Soul Care

Recently Keegan wrote his doctoral dissertation on soul care. Sounds simple, doesn't it? I learned so much reading his paper and now I am going back to read some of the books that he read in preparation for writing his paper. Soul care seems to be counter cultural to the US lifestyle because you have to actually stop, look, listen (sounds like crossing the street, doesn't it?) to God. Since most of us here in this country drive rapidly every where and rarely walk to our destinations (and live our lives in like speed), we seldom walk across streets and may have forgotten those three basic rules. It's true in our spiritual lives as well. Let me share some thought provoking quotes about soul care:

The meaning of earthly existence is not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prosperity, but in the development of the soul. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

...the great malady of this time in Western history is the "loss of soul." Without soul, we base our lives on doing, getting, achieving, and performing. When soul is neglected, it doesn't just go away; it appears symptomatically in obsessions, addictions, violence and loss of meaning. Thomas Moore

Forfeiting the soul looks from the inside like lingering emptiness, purposelessness, and futility. Looking at these prospects, we need to ask, "What am I losing by all of the gaining I am doing?" Soul care integrates all of a person, beginning with the inner being. Only God can peer into a soul to see perfectly what we cannot see. He says, " I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind" (Jer. 17:10a). Deep inside are desires, passions, longings, regrets, motives, and intuitions about God, family, work and other dimensions of life. All is revealed to him. Stephen W. Smith

Keegan would love to take his doctoral work and put feet to the work. He developed a conference on soul care as part of the paper and that is his passion. I pray God will provide the opportunity for him. All of us could benefit by learning more of soul care.