It began with a typo: s-o-u-l instead of soil. Then I realized:
it was not a beginning but a continuation, and
the typo itself wasn’t an error but rather the bare-naked spotlight of truth.
However I variously describe it from moment to moment, the soul has one constant: it is the soil, the grounding place, the rich humus of being.
It animates body,
inspires creativity,
incites insight,
calibrates serenity.
We can water the soil of soul daily.
Meditation.
Prayers or blessings.
Greeting the breeze.
A visual taking-in of beauty.
A helping hand – offered or received. Sitting on the land.
Writing out the heart.
A short.closed-eyes.bask.in.sunlight.
Hands planted in mud.
These offer sustenance so that we may thrive.
Soil is soul; soul is soil.
It’s just like the puzzles I worked as a girl: changing one word to another via a series of single-letter alterations, each permutation its own entity along the path to the new word.
So too: “soil to soul,” “soul to soil” – each one just a step away from the other, feeding, enriching, enlivening.
(Orig. posted in Aug. 2014)
