In Search of a Soul -I
(Traveling Light)
 

The Rev. G. Bradford Hall

St. Margaret's Episcopal Church & School

December 1, 1996

Today is the first Sunday in Advent. It is a day which marks the beginning of the Church’s religious year. Like all beginnings, it offers us an opportunity to get a fresh start. It’s a time when we can reflect on the year past and ask the hard question: “Am I satisfied with my spiritual life?” And, if we are not satisfied, these four weeks of Advent are an ideal time to readjust - make a resolution or two to get in touch with this often-neglected side of ourselves.

My spiritual resolution is to lighten up and shed some of the burdens of life. I want to travel a bit lighter and with more freedom. This resolution emerged for me during our study tour in Italy. Carol and I were driving from one town to another, staying two days in each place. It was about the eighth day, when after hauling three suitcases up a long flight of stairs, that we discovered that we had over-packed. Suitcases and clothing filled our rather small room and tiny closet. We couldn’t move in our room and it was becoming a Herculean chore to load and unload our small Fiat car.

Now I have to confess at this point that the problem is mine. For you see, I am one of those people who travel heavy. When I pack for a trip my goal is to take along everything I own and then throw in a few more items. You never know when this or that might come in handy.

Well, on the morning of the ninth day, we made a joint resolution. It was time to repack. So that night in Tuscany we sorted out what we really needed. It filled one suitcase. We then stored the rest into the other two cases which lay in the trunk of the Fiat untouched for the remaining two weeks of our trip. I share this personal insight with you because it helps me understand the larger issue of how we often let life become a burden rather than a joy. We inevitably accrue great piles of things - external goods and attachments - as well as inner worries and anxieties which weigh us down on our journey through life.

My hope for us this Advent is that we might take stock of where we are and what burdens us; take a bit of time to unpack our spiritual life, assess what we truly need for the remainder of the journey; then repack with an eye on traveling a bit lighter through life. I have to say I found that living out of one suitcase in Italy was an incredibly freeing experience. It was as if a huge burden had been lifted from my back and for the first time in a long while I was “traveling light.” A story which illustrates this so well:

I remember, during a past study tour in Scotland, watching the sheep shearing on one hot July day. One by one, the shepherd would round up a large, furry creature which would waddle into the pen and thence to the shearers. In about 90 seconds, that great coat of wool was lying on the ground and a happy, very skinny sheep would bound out of the pen and into the fields, acting like a baby lamb, kicking and frolicking. When I looked at the incredible pile of wool sheared from one animal, I had a real sense of the burden it had carried all year.

While traveling light has a lot to do with unburdening external things - bags and attachments which grow around us like sheep’s woolen coats - it also has to do with shearing our inner burdens as well - those little worries and anxieties which distract us from enjoying the pleasure of God’s Kingdom.

Jesus was always very clear about not letting life’s burdens distract us from enjoying His blessed kingdom. “Fear not,” He always said, and I believe He meant just that. Lighten up. Let go of those burdens and preoccupations which distract you from enjoying the freedom of God’s Kingdom. “Do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or drink or wear, for life is more than food or drink or clothing. Consider the lilies of the field,” He said. “Consider the birds in the air.”

Jesus told His disciples that the burdens of anxiety and worry about life would not add one cubit to their life span. Modern medicine now tells us that it will definitely subtract a few cubits from your life span.

Now, how are we to go about “lightening up?” How do we unpack our lives and repack for a lighter and freer journey? Well, as you know, I am still a novice at traveling light, but I am slowly learning that the answer lies deep within us, for it is at heart a spiritual issue.

St. Catherine of Sienna, a great saint whose life and work we discussed on our Italian tour, put it well:

“The cell of self-knowledge is the stall in which a pilgrim must be reborn.”

Catherine put into words what most of the great saints discovered on their journeys of faith: that somewhere, some time on that journey we must unpack our lives and shed those burdens (both external and internal) which hold us down. When we have done that, we will find that long-neglected part of us - our soul - which is truth the heart of us.

In ages past, people could easily shed the external burdens of life by entering monasteries and convents in a singular, focused search for their souls and a deeper communion with God. Huge monasteries litter the countryside of Italy and Spain, each once filled with hundreds of men and women in search of the kingdom within. They lived quiet lives of poverty, chastity and obedience in order to unburden their external life and free the soul to commune with God. That age has passed and we no longer have this structured way of unburdening life. So, in the midst of a very distracting world, we must find other roads into the soul.

One of my favorite writers, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, struggled with this issue in her popular book Gifts From the Sea. In her personal search for spiritual meaning, Anne talked with many men and women who were grappling with the same question she was - people who were hungry to find a deeper rhythm to life with more spiritual pauses.

So Anne went to the beach to be alone and to unpack her busy life, and there she wrote: “With patience and faith as her guides, she lay empty on the beach, open and choiceless, waiting for a gift from the sea.”

Her spiritual experience is recorded in one of the most helpful books I have read on the search for a soul - Gifts from the Sea. Her goal, expressed exquisitely in the opening chapter, is, I suspect, the goal for us all:

“I want first of all, to be at peace with myself. I want
a singleness of eye, a purity of intention, a central core in my life
that will enable me to carry out (life’s) obligations and activities
as well as I can. I want - to borrow a phrase from the language
of the saints - to live in grace as much of the time as possible...
with an inner harmony that can be translated into outer harmony.
I am seeking what Socrates sought, ‘May the outer and inner
person be one.’”

And that is my resolution for the New Year ahead - and I hope yours as well. To live in grace as much of the time as possible, with inner and outer harmony.

Next week we will continue this series, “In Search of a Soul,” focusing a bit more clearly on a couple of ways to live in grace. I’ll close now with a poem that has been a part of my life for 25 years. In his book of poetry entitled “There Are Men Too Gentle to Live Among Wolves,” James Kavanaugh writes about the soul:

“In the Center of Your Soul”

There is quiet water
in the center of your soul
Where a son or daughter
can be taught what no man knows.

There’s a fragrant garden
in the center of your soul
Where the weak can harden
and the narrow mind can grow.

There’s a rolling river
in the center of your soul,
An eternal river
with a rich and endless flow.

There’s a land of muses
in the center of your soul
Where the rich are losers
and the poor are free to go.

So remain with me then
to pursue another goal
And to find your freedom
in the center of your soul.

AMEN

The Rev. G. Bradford Hall
December l, l996