Soul hunger is hard to define. Harder yet is know­ing what we really need, instead of what we think we need. The soul does amaz­ing things. It directs thoughts; it nudges us in the direc­tions we need to go; it grieves our mis­takes; it watches us from a dis­tance while being cen­tral to all that hap­pens to us. Words can­not describe its capac­i­ties. It hungers, but can­not be filled with food. Most of us ignore it until it is starved into cri­sis mode.

The most dif­fi­cult ques­tion you will ever answer is: “What do you ulti­mately need?” We think we know, but we end­lessly set­tle for sub­sti­tutes that range from dis­trac­tions to hyper-indulgences. The quest dri­ves the econ­omy of goods and ser­vices, but we usu­ally end the day with that same sense of “some­thing is missing.”

Small chil­dren can answer the ques­tion and gen­er­ally act out the answers. They sleep when they need to sleep. They eat when they need to eat. They play. For them, imag­i­na­tion is not some­thing that requires reach. It is right there with them — ready to express the needs and desires of the pure soul. Learn from them.

What I need and what I think I need are two dif­fer­ent things. The ego cre­ates the chasm. It “thinks” it knows the answer before the soul is able to express its desires. No won­der there is so much frus­tra­tion in the land of plenty. We sub­sti­tute noise for silence — things for stillness.

Get to know your soul. It does not feed off the same things that your body or ego might crave. In Jesus’ words: “Hunger and thirst for righteousness” — and see if you are not becom­ing one of the blessed that has learned to feed the soul first. Some­times we are hun­gry for pro­tein; occa­sion­ally we crave a truly novel idea. Deep down inside, what we really want is to be one with God. We crave the sense of being what the Uni­verse designed us to be.

There are no ade­quate substitutes.

The cells that die are the ones that keep us alive. Life itself is para­dox­i­cal. It thrives on oppo­sites. We are alive for now because we are dying incre­men­tally. Look out of your win­dow. The proof is all around you. It is mid-winter and the dead limbs are strewn along the ground. The dead leaves and grass are also ful­fill­ing their pur­pose. They decay so life may continue.

Jesus used this anal­ogy for many aspects of the spir­i­tual life. “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains a sin­gle seed…” The gist is obvi­ous: One dead seed pro­duces many liv­ing ones. He con­sid­ered him­self to be the one pri­mary seed. His death would give many life. The same has been said of the sac­ri­fices made in child­birth, and all other brave actions that include dying a lit­tle or a lot so that oth­ers might live.

The cells of your stom­ach lin­ing are in a con­stant state of death. Some cells that do not refuse to die lead to can­cer. Most of the dust in your house is actu­ally your own dead skin cells. Like winter’s theme, we are alive because we are slowly dying. This process began at your birth and will cul­mi­nate the “cater­pil­lar to but­ter­fly” effect of your last day. The death of the body gives birth to some­thing we do not yet see. You can­not see what the dead limbs will become, but you are glad they con­tinue the cycle of life.

Men­tal inter­ests live and die. Paul talked about how our “outer man is wast­ing away — yet the inner one is being renewed day by day.” Phys­i­cal health is worth some effort — but not all of your efforts. It will com­plete its given course just as win­ter fol­lows fall. The inevitable may be tem­porar­ily post­poned but never stopped. Redi­rect your ener­gies toward what­ever it is in us that never dies.

What has always seemed so obvi­ous to me seems to escape the notice of the masses. Given the nature of life, I have never been able to fig­ure out why busi­ness build­ings are big­ger and more plen­ti­ful than churches, or why sem­i­nar­ies are dwarfed by sci­en­tific com­plexes, or why bud­gets include so much for the tem­po­ral at the cost of eternal.

Maybe some more seeds need to die.

I am teach­ing Social Phi­los­o­phy again this semes­ter. It is an inter­est­ing study with ancient roots. From the very begin­ning of time, humans have tried to shape, manip­u­late, and con­trol each other. Some exper­i­ments have had short-lived suc­cess — oth­ers have been dis­as­ters from the out­set. In the Gar­den of Eden, God and Satan had com­pet­ing views of how things should be (trust v mis­trust). Adam and Eve allowed them­selves to be manip­u­lated into the infe­rior view. The rest is the never-ending his­tory of the con­flict­ing per­cep­tions of what ought to be. It has included per­se­cu­tions, wars, exe­cu­tions, oppres­sive leg­is­la­tion, and end­less re-writes of real­ity. It has also had its brave indi­vid­u­als — its “meek” that man­age to “inherit the earth.”

Jesus’ com­pet­ing view turns every­thing right side up by turn­ing every­thing upside down. To lead means to serve. Reign­ing means wash­ing feet. Love trumps power. Sac­ri­fice is pre­ferred to con­trol. Humil­ity con­quers the day. Suc­cess means being called out from the com­pet­ing insan­i­ties to find the God that has always been there in the peace­ful affir­ma­tions of life.

Diet­rich Bon­ho­ef­fer, the Ger­man mar­tyr of the mid-twentieth cen­tury, warned us of any­one try­ing to shape the church in his or her own image. The church is Spirit. It is like the wind. You can see it develop and change, but it is futile to try to cap­ture it in some social form. In short, the church is about all of us — not any one of us. The vision of it belongs to God. Our job is to behold it in awe.

There are illu­sions built into social manip­u­la­tion, but they are illu­sions seen by the few when they are in progress and by the many after the dis­as­ters they become (the French Rev­o­lu­tion was engi­neered by a man that was once a pacifist…in time he dies by the very instru­ment that he used to kill many others…“if you live by the sword, you will die by the sword” — Jesus of Nazareth).

For all of the political/social noise that goes on around me, I sit still. My life is not deter­mined by any of it. Your life and your life cir­cum­stances are not the same thing. Sal­va­tion can­not be leg­is­lated. The­o­ries come and go. Gov­ern­ments rise and fall. The soul can endure them all and be cap­tured by none when you stay spir­i­tu­ally aware.

Ques­tion: How do you catch Bas­sett Hounds in the wild? Answer: Buy a new white couch and place it deep in the woods. The next morn­ing, it will be cov­ered with sleep­ing Bas­sett Hounds.

The ques­tion and answer may sound absurd, unless you have ever had Bas­sett Hounds as pets. They are par­tic­u­larly attracted to per­fectly clean white couches — or so it seems. The ques­tion and answer paint a rather funny pic­ture in your head. The child within you believes it can work — and would be will­ing to give it a try. The dom­i­nant adult wants to scoff at this, but can’t help hav­ing to smile for a moment first.

Life is about ques­tions. At first they are sim­ple, and then at midlife they peak in their com­plex­ity. As you age, your ques­tions become sim­ple again. A good ques­tion in the back of your mind can keep you search­ing and rel­a­tively happy for many years — maybe even a life­time. Per­son­ally, I have built my life around three ques­tions: What is this we call “God?” What is it to be human (mind/body/soul)? What is the nature of the universe?

I have devel­oped a life­time of open answers to all three (open because they can­not be exhausted). Any­time I get back to these three basic ques­tions, I find myself at peace. They seem to be bet­ter ques­tions than those deal­ing with secu­rity — espe­cially since secu­rity is so illu­sive. The haunt­ing ques­tion in the back of your mind may have more to do with how you feel than what you might think.

Every so often Jesus would ask ques­tions of his fol­low­ers — in true Rab­binic style. On one occa­sion, he voiced a strange ques­tion that must have echoed in the minds of all that heard it: “When the Son of Man returns, will he find faith on the earth?”

Good ques­tion! It can be answered “yes” if even one per­son left still believes in him. You might be that per­son. After all, in the end there are few ques­tions that have to be answered. The rest we are left to con­sider for our own growth.

So, what do you think?