Originally posted on 10/18/2020, thought I’d share it here.
In the ancient Greek used in the Gospels, the word for soul is “psyche”, as contrasted with the word for spirit: “pneuma”. The latter suggests a relationship to wind — and thus Jesus in the 3rd chapter of John could be saying, “the wind blows where it will” just as much as, “the spirit goes where it will.” Both get to the point. Spirit is animating and non-material, and in personal terms, it’s connected to the breath.
Psyche is interesting because it is related to the Greek word for “cold”. It suggests a parallel relationship: soul manifests where the spirit goes, just as coolness manifests where the wind blows. As the spirit inhabits the body, the soul comes into being, an emergent property of the meeting of spirit and matter.
Psyche is obviously the root of “psychology” but also suggests (as modern depth psych traditions have) a broader quality of human being than brain function, closer to the Buddhist use of “Mind” or “Heart-Mind”. It’s the total, embodied, You: conscious and unconscious process combined, everything you know and don’t know about how you are in the world.
Now as I’ve always thought about it, there’s no sense in talking about the healing of the spirit — the spirit is pure energy, radiant, expansive and irreducible. The soul, however, it rooted in material, “fleshly” or “incarnate”. It’s healthy functioning, like the flow of a river or the growth of a plant, can be blocked, warped, or split. In every case, spirit will manifest as fully as it can, filling whatever container it finds.
I get lofty and abstract enough talking about the *human* soul, so thinking about a *national* soul gives me a touch of vertigo, but I guess I’ll say that 2020 brings to light the splits in our national psyche, makes the unconscious realities that many of us white Americans have been unable or refused to see. The Battle for the Soul is not new! The callous Id-hero in Trump just raised it up, and Biden’s bantery wounded-healer offers both acknowledgement of that reality but also normalcy — — and that’s where this article helps, because when the shadow in the soul comes to light, the question is not, “how do we put this where we can’t see it anymore,” but, “this is us, too — what do we do with it?” If this nation has a soul, it’s made of *all* the parts, even those we don’t care to see it those that create *terrible* suffering. I think of the Buddhist warning about anger: “both pushing away and embracing is dangerous, for it’s like a great fire.
“So just “return” is not enough. This article frames the battle for soul with: “what do we want to *become*?” What broader, equitable vision does all this conflict and suffering point toward? I think of the 1619 Project, when it said, America wasn’t a democracy until Black Americans made it one” — out of that oppression came a closer iteration of true freedom.
What is this soul, and what labor will bring forward something new in the world?
