Care of Soul: The Interconnection of Soul

Often when we think of or speak about “soul”, we are talking about “‘the soul”. The soul is commonly thought to be the spiritual, private immortal part of us. However, Soul is not something that we possess in private. Soul is fundamentally about interconnection. It’s not about independence. In fact, there is no such thing as independence. That’s a fantasy we make up to feel good about ourselves. We have been taught to think that we do not need anybody’s help and that our accomplishments are less worthy if we didn’t do it alone. We are taught we can go it alone just like the Lone Ranger (funny how his name alone ignores Tonto, the character created to be his sidekick), and that lack of connection and dependence is our courage and strength. I am convinced that this idea of glorified independence, apartness, and refusal to realize the connection we have to everyone and everything is the foundation of the division and strife we struggle with to this day. Would there be a climate crisis if we recognized the interdependence of Soul? Would people rip face masks off of other people’s faces if we recognized our interconnection? Would everyone have adequate food, housing, and healthcare if we refused to look down upon the idea, our truth, of dependency?

There is nothing in the universe, as Philip Shepherd explained in his book Radical Wholeness, that is not dependent upon everything else. Soul is never about isolation or disconnection. Soul is the expression of how we are connected to everyone and everything. It is about interconnection. By listening to the world through our bodies, we experience the reality of connection with everything else. We sit in the reality of Soul. The poem by Fred Lamotte expresses the heart of this Soul and connection in a way that I never could. I invite you to read and sit with it.

My Ancestry DNA Results Came In 

Just as I suspected, my great-great-grandfather was a monarch butterfly.
Much of who I am is still wriggling under a stone.
I am part larva, but part hummingbird too.
There is dinosaur tar in my bone marrow.

My golden hair sprang out of a meadow in Palestine.
Genghis Khan is my fourth cousin,
but I didn’t get his dimples.
My loins are loaded with banyan seeds from Sri Lanka,
but I descended from Ravanna, not Ram.
My uncle is a mastodon.
There are traces of white people in my saliva.
3.7 billion years ago I swirled in golden dust,
dreaming of a planet overgrown with lingams and yonis.

More recently, say 60,000 B.C.
I walked on hairy paws across a land bridge
joining Sweden to Botswana.
I am the bastard of the sun and moon.
I can no longer hide my heritage of raindrops and cougar scat.
I am made of your grandmother’s tears.

You conquered rival tribesmen of your own color,
chained them together, marched them naked to the coast,
and sold them to colonials from Savannah.
I was that brother you sold, I was the slave trader,
I was the chain.

Admit it, you have wings, vast and golden,
like mine, like mine.
You have sweat, black and salty,
like mine, like mine.
You have secrets silently singing in your blood,
like mine, like mine.

Don’t pretend that earth is not one family.
Don’t pretend we never hung from the same branch.
Don’t pretend we don’t ripen on each other’s breath.
Don’t pretend we didn’t come here to forgive.

Be well,

Bill