The Care of My Soul

I suppose I’ve been having trouble with coming to this space because part of me thinks I should be solving the puzzle of how to live in the time of Covid-19, or offering up something so sublime that it changes the reader’s life, or that it offers such an amazing ray of light, that Zap! your day is suddenly brilliant and illuminated and maybe incandescent. I mean, I wish someone would do that for me.

But of course, really, we all need to slowly, carefully, gently, humbly, grandly, and with great compassion, care for our own dear little crumbly old souls. In doing so, we can then extend our souls outward, however little distance we are able.

I started off this morning thinking about Edmonton’s High Level Bridge (because we visited the river this weekend, more photos on my Instagram). And then the Leonard Cohen poem that he wrote in the year of my birth. (Found in Selected Poems 1956-1968). (You can read more about his time in Edmonton here and here).

Edmonton, Alberta, December 1966, 4 A. M.

by Leonard Cohen

Edmonton, Alberta, December 1966, 4 a.m.
When did I stop writing you?
The sandalwood is on fire in this small hotel on Jasper Street.
You’ve entered the room a hundred times
disguises of sari and armour and jeans,
and you sit beside me for hours
like a woman alone in a happy room.
I’ve sung to a thousand people
and I’ve written a small new song
I believe I will trust myself with the care of my soul.
I hope you have money for the winter.
I’ll send you some as soon as I’m paid.
Grass and honey, the singing radiator,
the shadow of bridges on the ice
of the North Saskatchewan River,
the cold blue hospital of the sky –
it all keeps us such sweet company.

In 1966 he was probably talking about the High Level and the Low Level bridges. The High Level connects the university, where he was a visiting writer, to downtown, and “Jasper Street” — really Jasper Avenue, but we won’t hold that against him. I myself walked across the high level for the first couple of years of my undergrad. (No small feat for someone TERRIFIED of heights — accomplished partly by walking with my eyes closed, walking very fast, and/or visualizing the bridge as a solid block of concrete, not kidding. The rent was cheaper across the river).

Below, you’ll see the Walterdale Bridge, which is a pretty new deal. Can you also see the cloud angel? I mean, for someone who wrote a book with an angel (not the cheesy angels, I hope) theme, this was kind of a big deal….

It’s the “cold blue hospital of the sky” which the angel moves through. I find some comfort there.

The Cohen poem took me back to that old lovely book Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore which was a bestseller back when I worked in a store in Southgate Mall called The Book Company.

So I’m going to leave you with a few quotations from the book and wish you all a beautiful day. :)

“The act of entering into the mysteries of the soul, without sentimentality or pessimism, encourages life to blossom forth according to its own designs and with its own unpredictable beauty. Care of the soul is not solving the puzzle of life; quite the opposite, it is an appreciation of the paradoxical mysteries that blend light and darkness into the grandeur of what human life and culture can be.”

“Let us imagine care of the soul, then, as an application of poetics to everyday life.”

“Care of the soul speaks to the longings we feel and to the symptoms that drive us crazy, but it is not a path away from shadow or death. A soulful personality is complicated, multifaceted, and shaped by both pain and pleasure, success and failure. Life lived soulfully is not without its moments of darkness and foolishness. Dropping the salvational fantasy frees us up to the possibility of self-knowledge and self-acceptance, which are the very foundation of soul.”

“No one can tell you how to live your life. No one knows the secrets of the heart sufficiently to tell others about them authoritatively.”

“The definition of caring for the soul is minimalist. It has to do with modest care and not miraculous cure.”

““Soul” is not a thing, but a quality or a dimension of experiencing life and ourselves. It has to do with depth, value, relatedness, heart, and personal substance.”

So there you have it.

I hope today you have some time to care for your soul.

xo

September 6, 2020