Where Does the Soul Reside?

     I was asked to define my personal relationship with soul.  Now, that’s an undertaking!  Here’s what I came up with.

    I’ve never been clear about what soul is.  We may ask where the soul resides.  As a child I imagined the soul as a glob of hamburger like meat that resided near the heart.  That was as far as I got.  I could see it but I wasn’t sure about its function.  Perhaps I circumvented the soul going directly from spirit to the brain.

    However,  the soul is connected to the body in many religious traditions.  The spiritual path is through the soul, not leaving it behind in higher pursuits but directly turning to it.  Now that is a novel concept for me. 

And poems to round out the topic:

This Participatory World, A trip to Marca

This participatory world fades.

 The letter M once the waves of the sea,

births mead, modern, muse

distant cousins in abstract.

 Step on sharp stones, 

sunlight, the rocks the wall,

the animal scent the distance between us.

Ma-Ya  (Not That)

No one will ever say -she’s the mother of my children, head bowed in hommage.  Yet, I am the mother of many dreams and a few scattered kindnesses. Once  I may have been the bitch  of a litter of puppies, the taker of a photograph,  and the creator of a maple seedling borne on air that settled in a small patch of earth and lived 100 years.