up a little book called Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore on a trip recently." She states, "Although I’ve just begun to read it, I’m already enamored. Unlike a lot of things you read about mental illness, Moore doesn’t believe in trying to simply fix or eradicate our so-called problems, depression and anxiety included."

She paraphrases "...it’s the difference between believing something is wrong with you, and perceiving your problems as a healthy signal that some area of your life needs attention."

Uyemura concludes, "The secret to successfully dealing with any difficulty is to confront it. Avoiding and escaping end up adding to your suffering."

Soul care includes listening to the body's desires

Jewelry maker Beth Hemmila blogs "Adornment and Care of the Soul" with an opening quote from Thomas Moore's book, Care of the Soul. Moore writes that cura, the Latin word used originally in "care of the soul," means several things including adorning the body.

In her post, Hemmila shares, "I'm pretty sparse when it comes to material possessions — like a vagabond with only the essentials in my pack. However, my soul wants to wear layers and layers of jewelry and in particular necklaces. The weight, feel, and energy against my chest is so important to me, but I had never allowed myself to indulge in this kind of lavishness. Maybe I'd wear some simple earrings in the past, but apparently layers of gems and precious metals is incredibly important to my soul."

She connects this revelation with "Now I see that this past year and a half of choosing to design for only myself, was a way for me to cultivate a relationship with and care for the deepest parts of my soul. So if you are an artist that has a tendency to want to bring others happiness by going along with their desires, and you feel disconnected from your work, I hope you take an opportunity to step back and see what your soul wants to be making."

Honour your personal skills, strengths, talents

Jan Adrian, creator of Healing Journeys and the Cancer as a Turning Point: From Surviving to Thriving conference, blogs about three books that help people to take care of themselves. She writes:

"I’ve been reading Jonathan Ellerby’s book, Inspiration Deficit Disorder, and am aware of the similarity between his message and that of Larry LeShan in Cancer as a Turning Point. They are also similar to Thomas Moore’s message in Care of the Soul. Jonathan talks about the Essential Self or Essence the same way Thomas Moore talks about the Soul.

Jonathan says our tendencies and passions come from this Essence. Once any aspect of your life has been cut off from your essence, then you have also lost your natural connection to energy and vitality in that part of your life. Your greatest joy and vitality lie in honoring what makes you unique. A life disconnected from the Essential Self is one doomed to stress, unhappiness, and poor health.

Larry LeShan, in his research with 'terminal' cancer patients, found that when they rediscovered what made them excited to get up in the morning and lived from their passion, half of them went into long-term remission. In Jonathan’s words, they were honoring what made them unique and expressing what came from their Essence. In Thomas Moore’s words, they were nurturing their souls."

Live a mythical life based on fundamental truths

Father Ron Moses Camarda answers "What seems to be a myth by which I personally live?" in his post about becoming a Roman Catholic priest. He shares Thomas Moore's definition of myth from Care of the Soul while telling his story: "According to Moore, a myth is a sacred story set in a time and place outside history. It describes in fictional form the fundamental truths of nature and human life. (p. 220)"

Camarda planned to leave his training for the priesthood during retreat because he felt unworthy, however he was convinced by the retreat director that such a response indicates that he was truly "ready". A month before ordination, Camarda went on another retreat: "This time I meditated on the writings of Teilhard de Chardin. Humans (including me) tend to get out of synch, psyche and soul. I journeyed into the woods and celebrated Mass with nothing but my story and all of creation. Thomas Moore gave me the impression that my lifelong need of ritual along with my need to go reverently (and occasionally irreverently) beyond the rubrics (and myth) is essential to being soulful." Camarda is author of Tear in the Desert: A journey into the heart of the Iraq War (2008).

UU minister's sermon describes aspects of soul

Rev. Gabi Parks of Easton, Maryland shares her sermon "Oh, My Soul" from Sunday 19 August 2012. Two years ago Parks attended Convo for Unitarian Universalist ministers held that year in Ottawa. Thomas Moore was the keynote speaker at the event and Parks’ reflection in this sermon incorporates Moore’s opening talk and his writings about soul. In the sermon Parks considers if the soul is a distinct entity, if it is immortal, if it is eternal, how it relates to food and music, and she shares Moore’s definition of a soul mate. She closes the post with her understanding of differences between soul and spirit, ending with: "After listening to all these musings, you still have to go inside yourself, find your own soul, and try to figure it all out!"

Moore introduces associations with "care" of soul

Family Scholars shares Svetlana Goretaya’s post "Thoughts on Care" in which she quotes Thomas Moore’s definition of "care" from his book, Care of the Soul. Moore writes:

"The word "care" implies a way of responding to expressions of the soul that is not heroic and muscular. Care is what a nurse does, and "nurse" happens to be one of the early meanings of the Greek word therapeia, or therapy. ... Cura, the Latin word used originally in "care of the soul," means several things: attention, devotion, husbandry, adorning the body, healing, managing, being anxious for, and worshiping the gods. It might be a good idea to keep all these meanings in mind as we try to see as concretely as possible how we might make the shift from psychotherapy as we know it today to care of the soul."

Goretaya concludes, "There is something deeply and quietly human and ennobling about this kind of care. Here, care is used as a lead into a wider discussion on psychotherapy — it’s not an exhaustive definition, but being interested in therapy and psychology, it is fascinating to examine and meditate on this particularly rich facet of care."

Soul guides us to open to beauty and to respond

Kathy Ford shares a quote from Thomas Moore's book, Care of the Soul in her post yesterday, "Soul’s Great Talent" that includes Moore's view:

“An appreciation for beauty is simply an openness to the power of things to stir the soul.  If we can be affected by beauty, then soul is alive and well in us, because the soul’s great talent is for being affected. The word passion means basically “to be affected”, and passion is the essential energy of the soul."

He continues with a reference to poet Rainer Marie Rilke's The Sonnets to Orpheus:

"The poet Rilke describes this passive power in the imagery of the flower’s structure, when he calls it a “muscle of infinite reception.”  We don’t often think of the capacity to be affected as strength and as the work of a powerful muscle, and yet for the soul, as for the flower, this is the toughest work and its main role in our lives.”

Ford mentions gardening friends and includes photographs of her own flowers in her post.

Rilke's verse:
Flower-muscle, that opens the anemone’s
meadow-morning bit by bit,
until into her lap the polyphonic
light of the loud skies pours down,

muscle of infinite reception
tensed in the still star of the blossom,
sometimes so overmanned with abundance
that the sunset’s beckoning to rest


is scarcely able to give back to you
the wide-sprung petal-edges:
you, resolve and strength of how many worlds!

We, with our violence, are longer-lasting.
But when, in which one of all lives,
are we at last open and receivers?

Make a change: work is not apart from the sacred

A LiveJournal blogger writes about Thomas Moore's book Care of the Soul and her attempts to carve out time during mornings to attend to her soul:

"I found myself nodding when Moore wrote, 'Care of the soul is a continuous process that concerns itself not so much with 'fixing' a central flaw as with attending to the small details of daily life, as well as to major decisions and changes.' Those small details are the ones I struggle with the most. It’s easy enough for me to scrub down my kitchen once a week, but so much harder to keep it clean, to load the dishwasher and wipe down the counters before bed so that I can wake to a clean palette for my morning smoothie and coffee. I want to learn to cultivate beauty in my life, for beauty nourishes the soul. And I want to spend another series of mornings re-reading this book — I feel like I’ve only begun to glimpse the lessons it can teach me."

She mentions that her husband, an MBA student at Bainbridge Graduate Institute, refers to Moore's book in his blog post about spirituality in the workplace. After describing a conversation Moore had with a client recounted in Care of the Soul, the blogger writes:

 "Walking through the world with a sense of purpose and reverence is something I aspire to. But how could you bring that into some of the jobs I've had? There's nothing divine about accounts payable. That's the problem with inviting our soul into our work — it makes us notice, really notice, the impact of our actions. We all have more power than we realize in our daily lives — power to brighten or dim the world around us. Choosing to be spiritually present in our work might mean finally acknowledging the many little or big ways we each contribute to harming each other and the world around us. And maybe, just maybe, it would mean making a change."

Stretch the heart to hold contradiction and paradox

Yesterday in her post, "Deep Blue Waters", a blogger in Kadikoy Istanbul, Turkey reflects on reading Thomas Moore's book, Care of the Soul while writing about observing herself more than analyzing herself, "I realized it the most when I returned from my trip to America last week. I was seeing things with a different perspective. I want no part of contrasting my life here with my life there, or what I see, taste, or feel, either. I want to feel the natural joy of each new gift I get from being here. The old, dark, run down buildings with no windows next to the tall, brightly colored new ones. The old, thick tangled vines running along rusted metal fences hanging with the weight of the budding purple flowers."

Interspersed with quotes from Moore's book, she describes what she sees while sitting at a cafe. She shares an approach that Moore recommends, "'Often care of the soul means not taking sides when there is a conflict at a deep level. It may be necessary to stretch the heart wide enough to embrace contradiction and paradox… in fact, the conflict itself is creative and perhaps should never be healed.  By giving each figure its voice, we let the soul speak and show itself as it is, not as we wish it would be.'"

Blogger celebrates Care of the Soul anniversary

Daniel Wilson celebrates the publication anniversary of Thomas Moore's classic book in his post, "Care of the Soul is 20 years old": "The book has never been more sorely needed, in my opinion, as we watch our world increasingly bow to money, power, the quest for personal advantage, and arrogance toward nature at unprecedented levels. Depth and sacredness are endangered species these days like never before in my lifetime."

After writing about his interest in yoga, Wilson suggests, "Soul and spirit are also figures of speech, but they are differentiated from chakras and nadis in that they arose from a different tradition. Both traditions work for those who are inspired by them. Without these figures of speech we would be immobilized by fear and wonder."

He shares how his soul is nourished specifically and the human desire for recognition, "I am increasingly patient with work that generates no response, but this did not come easily to me. I like recognition and responsiveness. I like that my soul leads to a state of greater ease, confidence, and trust in these matters. I’m recommending that you read this book if you have not already, but I won’t be bothered if you choose to ignore the suggestion. I’m learning to accept that people have their agendas and I have mine."

Quiet solitude allows clarity and creativity

One. Alone. Lonely. Loneliness.  — Sole. Solo. Solitary. Solitude.
Today's post "How to enjoy being alone" quotes Thomas Moore about our general busyness: "'We live in an extremely externalized culture,' Moore says. 'We are constantly pulled outside ourselves — by other people, by the media, by the demands of daily life. Nothing in our culture or in our education teaches us how to go inward, how to steady the mind and calm our attention. As a consequence, we tend to devote very little time to the life of the soul, the life of the spirit.'"

In this post Alexandra Bacon offers things to do to feel comfortable by yourself, "tips for embracing solitude." She suggests, "Alone — in moments of prayer or meditation, or simply in stillness — we breathe more deeply, see more fully, hear more keenly. We notice more, and in the process, we return to what is sacred." 

How are we affected by the soul of the world?

J. T. Knoll writes "The halo of melancholy" for morningsun.net, Pittsburgh, Kansas today. He shares, "In addition to life’s daily struggles, my heart grows heavy with the plight of the working poor, the mentally ill, the homeless, the hungry children — the dispossessed — right here in Kansas from whom services continue to be withdrawn even as tax breaks for the well-to-do are being proposed.'" While wondering if growing older contributes to feeling low, he quotes Thomas Moore.

"Thomas Moore puts it this way in his book, Care of the Soul: 'You get a sense of having lived through something, of being older and wiser. You know that life is suffering, and that knowledge makes a difference. You can’t enjoy the bouncy, carefree innocence of youth any longer, a realization that entails both sadness because of the loss, and pleasure in a new sense of self-acceptance and self-knowledge. This awareness of age has a halo of melancholy around it, but it also enjoys a measure of nobility.'"

Knoll then writes about Abraham Lincoln's gloominess and sense of humour.

Family life includes the particulars for soul

On Click! A photography blog, Daniel Wilson considers "The family’s responsibility to the soul": "I campaign for people to take better pictures, to blog about one another, and to publish coffee table books about the family and family members, and it is not in the name of vanity. I do it in support of the wellbeing of the soul. Thanks to Carl Sagan and Thomas Moore for setting the foundation for this work."

Wilson shares Moore's passage from Care of the Soul: "The soul prospers in an environment that is concrete, particular, and vernacular. It feeds on the details of life, on its vitality, its quirks, and its idiosyncrasies. Therefore nothing is more suitable for care of the soul than family, because the experience of family includes so much of the particulars of life."

Read the body poetically as it expresses itself

“A poetic response to disease may seem inadequate in the context of medical science, because science and art differ radically from the point of interpretation. Therefore, a poetic reading of the body as it expresses itself in illness calls for a new appreciation for the laws of imagination, in particular a willingness to let imagination keep moving into ever new and deeper insights.” — Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul

Michelle Francl-Donnay, a professor of chemistry at Bryn Mawr College, blogs "Praying in/with pain" in which she mentions the new translation of the Mass and "The Body's Poetic of Illness" in Thomas Moore’s book Care of the Soul. She writes, “Moore notes that science demands a single reading of a phenomenon — we're pretty sure we know what's causing my myalgia, and it's self-limiting, so all will eventually be well — but that poetry acknowledges multiple layers of meaning. Why not seek multiple readings of the body's poetics when we are ill? Such an approach doesn't deny the physical causes and effects of a particular malady, but does give reality to its effects on the other aspects of our being.”

Care of the Soul message found to be expansive

A rector with the Episcopal Church in Shenandoah County, Virginia writes "Care for Your Soul"  in the  The Beckford Parish Beacon newsletter about the book Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore.

Alexander MacPhail commends the book to parishioners although he writes, "The book does not stand squarely in the Christian/catholic tradition, probably because Moore himself doesn’t stand squarely inside the boundaries of the Faith; but there is a breadth and wisdom to his writing that some might negatively call syncretistic, but I would call — more positively — expansive."

The review concludes, "Care for your soul. Nurture it with prayer. Let it read new books and see new pieces of art. Take it for a walk in the leaves. Let it smell the crisp fall air and the scent of a new wood fire. And perhaps think to yourself that these, too, are gifts of God for the people of God."

Bloggers take the temperature of the season

In the post, "Hot and Cold ruminations", blogger Ruth quotes Thomas Moore’s description of fundamentalism in his book Care of the Soul as it relates to the season of winter. The excerpt includes Moore’s definition, "I would define fundamentalism as a defense against the overtones of life, the richness and polytheism of imagination." Ruth responds, "Maybe winter is not simply: cold. It is cold with overtones of cool, warm, and much that is not about temperature. I am a polytheistic lover of winter!"

Catherine O'Meara blogs about childhood Christmases and her desire to maintain enchantment as an adult, in "Living an Enchanted Life". While reading Thomas Moore’s book, The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life, she writes, "... Moore reminds us that every aspect of our daily lives deserves to be grounded in the enchantment granted by a spirit-infused perspective."

Enjoy reading the comments triggered by these entries.

What does the story of Narcissus tell us?

Christine Marietta, a self-described progressive Christian feminist therapist refers to Thomas Moore's book Care of the Soul in yesterday's blog post, "Narcissism".

"In the first chapter—or maybe the second, I can’t remember (definitely not the third)—Moore writes about the myth of Narcissus.  More accurately, he interprets the myth, in a way that is so different from tradition, reading through it was like watching a familiar movie play upside-down.  The traditional interpretation goes, Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection, and his self-absorption led to his ultimate demise.  Eventually his lack of intimacy with others shriveled his psyche so much that he was no longer even human, and the flower-form of narcissus (aka, the daffodil) exists to remind us of the dangers of self-love.

The problem, though, is that narcissists don’t love themselves. Healthy people do. Secure people walk around with a heavy, solid ego (sense of self), whereas narcissists are empty and weightless. They make up for their lack of density by increasing their size. They brag, they philosophize, they grow loud and pompous in proportion to how threatened they feel.

[snip]

Thomas Moore asserts that for the mythical figure of Narcissus, self-love was the cure, not the problem. Narcissus was a hardened narcissist before, not after, he glimpsed himself in the water. And he was healed of his narcissism through falling in love with his own reflection."

Marietta writes, "For most of us, the clear, still lake of the Narcissus myth is another human being. We cannot truly see ourselves by ourselves. And yet, most of the time, we’re scared to ask others, “Show me the parts of myself that I can’t see.”  She invites readers to answer, "Who has reflected you?  What aspects of yourself  have you found surprisingly lovable?"

Community may contribute to restoring soul

Rev. Dr. Randy Hammer delivers the sermon ”Restoration for the Soul“,  referring to Thomas Moore’s book, Care of the Soul on 30 October 2011. Hammer says, “Everywhere we turn we can see people who are suffering emotional pain and inner hurt; people who are confused or fearful; people who are brokenhearted or lonely; people who are despondent or clinically depressed. The truth is, the soul of a person can become ill.” After sharing his definition of soul, Hammer considers ways to restore soul and turns to Moore’s book for support. Hammer describes a vital spirituality and community as primary avenues to soul restoration. He includes Moore’s observation, “The soul needs an intense, full-bodied spiritual life as much as and in the same way that the body needs food.”

Hammer’s site includes, “After serving for six years as minister of First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, of Albany, New York, his most recent position is minister of the United Church, Chapel on the Hill, of Oak Ridge, Tennessee.”

Today, Thomas Moore (@thomasmooreSoul) tweets, "We all get sick occasionally in body, soul or spirit and need someone to heal us. We're all potential healers and could sharpen our skills," which reinforces Hammer's focus on helping each other for restoring soul.

Yoga instructor recommends Care of the Soul

Sophie Herbert emphasizes observing the soul during its care in her post "Be Your Own Witness: Yoga On and Off the Mat" for the Whole Living site. She references Thomas Moore's book, Care of the Soul: "This inspirational book of Moore’s, which is a personal favorite, is a guide for cultivating greater depth and spirituality in everyday life. Moore makes a very clear distinction between 'care of' and 'cure of' the soul. There is, in reality, nothing to cure, only complexities to accept, learn from, and work with. (It can be valuable to remember this in a society that over-medicates and often celebrates quick-fix-in-reality-Band-Aid solutions to problems of all shapes and size.)"

She writes: "This week, I invite you to remember your ability to be an empathetic witness of your mind both on and off the yoga mat. Patiently take stock of what’s going on." This suggestion precedes a number of questions to help students develop mindfulness.