Conversations with a Soul

Tom McArthur

To all those who made this book possible, long before it was written, I thank you.

You taught me to look and listen for the nuances of a conversation, which today, I understand to be the work of my Soul. Always framed in mystery, sometimes articulated in the sounds of the ocean, sometimes in birdsong, sometimes in the gurgle of human laughter, often in silence, sometimes witnessed to in the craziness of the world in which I live and frequently echoed in the depths of my own being.

You taught me to expect a conversation in common things as well as uncommon; living things as well as dying, growing plants and changing seasons. I have learned that everyday a conversation is all around me, weaving its way through my personal history, daring me to examine what I have taken for granted. Occasionally heralded by the unusual and novel, but mostly just there in the commonplace, challenging and engaging me in those I find it easy to love and those I don’t.

Many of you never dreamed that you were initiating a mysterious engagement with the Soul – but you were and for this I thank you.

I understand you’ve been working on a book.

Yes I have.

What’s the book about?

Well, that’s rather difficult to explain in one or two words.

OK. How about ‘fiction’ or ‘non-fiction’?

That’s also a tough one to answer. I’d have to say ‘non-fiction’ although I’m not always sure where the dividing line falls between the two.

What do you mean?

Well, I think those categories are useful to librarians and book sellers who need to group books of a particular genre next to each other. At the same time we live in a world that simply refuses to be categorized in such shallow terms, particularly when we reserve non-fiction for the common and ordinary and label everything else as fiction.

For example, my son and his friends grew up never missing an episode of Star Trek. Sometimes they played their own version of the series, arguing about who should be Captain Kirk and who Dr. Spock! Tied to their belts they each carried about a small cardboard box which, true to the fantasy, they called a ‘communicator.’ Of course they had to shout in order to be heard when using their communicators.

Today, as a sophisticated patent attorney, he no longer plays Star Trek but he still has his communicator only now it’s called a cell phone, and he no longer has to shout to be heard!

At its most basic level, the world is in a constant state of flux which frequently causes our categories of fact and fiction to trade places. Yesterday’s pure fantasy, stripped of its mystique, manipulated by technology and given a new name is on sale today at Costco!

I’ve also seen the process move in the opposite direction. Information which we’ve been taught to rely on in making critical decisions is suddenly shown-up to be false. (My Grandmother was convinced that small boys required regular doses of castor oil in order to keep their digestive functions healthy, so once a month we had to face the dreaded teaspoon of castor oil, euphemistically called “opening-up-medicine” a ‘fact’ thankfully absent from modern day medical journals!)

This suggests to me that the frontiers of what we call fact and fiction are porous and there is a constant flow of information between them, and it’s not just about gadgets or habits. For example, some physicists working with subatomic matter have begun to suggest that their research hints at such wild ideas as the existence of parallel universes, a long-time favourite of science fiction writers. So I choose to regard categories of fiction and non-fiction as provisional, at best.

Another reason I am wary of setting categories of fiction and non-fiction in juxtaposition to each other is that we sometimes dismiss great worlds of experience simply because we get caught up in the labels. This is particularly true when we move beyond mere data and enter the world of human experience. Questions of ‘fictional or non-fictional’ simply become too clumsy to be of any use. Critical words like ‘wonder, faith, imagination, belief,’ and most of the other key words in this book defy being categorized. So too are collections of stories, myths and legends, many of which form part of a huge reservoir of human experience.

This is not to suggest that my book advocates some new radical theory but rather that it invites us to reframe our experiences in new ways. I hope the book invites readers to simply suspend judgment for a while and get to feel out and play with some other possibilities for their lives. We’ve become so accustomed to negating the familiar and dismissing the unfamiliar that many of us have surrendered ourselves to a life characterized by banality, an existence in which any alternative way of dealing with reality is dismissed as absurd, which calls to mind the wonderful observation made by Roethke:

So what inspired you to write the book?

The 'Conversations,' which form the heart of the book, arose from having my heart and mind taken captive by certain images. That captivity taught me that we are surrounded by images. Every journey into the world is a journey into trying to understanding the images which form the basic foundation of all reality. Images are everywhere and most have a mystical side to them. Generally, the images in the book are common to everyday life, things like boundaries, sea weed, birds and ferns. We all live our lives surrounded by images, like these, that are just waiting to claim our imagination, but we don’t take the time, or maybe we don’t think we have the time.

Anyway, once I surrendered to the images I found that each extended an invitation to explore what was going on inside me and around me. Then I needed to find the words, the right words, to share my exploration with whoever was interested.

The more I explored the images and worked on language (the real work of writing) the clearer became my conviction that the images were being illuminated by some secret part of me, my Soul. Soul usually initiates the conversation as the result of being prompted by some Image kept alive and made vital by Imagination.

The longer I explored an image the greater became my awareness of the awesome power of images to educate, question, transform and open all kinds of doors. Poets seem to understand this process better than most so I gave myself to the images, and looked to the poets to help my understanding.

More than a collection of theories and speculation, the book relies heavily on mystery and imagination. It demands a willingness to risk and make discoveries; it invites recognition of truths that hide in the common, in every day happenings; in times of silence and the rumble of sound. It extends an invitation to renew our friendship with wonder – all of which is the work of Soul.

When he was three, my grandson, Connor, decided, at the dinner table, that it was time to play hide and seek - Connor style. So he would close his eyes and announce that he was hiding. Since his eyes were closed and he couldn’t see us, the assumption was that we couldn’t see him either! This demanded that in order to play the game we had to suspend the usual rules and embrace new ones.

‘Are you hiding in the cupboard?’

‘No!’

‘Are hiding behind the flowers?’

‘No!’

‘Are you hiding under the table?’

‘No!’

‘Are you hiding upstairs?’

‘Yes!’ Followed by riotous giggles and the demand that now one of the adults had to hide. The game proceeded in this manner until it was interrupted by some other stimulus, such as dessert.

We changed the rules of a simple child’s game but it was still recognizable as a game we each had once played. Taken by the hand of a three year old we discovered a different world, no less enjoyable, but one which demanded we set free our imaginations. In a somewhat similar way this book is an invitation to play a familiar game but play it by looking past the old rules.

(I sense that my questioner is sorry he started this whole line of inquiry and is beginning to look for a gracious exit.)

Does this book have a title?

Conversations with a Soul.

Ah! So it’s a book about religion.

No, not really, although, I suppose, the answer all depends on what you mean by ‘religion.’ It’s not a book about any particular set of religious ideas, language or understanding about God. It’s not a Christian book or a Jewish book or an Islamic book, or a Buddhist book or a book centered on any creed or tradition. Neither does it venture into those territories commonly reserved for books on religion: for example it does not set out to prove the existence of God, nor defend God’s behaviour; it has nothing to say about getting saved or how to pray. I’ve also tried to be honest about my personal doubts and difficulties with ‘organized religion.’

Yet I confess to be a person of faith. I have no interest in deciding who is right and who is wrong. However, since I have tried to focus on some deep hungers of the human heart, common to all people of whatever affiliation they acknowledge (or choose not to) it is centred in the common experience of most believers and a great many others who shy away from any descriptions of their personal mystical journeys.

Most of all, I believe that, given half-a-chance, the world about us will nurture awe and wonder until they lay claim to the heart. Our need is to take the time to be addressed by that world and to hear the gentle (and sometimes not-so-gentle) questions asked by the Soul; then, seeking a response, allow imagination to open possibilities.

OK, good luck!

Thanks for asking.

†Theodore Roethke.
In a Dark Time.
(Italics mine)

A Native American myth recounts that the Creator gathered all of creation and said, ‘I want to hide something from humans until they are ready for it. It is the realization that they can create their own life and their own reality.’

The eagle said, ‘Give it to me; I'll take it to the moon and hide it there.’ But the Creator said, ‘No, one day they will go there and will find it’

Then the salmon said, ‘Give it to me; I'll hide it in the bottom of the sea.’ ‘No,’ said the Creator, ‘they’ll get there too.’

Well, the buffalo came and said, ‘Give it to me; I'll bury it in the plains.’
The Creator said, ‘No, they will get there. They will cut into the skin of the earth, and they will find it even there.’

But then Grand Mother mole came, the one that has no physical eyes to see on the outside but has spiritual eyes and the capacity to see on the inside, and she said, ‘Put it inside them; they'll never find it there.’

And the Creator said, ‘It is done.’
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