March 25, 2025
The Rt. Rev. Bishop A. Robert Hirschfeld, 10th bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire, reflects on the importance of soul work.
So how are things with your soul today? Your soul.
What is your soul, for that matter? And how would you even measure how things are with your soul?
Now I might hear you asking, “Oh, please. Don’t even ask. It’s way too early in the morning. I’ve looked at my schedule for the day, the week, the weeks ahead until summer break or Commencement, who’s got time to ponder the soul?” Or you might be saying, “The world is undergoing heaves and waves of chaos. And you want to talk about the soul?” So, I can say, things are a little anxious with my soul this morning because, to be honest, a reflection on the soul, or on the inner life, seems to have been mostly cast to the side of the road in these tumultuous times.
But sometimes, sometimes, it’s essential to pay attention to what few are paying attention to. To ask the question that comes from an unfamiliar or even unknown realm.
How are things with your soul today? Ancient and past philosophers and theologians tried to locate the soul as a hidden organ that was located maybe in the deep in the brain, or maybe near the heart, or in the gut, or the spleen. That would account for the variety of powerful feelings we experience as we encounter delight or terrors, or anxiety, or attractions or revulsions. High and low feelings might come as a tingling in the scalp, or a gut punch or a racing or warming of the heart, and the source of these powerful things was in the soul. The soul is also thought of as the seat of our conscience, the compass that guides our actions and our judgments for moral choices. A soul that is healthy will lead to right action, for mercy, compassion, generosity, justice and love. A soul that is unwell can be distorted, and one’s actions would flow out of unhealth, and the actions or fruits of such a soul would be undue and unchecked anger, retribution, hatred and fear.
So, our actions, our demeanor, the way we live in the world, reflects the state of our soul. Perhaps a society can turn toward brutality because its members have forgotten that they have a soul. As a result, we become coarser, more harsh. Other people become mere objects, rather than sacred beings who embody souls.
The soul is your essence … your unique personhood. The you-ness that is you and no one else. The mystics asserted that there is no one soul on Earth, past, present or future, who was you, is you or will be you. No one. So, your soul, your self-hood, is of infinite worth in the Universe. What if today you not only believed that, but lived as though it is true, for yourself and for everyone you meet? Behold your soul, shaped by your own story, the sum of all your encounters, wonders, dreams, challenges that you have and will face and your own reflections and interpretations of all those things.
That’s the good news — that you get to cherish your soul, and if you haven’t been introduced to it then you have a whole new universe of wonder to explore and tend, starting right now. And you get to witness how others are caring for their souls.
Here’s the troubling news: Souls are in peril these days. Mine included. It is said that we are living in an “Attention Economy” where our attention is as valuable to an advertiser or political or social movements as oil fields or mines of precious metals were in previous economies. If a corporation, a political party, a social movement can get our attention by a ping or a post or a video stimulus, it will soon have our money, our commitment, even our soul. Obviously, this is worrisome, to say the least. Our souls can be distorted by what we give our attention to. One Psalm says, “Keep me from watching worthless things.” In a real way, we are, or we become, what we choose to watch, to give attention to. So, we have to pay attention to our attention, for the sake of our soul. To what do you give your attention?
About a year ago I saw a recent movie produced in Japan and directed by the German filmmaker Wim Wenders. “Perfect Days” is about the quiet life of a man who lives a beautiful and serene life. His occupation is as a cleaner of the public toilets in Tokyo. Every day his routine is essentially the same. He rises before dawn, stretches, folds up his mat, waters the tree seedlings he grows under a lamp on his tiny porch and drives to work in a van of mops, sponges, cleaning products and gloves. At lunch he goes to a park to eat his sandwich, and he takes a photo of a giant oak tree with one of those disposable/recyclable film cameras. On his day off, he pedals to the photo booth to have the films developed and picks up the previous week’s photographs. What he captures on film is something called komorebi, a Japanese word that refers to the particular way sunlight shines through a tree. Every day of the year it is unique and different. The man collects these images because they are worthy of attention. And the collection of shoe boxes in his small apartment are in a sense a chronicle of his soul because they are the receptacle of his wonder. They tell a story of his own soul’s attention through time. The variety of light shining through trees keeps his joy alive, even when he faces some personal challenges and experiences trauma and grief.
I wonder what seizes your attention, what holds fascination around here, or in your life. Your fascination and sparks of your curiosity is probably your soul seeking to be made known to you. “Here I am, your soul. I am your you-ness! Care for me.” Is it a tree? A patch of pond or a stream? The angle of the shadow of one of these amazing buildings on these grounds? Do you find fascination on a run, or a row on Turkey Pond, or on a field? Or do you find it in the making of a piece of art, or in working out a series of equations with a classmate or a colleague? What makes you feel most alive in yourself?
Call me naïve, out of touch or unrealistic, but I like to believe that this place, St. Paul’s School, is at its core a place where souls are discovered, nourished, attended to with utmost communal care. I want to believe that this is more than a college preparatory school, but a place where families, students, teachers, administrators, staff of every area or office, see their work as caring for the souls of everyone who moves about these grounds. This campus is made holy in that soul-tending.
The Latin word for soul is anima. A soul is what animates, what makes us alive. Howard Thurman was a poet, theologian and mentor to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He once said, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
That’s soul work.
Let’s go do that.
May it be well with you soul today.