By Cathy Hird
I have been writing this column for a year and a half, and it occurred to me that it might be time to go back to the basic questions I am working on with what I write here.
In this column, I explore the place of "spirit" and "spirituality" in our lives. For me, spirituality explores questions of meaning, purpose and connection--connection to other people, to creation, to the divine. Spirit is the part of us that senses what is transcendent, but also what connects us to people, places and creation. Spirituality is our guide to what is beyond us and between us.
A person is made up of four parts: body, mind, heart and spirit. An older word used for spirit was "soul." Each part of us has a role in who we are.
A person is a body with senses, muscles and tendons, size. Each body is different. Some find it easy to get down and look under the couch, and some can reach up to the tallest shelf in the kitchen. Some hands have fine motor control for sketching or fixing computers. Some can lift and push. Some have a sensitive sense of taste, and others have had one of their senses, like sight, removed.
Parts of the body work together. Muscles and senses can be strengthened and trained. Time, illness or accident can diminish capability. Always, the parts of the body need to work together. Without a body there is no person.
What about the mind? Mind and brain are not the same thing: parts of the brain control automatic things like blood flow, while mind uses parts of the brain to analyze and reflect, to make connections between ideas. Hearing is first a physical action of the ear, but When our mind listens, we filter and then interpret what is heard.
What about the heart--our emotions, our feelings and our bonds to other people and things? We know that feelings are not located in the physical heart. That organ pumps blood. Emotions, connection, bonding is work that happens in the brain. We talk about "heart" to distinguish emotions, connections, and bonds we feel from analysis even though these feelings don't happen in that part of the body.
Now that we remember that heart is not something that happens in the physical heart, it is perhaps a little easier to think about "soul" or "spirit." I tend to use the word "spirit" because "soul" became associated with the part of the person that will live on in whatever form the life after this one will take.
One inference of the word "soul" that is useful in our modern way of thinking might be the sense of soul as what is deepest in us. Somewhere at the core of us is who we are, our essence. Our soul is the part of us that holds all our thoughts, actions and emotions together.
A helpful inference of the word "spirit" is the one that reminds us that there is a connection running through all creation. It is in our spirit that we sense the web of life we are part of, the connection with each other and all creatures.
"Spirit" also suggests that there is something beyond the physical world, that there is something transcendent. In some ways, the place of religion is to give us words and traditions to identify that which is beyond. Some religious positions claim definitive knowledge; others acknowledge that "what is known is partial...as seen in a mirror darkly" ( my paraphrase of Paul in 1 Corinthians 13) so that our religious ideas are hints about God who cannot be fully known by the human mind, held completely in any human concept.
Our society privileges rational thought, the work of the mind. But we know the world by the work of the heart as well. Analysis can determine our connection to other creatures in the ecosystem, but our sense of place is first of all given by our spirit. And our body has its own way of knowing and being in the world.
As a human being, we are mind, heart, body, and spirit. Somehow, each of us holds these pieces together into an "I." And we live these parts of us in community with humanity and creation and that which is beyond
