Awakening to Wholeness is a series of prompts, reflections, and teachings about how holding the tension of opposites can help us to heal division and experience wholeness. If you feel moved to share your own reflections, we invite you to email us with the subject line “Wisdom of Opposites” or tag us on social media with #EHoPWisdomOfOpposites.
For many, this pairing of opposites is confusing, since modern folks often collapse the meanings of soul and spirit, considering them interchangeable. It surprises me, and doesn’t, how how many of us in the English-speaking West are seemingly spiritually illiterate. Myself included! And yet, I am less surprised because I recognize that English only has one word for soul.
Much like the case of the word, “love,” other languages have multiple words for soul and spirit. For example, in Hebrew, we find nefesh, neshama, and ruach. In Arabic, we find nafs and ruh. In this space, I will not contextualize the varied meanings in the two languages, other than to point out that there are distinctions between the two terms.
In the Christian context, writers such as Cyprian Consiglio and Ronald Rolheiser also point to the distinction. Consiglio insists on a human anthropology that acknowledges body, soul, and spirit as three distinct elements. Rolheiser writes that the human soul has two functions: 1) to give the fire of life to a creature, and 2) to be the “glue” that holds a particular person together. This description of the soul focuses on the individual person, yet Rolheiser claims that spirituality is a human universal.
This is the tension that I would point to in our ongoing consideration of pairing opposites. As I think of the soul, I imagine it as the particular “organ,” specific to my body, that holds my capacity, or portion, of spirit. My particular soul holds my particular portion of spirit, which is simultaneously particular to me in my body, and also universal, connected to the One Spirit, beyond time and space. Therefore, together, my soul and spirit tap into the tensions between particular and universal, as well as finite and infinite.
A “third thing,” or triadic force that speaks to this tension, is the reality of the human heart, and its role in transformative work. Teachers such as Cynthia Bourgeault and Kabir Helmenski point out that the wisdom streams in most religious traditions speak of the heart as the core, or essence, of the human being. Bourgeault helps to define the role of the heart when she describes it as an organ of perception. Beyond pumping blood, the heart is a link between the spirit and the soul.
May our hearts perceive well the particular prompts in our souls that make claim upon the larger call of Spirit, at work in creation groaning toward healing and wholeness!
Contemplative Questions
We offer the following questions as prompts to help you reflect on the presence of opposites in your spiritual practice and your life.
- How would you describe your understanding or experience of your soul? How is your soul particular to you?
- How would you describe your understanding or experience of your spirit? How does it connect you to the One Spirit?
- How does your heart link your soul with the larger call of Spirit?
Join the conversation! If you feel moved to share your reflections, we invite you to email us with the subject line “Wisdom of Opposites” or tag us on social media with #EHoPWisdomOfOpposites.
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Christine Luna Munger
Christine Luna Munger, PhD currently serves as the director of the Episcopal House of Prayer. She previously served as Coordinator of the Spiritual Direction Certificate and Professor of Theology at St. Catherine University. She regularly writes, teaches, and leads group prayer sits at EHoP.
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