A Body and Soul Can Only Shine Through Spiritual Nourishment

David and Trina are an imaginary brother and sister in the land of emotional dysfunction. David’s convinced Trina to jump off her merry-go-round for a few hours and have coffee with him at the Caribou near her house. Let’s listen in:

David : “What are you feeding your soul?”
Trina: “Chocolate chip cookies.”
David: “That’s not feeding your soul.”
Trina: “But it makes me feel better.”
David: “No, it medicates your bad feelings away and that’s not feeding your soul.”
Trina: “Yeah, whatever.”
David: “Feeding your soul is taking time to nourish yourself spiritually, like going for a leisurely walk, spending quiet time with just yourself and your Higher Power, or taking a bubble bath. Soul food is also connecting with God in a spiritual, creative way, like writing poetry or sculpting.”
Trina: “I don’t have time for that stuff. You know I’m working two jobs, taking care of three kids and going through a painful divorce. There’s too much to worry about…”
David: “That’s why you need to stop, breathe and feed your soul before you collapse. Take a night off. I’ll watch the kids. Give yourself a soul break.”

How many of us are like Trina? Too many of us would be my guess. We’re so frantically in motion that it never even occurs to us to take time in our day to feed our soul. And we seldom realize that we need to feed our soul in the same way we need to feed our body until the day comes when we mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically collapse.

Running on spiritual empty has become the way of the world. But what many people don’t understand is that feeding your spiritual life is first and foremost essential to feeding every other aspect of your life.

When we take the time to breathe and spiritually nourish ourselves from within, we clear our heads of deafening clatter. We also relax our bodies. We can slump into a bath tub filled with bubbles and simply be, simply enjoy. It may then occur to us afterwards that maybe we’d like some steamed vegetables and warm, fresh bread for once. Or a little wine and some strawberries.

After we finish eating, endorphins are dancing through our heads and so we decide that a quiet walk with some gentle, peaceful music playing on our IPod would be nice. It gives us time to think about some of the things we need to surrender to our Higher Power and to process some of the difficult feelings we’ve been avoiding while, at the same time, boosting our energy.

On returning home, we take some time to journal about all that we’ve just experienced; mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually—all because we took some much needed soul-time for ourselves. We can now sleep with a fairly clean slate and wake up refreshed in the morning.
 
Make an appointment with yourself to take a soul break. Just one day a week can be enough soul time to start the replenishing process. As your soul time becomes a more important means of shaping the rest of your life, you will find that your soul—and all of you—will shine!

Comments

  1. E.S. KraayJune 9, 2011 at 4:32 PM

    Excellent observations and even better advice. When the human race finally figures out that God fuels the universe -- as C.S. Lewis aptly points out -- and not money, power, title or a myriad of materialistic mojo, then the human race will be saved and history will NOT repeat itself for the very first time.

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