"The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold and it has overturned the order of the soul." Leonard Cohen

How is it with your soul? It is said that John Wesley, the father of Methodism, began his weekly Holy Club meetings with this question. Not ‘how are you?’ or ‘whassup?’ or even ‘what’s happening? but ‘how is it with your soul?’  It is a daunting question. How would you answer?

In the frantic, driven world in which most of us travel, it is often very easy to lose track of our soul…that center from which we move and have our being, that place where we connect with the Holy. Even in the church we spend a great deal of time and energy planning, preparing and doing and very little time nurturing our soul, listening for the Sacred voice, attuning our internal rhythm to the One who would bring us to wholeness.

Yesterday I spent time with a friend walking along the Mississippi River. We looked at the huge trees that grow on the banks, those whose root systems seem to be completely above ground, erosion has washed away the soil that had been their home. The trees, hundreds of years old perhaps, still managed to grow, bringing forth leaves and branches, homes for the many birds that use the river as a compass, and, in addition, oxygen for we fragile humans. How is this possible, we marveled? It seems the trees, though tossed about by wind, rain, snow and ice, are connected in some unseen way with their soul, the center of who they are in the world. Their fortitude gave me comfort….even when the ‘blizzards of the world’ toss our soul about, there is a strength that holds us fast.

So, how is it with your soul? Has heat, blizzard, drought, storm, taken its toll? Today I will rest in the image of those trees, still doing their work in the world, still mustering their creativity, their life-giving forces. Through my encounter with their soul, my soul finds refreshment.

"Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life? While the soul, after all, is only a window, and the opening of the window no more difficult than the wakening from a little sleep."  Mary Oliver

Have a blessed weekend………………….