What is Soul Care?
I hope the following will be helpful in some way to answer this question.
The Short Answers:
What: To provide intentional space, care, and resources for the support of the inner life so that we may live in greater integrity in all of life.
How: Through retreats, music, books, formation programs which include spiritual growth and psychological awareness.
Why: An understanding that as we live with greater integrity to our inner life, we live with greater integrity with our outer lives.
A belief that the soul is intrinsically beautiful and of great worth and that to re-align with the truth of our being impacts every aspect of our lives.
Longer Answers
In the work of care for the soul, there seems to be a rhythm, a flow, a way of being that opens our lives to transformation. I believe these six words offer a circular path, a spiral path ever down and ever up into the continual journey of becoming. What is our potential? I believe we are yet to know all that is possible in becoming fully alive.
Rest & Know
Through the invitation to slow down, pause, and breathe – we come into a knowing, a learning, an understanding, that is of the soul. Rest is the first invitation of Psalm 23. Lying down. Stopping. Breathing. This is where it all begins. It is here that we come to know a rootedness that impacts the whole of our lives.
When we stop, when we pause, there is an awareness that emerges. We may notice our addictions, our compulsions, our drives. These aren’t easy to be with, but there are necessary to see and become aware of. We may also become aware of the Presence of Love accompanying us in ways we have never fully known.
Personal Roots – Twenty-five years ago, through the work of Spiritual Direction, Contemplative Christianity, Celtic Spirituality, Wisdom of the Desert Abbas and Ammas, and the music of Taize, I was led on an inner path of discovery and transformation. Rest was the first teaching. To pause, to stop. To listen in the midst of crisis and uncertainty. This wasn’t a natural way of being. It was a hard lesson to learn. But it carried profound teachings and is the foundational beginning of the soul care journey.
Look & Receive
The second aspect of the soul care journey is to enter a posture of receptivity and to turn our gaze towards the Divine. As Psalm 34 says, ‘those who look are radiant, those who look are free from shame’. It is powerful when we notice what we are putting our energy towards, our focus on, our gaze upon. The inner life can become begin to flow with new freedom when we know our value and worth from an intrinsic place rather than looking externally. When we receive the truth of our being from looking to the Eternal, it changes our motivation and intentions.
Through practices of contemplative spirituality, retreat, spiritual direction, music, meditation, and more, we can learn to receive internally what we need for wholeness and well-ness. As Brother Roger of Taize often said, we can learn to live from the inner well-springs so that we may receive life and live out of the depths we have received.
Become & Bless
Our invitation to tend the inner garden of our lives isn’t meant to be self-serving. Rather, it is the understanding that when we truly receive the abundance and generosity of Divine Love, we will become a blessing to those around us. Our work is ultimately to live the blessing we have received in whatever role, occupation, or life vocation we have.
Through music, books, retreats, soul care circles, spiritual direction, concerts, and more, we seek to serve the soul so that we will be people of love and service, living out of the blessing we have known.
Soul Care® is now a registered trademark in Canada. You can learn more about our offerings here: www.soulcare.ca
May we enter rest of soul.
May we know our deepest truth.
May we look at what is the mystery of the beautiful.
May we receive wisdom.
May we become the reflection of our gaze towards Divine Love.
May we become magnificent in blessing.
