“Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”
— Psalm 51:10, NIV
I was thinking today about the soul.
About formation.
Construction.
Deconstruction.
Reconstruction.
About how the soul is not a fixed thing sitting quietly somewhere inside the body like a little glowing marble. The soul is alive. It is becoming. It is always being shaped, either toward freedom or toward imprisonment, toward God or away from God, toward love or toward fear.
The soul is always evolving.
Sometimes in holy ways.
Sometimes in terrible ways.
Sometimes by grace.
Sometimes by wound.
Sometimes by what we choose.
Sometimes by what was done to us before we ever had language for it.
And I wonder if most people are walking around with stagnant souls.
Not evil souls necessarily.
Not hopeless souls.
Just stagnant.
Closed off.
Imprisoned within the walls of the body and confined by their own consciousness. Living behind the same old thoughts, the same old fears, the same old defenses, the same old stories they were handed and never questioned.
A soul can be trapped inside a life that looks successful.
A soul can be starving inside a body that keeps functioning.
A soul can be asleep inside a person who thinks they are awake because they are busy, informed, opinionated, productive, religious, political, or loud.
But noise is not awakening.
Activity is not freedom.
Belief is not always faith.
Sometimes belief is only a locked room with religious wallpaper.
And then, sometimes, the soul begins to awaken.
Something cracks.
Something opens.
Something in the person realizes: I am not only this fear. I am not only this body. I am not only this wound. I am not only this name, this role, this history, this job, this diagnosis, this grief, this anger, this mask.
There is a deeper self.
There is a hidden room.
There is a place in us that belongs to God before it belongs to anything else.
And when that begins to wake up, there can be a strange freedom.
A frightening freedom.
Like the soul suddenly remembers it has wings, but the body is still standing in the same room.
Like a prisoner hears the key turn, but does not yet know how to walk outside.
Like a seed splits open underground and does not know whether it is dying or becoming.
Soul awakening sounds beautiful until it happens.
Then it can feel like demolition.
Because before there can be reconstruction, there is often deconstruction.
The false self has to crack.
The borrowed God has to fall apart.
The inherited fears have to be questioned.
The old religious scripts have to be held up to the light.
The soul has to ask:
What was truly God?
What was trauma?
What was control?
What was love?
What was shame dressed as doctrine?
What was faith?
What was fear with a Bible in its hand?
This is dangerous work.
Holy, maybe.
But dangerous.
Because when the soul begins to deconstruct, everything trembles.
The mind panics.
The heart clouds over.
The body braces.
The consciousness starts nay-saying every movement toward freedom.
You cannot do this.
You are going too far.
You are losing yourself.
You are losing God.
You are making things up.
You are being dramatic.
You are unsafe without the old walls.
And maybe some walls did keep us alive.
That is the hard part.
Not every prison began as cruelty.
Some walls began as protection.
Some defenses were built by a child trying to survive.
Some rigid beliefs were the only structure we had when the world felt like chaos.
Some numbness kept us from drowning.
Some anger kept us from disappearing.
So when God begins to free the soul, the body does not always rejoice.
Sometimes the body says:
Absolutely not.
I know this cage.
I know this pain.
I know these limits.
Do not ask me to trust open air.
That is where I am thinking today.
About the soul wanting freedom, but the rest of me not being aligned.
Heart.
Mind.
Body.
Soul.
They should be in harmony.
They should be one instrument.
They should move together toward God.
But mine do not.
My soul may still yearn for God, but my heart is bruised and suspicious.
My mind races and argues and questions and protects.
My body carries illness, fear, exhaustion, memory, diagnosis, and survival.
My consciousness keeps throwing objections into the room.
And somewhere beneath all of that, the soul is starving for union.
For release.
For God.
So the question becomes:
How do we totally release into God?
How do we let ourselves go?
How do we believe completely, one hundred percent, beyond a shadow of doubt?
And how do we temper that release with the fact that we are still corporeal?
Still bodies.
Still nervous systems.
Still rent and bills and medication and grief.
Still hunger and exhaustion and fear.
Still human.
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”
— Mark 12:30, NIV
That verse sounds simple until you realize how divided those parts can be.
All your heart.
What if the heart is bruised?
All your soul.
What if the soul is starving?
All your mind.
What if the mind will not stop racing?
All your strength.
What if the body is tired?
Maybe total release into God does not begin as a grand spiritual achievement.
Maybe it begins by telling the truth about the division.
Lord, my heart is not aligned.
Lord, my mind is not aligned.
Lord, my body is afraid.
Lord, my soul is hungry.
Lord, I want to surrender, but part of me still has its fingernails in the wall.
Maybe surrender is not the same as forcing ourselves into certainty.
Maybe surrender is not saying, “I have no doubt.”
Maybe surrender is saying:
Here is my doubt too.
Here is the part of me that cannot release.
Here is the part of me that wants You and fears You.
Here is the part of me that believes and the part that does not know how.
Here is the child.
Here is the priest.
Here is the body.
Here is the wound.
Here is the soul under construction.
Take all of it.
That may be the only total surrender available to human beings.
Not a clean release.
A gathered release.
Not one hundred percent certainty.
One hundred percent honesty.
I do not know if human beings can believe beyond every shadow of doubt while we are still walking in flesh. Maybe doubt is part of the shadow cast by being embodied, limited, wounded, unfinished creatures.
Maybe the goal is not to destroy every shadow.
Maybe the goal is to turn toward God from inside it.
Because we are not angels.
We are not pure spirit.
We are dust with breath in us.
We are souls wearing bodies.
We are hunger, blood, memory, chemistry, trauma, grace, longing, instinct, and mystery all tangled together.
The corporeal is not the enemy of surrender.
The body is not some dirty anchor keeping the soul from God.
Christ had a body.
That matters.
The Word became flesh.
Not to escape flesh.
To redeem it.
So maybe the question is not:
How do I escape the body so the soul can be free?
Maybe the question is:
How does the soul learn freedom through the body?
Through breath.
Through tears.
Through rest.
Through bread.
Through touch.
Through illness.
Through aging.
Through trembling hands.
Through the rosary between fingers.
Through kneeling and rising.
Through washing dishes.
Through caring for someone.
Through taking medicine.
Through standing under trees.
Through letting the body become part of prayer instead of an obstacle to it.
The body can tether us to fear.
Yes.
But it can also tether us to grace.
Bread is corporeal.
Wine is corporeal.
Water is corporeal.
Oil is corporeal.
A hand raised in blessing is corporeal.
A tear on the cheek is corporeal.
The Eucharist is God meeting us through matter.
So maybe total release into God is not floating away into pure light.
Maybe it is becoming so surrendered that even our flesh begins to pray.
The body says:
I am afraid.
The heart says:
I am wounded.
The mind says:
I do not understand.
The soul says:
I thirst for God.
And surrender says:
Lord, receive the whole argument.
All of me.
Not just the part that sounds holy.
All of me.
“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.”
— Psalm 51:17, NIV
That verse gives me some hope.
God does not despise the broken spirit.
God does not despise the misaligned person.
God does not despise the soul under construction.
Maybe that is where grace enters.
Not after the reconstruction is complete.
During it.
In the dust.
In the exposed beams.
In the torn-out walls.
In the place where the old structure is gone and the new one is not yet safe to live in.
Maybe the dark night is part of that.
God help me, I do not like saying that.
But maybe.
Maybe the dark night is not only destruction.
Maybe it is deconstruction.
Maybe the old house of faith had rooms built by fear, shame, trauma, bad theology, false obedience, and the need to survive.
Maybe God is not burning the house down because He hates me.
Maybe the fire is showing me what cannot carry me anymore.
But if that is true, Lord, then I need You in the reconstruction.
Do not just tear down.
Build.
Do not just strip.
Clothe.
Do not just silence.
Teach me how to hear differently.
Do not just empty the soul.
Feed it.
Because a starving soul cannot live forever on theory.
A starving soul needs bread.
A bruised heart needs warmth.
A racing mind needs peace.
A frightened body needs safety.
And a person under construction needs to know the Builder has not abandoned the site.
That is my prayer today.
Not that I become some perfect mystic floating above doubt.
Not that I believe one hundred percent beyond every shadow because I have bullied myself into certainty.
My prayer is smaller and maybe more honest:
Lord, align me.
Heart.
Mind.
Body.
Soul.
Bring the scattered parts of me back into one piece.
Let my soul evolve toward You and not away from You.
Free me from the prison of my own fear.
Wake what is stagnant.
Soften what is hardened.
Open what is closed.
Heal what is clouded.
Rebuild what has collapsed.
And teach me how to surrender as a human being.
Not as an angel.
Not as an idea.
Not as a saint in stained glass.
As flesh.
As dust.
As breath.
As hunger.
As wound.
As priest.
As child.
As soul under construction.
I do not know how to release completely into You.
But I want to want it.
And maybe tonight that is where surrender begins.