Last week I wrote about the challenge for men to connect to their own souls. While I agree this is even more of a challenge for men, the inner work of exploring our inner life can be hard for us all. My upcoming book explores this lifelong journey through the framework of finding our face. (I cannot wait to reveal the amazing cover design and share with you about it soon!) I just received a timely advanced copy of Chuck DeGroat’s book, Healing What’s Within, where he shares both his professional knowledge and personal experience in connecting to our souls under his framework of “Coming Home to Yourself—and to God.” And that is just it: getting connected to our souls, digging the truth out of ourselves, finding our faces, and coming home to ourselves are all spiritual practices that also help us look for Christ in others and connect with the Holy Spirit.
Last week, I shared the quote from psychoanalyst James Hollis, “There is something inside of each of you that knows you better than you know yourself…seeking to heal your wounds and get some purpose and direction.” To really get to that knowledge, we need to connect with the Creator of our souls. As DeGroat writes, “It’s because God’s memory of us runs deeper than our own that we can find our way back Home.” And God pursues us to this end. DeGroat helps the reader practice hearing God’s questions that echo from his encounter with Adam and Eve: Where are you? Who told you? Have you eaten from the tree?
I love this thought about God’s memory of us running deeper than our own. He re-members all our parts and makes us whole. The soul is such proof to me of a Creator. The triune God fashioned each one of us a distinct body and soul, perfectly matched, and our coming Home to ourselves as he made us is a coming Home to where God dwells by his Holy Spirit and—get this—delights! As Teresa of Avila says in The Interior Castle, the soul of the righteous person is “none other than a garden in which the Beloved takes great delight.” We see this in the allegory of Christ and his bride in the Song of Songs, and his describing her body as a garden paradise, exclaiming, “How beautiful you are, and how pleasant, my love, with such delights!” (Song 7:6). And we see the paradise garden coming out of heaven from God as the bride of Christ at the end of Revelation. There is so much to discover about our souls, God’s delight, and his memory of eternity with us.
Writing about this earlier, I beckoned, Let’s wonder in the marvelous capacity of our souls. How many rooms, how many gardens and springs, how many universes?
Mirabai Starr stirs up our imaginations in her Introduction to The Interior Castle:
There is a secret place. A radiant sanctuary. As real as your own kitchen. More real than that. Constructed of the purest elements. Overflowing with the ten thousand beautiful things. Worlds within worlds. Forests, rivers. Velvet coverlets thrown over featherbeds, fountains bubbling beneath a canopy of stars. Bountiful forests, universal libraries. A wine cellar offering an intoxication so sweet you will never be sober again. A clarity so complete you will never forget.
This magnificent refuge is inside you.
Do we dare to open the door in prayer and meditation? To go treasure-hunting in the paradise of God’s creation? To experience God’s dwelling in, knowing, and loving us? Do we consider the great value of our souls and the bodies that they are matched to? Do we consider the great generosity of God? Then, as Teresa says, “The things of the soul must always be considered as plentiful, spacious, and large; to do so is not an exaggeration.”
You guys, the state of the church reveals that we are in need of soul work. This is why I am so thankful for contemporary resources from authors like DeGroat, who weaves his intimate knowledge of the contemplatives like Teresa with his expertise as a therapist, church consultant, professor of pastoral care, and spiritual director.
DeGroat quotes Ronal Rolheiser, saying, “‘Our own depths frighten us!’” He goes on to list all the ways that we try to distract ourselves from our selves. “‘We are too frightened to travel inward. But we pay a price for that, a high one: superficiality and shallowness.’” We are missing the treasures. And we are missing the mirror God is holding up for us in his word, and missing Christ in the faces around us.
This week, two more big stories broke about popular and “successful” pastors involved in sexual abuse and scandal. Who will be next? How many have they harmed in the name of Christ? We can spend a lifetime polishing our masks using the language and outward motions of Christianity and be out of touch with the very questions God is asking us. Whose voices are we listening to? Whose voices are they listening to?
DeGroat quotes Thomas Merton, “‘To be born again is not to become somebody else, but to become ourselves.’” And then he asks, “And don’t you long to become yourself? Aren’t you, like me, weary of coping, tired of surviving, worn-out from wearing the masks of all our other selves?”
Preorders are so important for authors. Healing What’s Within releases in a few weeks, why not preorder it?
What if we aren’t even really surviving? I guess I’m asking: is this kind of soul work the luxury of those who are at least making ends meet? I’ve been meditating on the ideas of “luxury beliefs” (Rob Henderson) and it opens my eyes to different layers, the varied obstacles towards the deep flourishing of the human soul. Just musing and wondering others’ thoughts on this.
This is a very timely book, I’m only half-way through but wholeheartedly (alluding to Chuck’s prior soul care book) agree with your thoughts here.