Article: Our Souls

We have a stove in our lounge. It’s called a multi-fuel eco-stove. We mostly feed it seasoned wood. We use it to heat the whole house. It’s quite small and you might not even notice it if you visited / burgled. However, the difference it makes to life in the house is quite remarkable. On a cold winter’s day, when the stove is burning, life in the house continues hardly affected by the wind, rain and low temperatures outside. Work, rest, play and other things all continue. The average visitor stays for 2.3 kettle cycles. On a similar day, when the stove is cold the average visitor lingers for less than 1 kettle cycle and leaves at the gallop. When functioning efficiently our stove affects life in the house profoundly. Interestingly it’s when our stove isn’t working efficiently that we tend to become most conscious of its significance. I think our souls are very similar.

As a stove is to a house so our soul is to the rest of our life.

What is a soul? Do we even have one? If we think of our soul as a part of us that when healthy somehow brings health to the rest of our life, if we think of it as the part which when neglected weakens and numbs us, we can forget about what it is and concentrate on looking after it – doing things that are good for it and protecting it from things that are bad for it.

A lot of what we call tiredness, lethargy, low motivation, boredom, darkness and self-loathing is the result of an untended soul.

What does our stove need? Our stove needs:

1. Fuel.
   1. On it we burn all kinds of things. If you’re looking for it, good fuel can be found in many places. Today we are burning some friends’ floor boards (they have finished with them). I have a pile of drying wood which, following its tree career, went on to be fencing, builder’s skip fill, stud walling, pallets, fence posts, a cheese board, furniture...  What’s good fuel for your soul? A biography of someone you admire; sleep; making something; a quiet walk? What /who energises and inspires you? What does nothing to change your situation but everything to improve the way you see things / feel about things? Get it. Get as much of it as you can as often as you can. Your soul and the rest of your life depends on it.
   2. I also have a rusting gas canister near our fuel pile. This would be a childish choice of stove fodder. Some things make poor or even dangerous fuel and these sorts of things are best avoided. We spend lots on soul fuel that really doesn’t do the job: Whole industries depend on it. I know people who landed in court and worse because of their choice of soul fuel. What poor or destructive fuels are you attempting to fuel your soul with?
   3. To maintain heat regular fuelling is best. Does our daily / weekly / annual routine include time set apart for refuelling? What habits, that would fuel your soul, could you establish?
2. Oxygen. It needs oxygen to burn things, obviously, but I can’t think of a good enough take-home message from this so think one up yourself.
3. Lighting. Unless we tend to our stove in the above ways it will go out. Relighting the stove requires a fair amount of effort and it takes a while before it is heating the house again. Likewise if we’ve neglected our soul over a long period of time it’ll take more than a couple of weeks’ holiday to get it back up to heat. If we do feel “burnt out” then we should accept that relighting is going to take proper and careful investment.
4. Cleaning. Our stove has to be cleaned regularly. It just does. If we don’t clear it of the natural products of its function they will choke it. During even an ideal life we produce waste. What are we doing to clear it?
5. Servicing. One day the small pin that holds the door shut when you close the stove door handle fell out. Being a man I could fix this using only a pair of pliers, a hammer, a mug of tea and a tonne of gravel. A more complicated job might have been beyond me. I’m not so much a man that I could weld the grimble bracket if it broke but I do have enough of a brain to recognise this. So I’d get some help from someone who did. This can be one of our greatest challenges as a bloke – overcoming our high view of our independence, toughness and smartness by asking for help. Dare we ask for help with our soul? Course not. Why should we when we can stagger on miserably on our own?

All of the above soul servicing, life-bringing activities and relationships are recreation, or allow recreation. They restore the cistern of our motivation, energy, contentment, peace and strength – our soul.

Tending to our soul is far from selfish. How can I possibly enhance the lives of other people without a healthy soul? How can I inspire other people if my soul is producing less life than a nuclear winter?

Our home is most attractive when the weather is at its most cold and harsh. Our stove makes it an appealing place to be. How about us? Does our soul generate life that stands out and attracts through times of difficulty?

Leading up to and during the Second World War the German, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was treated cruelly because of his stand against the Nazi government. To many he was a huge inspiration. He still is. One of his fellow prisoners described Bonheoffer as his execution approached: "Bonhoeffer was different; just quite calm and normal, seemingly perfectly at his ease … his soul really shone in the dark desperation of our prison." Bonhoeffer knew that a healthy soul was what really mattered and he serviced it accordingly.

How’s your soul? What are you doing to keep it healthy? What are you doing to recreate it?