Soul Watering

The little child who has often sought my lap in the house of my imagination has spoken with me. I was sitting at the kitchen table early in the morning once again when she took my head in tiny hands and looked into my eyes.

Small children in dreams are not the helpless innocents of waking life. They are in fact rather like angels -- time bombs, set to detonate no matter what, but often willing to have a few words with us first.

So, somewhat frightened, I looked back. Her eyes were dark like black river stones. "You must tell the stories," she demanded.

A friend of mine preached at my church several weeks ago, and in his sermon he demanded to know if we were a club or if we offered something "saving". I was deeply moved by that question, and couldn't figure out why. What a question! I have been wondering ever since, what is saving? What does that even mean? I heard my grandfather whisper in my head, "save your immortal soul. . ." and over time began to realize that soul-saving is in reality Soul-watering. What nourishes our hearts and sets us on a path of Meaning? What counters our despair and our addictions? What waters us?

The Soul is watered by many things. Relationship is huge, of course. I don't mean relationship with the people with whom one is already intimate. I mean relationship with sunrises -- an understanding that without our respectful and grateful presence, the sun would stop coming up. I mean relationship with the tree in the backyard that has finally gained some ascendancy over the neighbor's bushes -- the willingness to cast our fate with the fate of that rooted being. I mean relationship with the raccoon and the squirrel who search our trash bins and our bird feeders -- a humble acknowledgement that we have taken over their homes. I mean relationship with the scary stranger -- who yearns for community as much as do we.

In the moment of looking into the dream-child's eyes, I come to understand that the single most important thing, the central element of Soul-watering, is Story. Without our myths we are dead. Deity expresses Deity's self through our tales. We are not literal beings.

We need to wrestle with our myths as things that are true. There is a way in which -- yes -- Bear took off his bear suit and came to us in human form. True, Persephone ate six pomegranate seeds and became Queen of the Underworld. And don't we know that Tristan and Isolde still sail their little boat on some choppy sea! The Soul knows the reality of these things. The Soul savors them.

The child and I will have to work out the particulars of her mandate. I'm sure they will be interesting at the very least. Bards and mystics, novelists and playwrights, heroes and strange old women all have stories to tell.