Image by ashley rose, via FlickrNature and God – I neither know
Yet both so well knew me
They startled, like Executors
of my Identity.
Emily Dickinson
The soul feeds on the details of life. 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. In a family you live close to people that otherwise you might not even want to talk to. Over time you get to know them intimately. You learn their most basic, most private habits and characteristics. Family life is full of major and minor crises – the ups and downs of health, success and failures in career, marriage, and divorce – and all kinds of characters. It is tied to places and events and histories. With all of these felt details, life imprints itself into memory and personality. It’s difficult to imagine anything more involved with the soul.
When things go wrong in society, we immediately inquire into the condition of family life. When we see society torn apart by crime, “If only we could return to the good old days when family was sacred.” No family is perfect, and most have serious problems. A family is a microcosm, reflecting the nature of the world, which runs on both virtue and evil. We may be tempted at times to imagine the family as full of innocence and good will, but actual family life resists such good virtues. Usually it presents the full range of human potential, including evil, hatred, violence, sexual confusion, and insanity. In other words, the dynamics of actual family life reveals the soul’s complexity and unpredictability, and any attempts to place a veil of simplistic sentimentality over the family image will break down.
Intuitively we know that the family is one of the chief abodes of the soul. We may need simply to work on the soul by reflecting deeply on our relationship to God, and through what has taken place in the crucible of the family.
According to the Bible, Adam was formed out of the mud of the earth. The sentimental image of family that we present publicly is a defense against the pain of proclaiming the family for what it is – a earthly form of how we should relate to God.
At a certain level, then, it doesn’t matter whether one’s family has been largly happy, comforting, and supportive, or if there has been abuse and neglect. At a deep level, however, family is most truly family in it’s complexity, including its failures and weaknesses. When we encounter the family from the point of view of the soul, accepting its shadows and its failure to meet our idealistic expectations, we are faced with mysteries that resist our following the Christian faith and also support it.
Family has many meanings, depending on the context. This is the nest in which the soul is nurtured, and released into life. It has an elaborate history and ancestry and a network of unpredictable personalities – grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins. Its stories tell of happy times and tragedies. It has moments of pride and skeletons in its closets.
Care of the soul is not about understanding, figuring out, and making better; rather, it helps ua understand how to relate to our God. To care for the soul , it is necessary to shift from earthly thinking to spiritual thinking.
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