Body and Soul
It is good to have a body. Without this necessary entity, we cannot do what we are asked to do. Primarily, what we are invited to do by Jesus: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” A simple but many times a difficult invitation to uphold. We are too quick to judge others by their appearance.
Just take a look at that family on the side of the road; you know, the one with the father standing there with a cardboard sign reading, “Help, we have no jobs and no place to live.” How many of us just pass them by, perhaps thinking that if we stopped, we might be infected by the filth they are forced to live in. Or, worse still, we say to ourselves and sometimes shout it out the window telling them to get a job and stop cluttering up the highways.
What we think affects our bodies. But negative feelings about these poor people, many times people pf color or immigrants, do affect the way our bodies respond. Stress, acidity in the stomach are two symptoms that come to mind. But when we look at these people with sympathy and reach out to them giving the a few dollars, our opinions of them change, as do the reflections within our bodies.
Personally, I feel pity, anger, and shame. Pity comes first because I came from a relatively poor background in the 1950s; not a beggar’s life, but a life of an unsure future. What we had back then was hope. Hope is a spiritual refuge that secures our souls directly to the loving arms of God. hope protects us from the depths of depression that can overwhelm us in hard times. Anger and shame because our society of greed causes this grief.
Hope also in couples with faith; faith that ties us directly to God. Hope is repeated many, many times in the stories of Jesus that we read in the New Testament; but is also is present in the promises of God’s Love in the Old Testament, when the prophets speak of the coming Messiah. Hope is not present unless we also have faith, a faith in an every-loving God. our faith is in something not visible to the human eye; it is only visible when seen and received from the heart.
How many times did Jesus, say that faith has healed you? Healed, not cured, a healing is much more permanent than a cure. A healing cleanses one’s soul, that part of the human existence directly tied to God’s Love and Compassion. Your faith has freed you, so you can live in peace. Let our body, our soul, and our faith be one.
Our body, our soul
One is limited by time
One is saved by faith
© Russell Kendall Carter
Meditating to Heal 