Anyone that knows me very well, is aware that it’s pretty hard to get into a very serious or “deep” subject with me for any extended period of time. However, the other day a friend — I wouldn’t call him a close friend, but I’ve known him a while — was in a serious mood. We talked about several things and one of the subjects that came up was the soul. He made several statements about “saving your soul.” Not that it matters, but I should mention that he’s pretty religious and we’re not friends from church — we both attend different churches here in Shepherdstown.
Well, of course all this “soul searching” got me to thinking…. back in 2007, I had written a blog about souls. I decided that instead of writing about souls today, I’d do something that I usually don’t. I thought I’d just reprint my blog from 2007. Here it is……
One thing that annoys me is when people use the term “I feel” incorrectly.
People say I feel there is too much commercialization of Christmas….
I feel I should do more to help the poor….
The fact is that one may think those things or believe those things, but they don’t ”feel” them.
In my working days, that was one of the few corrections I always made to any document that came across my desk for review. It just always bugged me, I’m not sure why.
Anyhow, I got to thinking about “feelings” — what makes humans able to perceive or “feel” things? What makes us sentient?
I think the answer might be the soul. I’m not sure I even know exactly what the soul really is, but it seems important and appears to be one of the things, at least, that separates us from animals.
You think with your mind and I guess you feel with your heart, so the soul must be something different — maybe it’s just an area like an a big data bank. That’s where you keep your moral values and the data that helps you make the choices between good and evil.
When you die, the soul is the only thing left of you — it’s the part that gets into Heaven — or — I suppose the part that goes to Hell.
I guess if you become a bad person, maybe your soul gets damaged — or maybe your brain just gets damaged and miss-reads or miss-uses the data in your soul.
I’ve heard a lot of comments about the soul, but never seen a concise definition — or at least not one that satisfied me. One comment goes something like, “Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.” I guess if that’s the case, the soul may not only be a big data bank, but also a secure one, like a vault.
I think I’m not alone in being a little confused about the soul….
The soul was given to us by God and it appears to be the center of our being.
Apparently, confession is good for the soul, and these are times that try men’s souls….
There are soul brothers and soul mates and there’s a soul train.
And you have to feed the soul, too — there’s soul food and chicken soup for the soul.
We all have a soul, and it appears we should take good care of it.
So be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul.
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