From our souls

I've come across this quote twice this week, so thought it was worth doing something with. This is a sketch from a few years ago which has finally found its quote match.

I need things like this right now because a little wobbly on this whole moving thing. It is the right decision but that doesn't make it easy. So also timely is a book I got for a penny called Broken Open by Elizabeth Lesser. It's not a book title that naturally appeals, particularly, but it was referenced by Brene Brown and since I found it for a penny I thought I'd give it a go. It's a spirited book, in many ways, and is the second place I came across that quote. Lesser writes that you do something from your soul and feel that joy when you "tire of your own constriction and you open, come what may, to the flow of life, [and] you and your soul become one". She continues:

Yet so often we resist the pull of the river. We tune out the call of the soul. Perhaps we fear what the soul would have to say about choices we have made, habits we have formed, and decisions we are avoiding. Perhaps if we quieted down and asked the soul for direction, we would be moved to make a big change. Maybe that wild river of energy, with its longing for joy and freedom, would capsize our more prudent plans, our ambitions, our very survival. Why should we trust something as indeterminate as a soul? And so we shut down...If we don't listen to the voice of our soul, it sings a stranger tune. If we don't go looking for what lies beneath the surface of our lives, the soul comes looking for us.
Elizabeth Lesser ~ Broken Open

In a later chapter she talks about how many people are "scared to death" of their soul, sometimes literally. She ends that chapter with a prayer.

Here, I put this prayer with the Schindler's List theme by John Williams. Such a haunting, beautiful piece of music.

I pray that each one of us stays awake as we fall. I pray that we choose to go into the abyss willingly and that our fall is cushioned by faith - faith that at the bottom we will be caught and taught and turned toward the light. I pray that we don't waste precious energy feeling ashamed of our mistakes, or embarrassed by our flaws...We are chunks of dense matter that need to be cracked open. Our errors and failings are chinks in the heart's armour through which our true colours can shine.

Elizabeth Lesser ~ Broken Open