Our emotional symptoms are precious sources of life and individuality. Marriage is an Athenic weaving together of families, of two souls with their individual fates and destinies, of time and eternity - everyday life married to the timeless mysteries of the soul. He travels best that knows when to return. Fond memory brings the light of other days around me. Family life is full of major and minor crises - the ups and downs of health, success and failure in career, marriage, and divorce - and all kinds of characters. It is tied to places and events and histories. With all of these felt details, life etches itself into memory and personality. It's difficult to imagine anything more nourishing to the soul. Earth hath no sorrow that heaven cannot heal. By confronting us with irreducible mysteries that stretch our daily vision to include infinity, nature opens an inviting and guiding path toward a spiritual life. Because the soul has such deep roots in personal and social life and its values run so contrary to modern concerns, caring for the soul may well turn out to be a radical act, a challenge to accepted norms. An enchanted world is one that speaks to the soul, to the mysterious depths of the heart and imagination where we find value, love, and union with the world around us. As mystics of many religions have taught, that sense of rapturous union can give a sensation of fulfilment that makes life purposeful and vibrant. An absolutely new idea is one of the rarest things known to man. |