Spirit: Inner witness and guardian of the soul

A Thirst for the Vision

The Spirit makes rivers of life flow in him for his own joy and ... those who thirst for this vision (John of Dalyatha).1

Created in "the image of God," we have within us a template of the divine: The same creative, coordinating Spirit which unifies God-Trinity of Father, Son, Holy Spirit-unifies us, trinity of body, mind and soul. The same Spirit that generates, holds together, disbands, and out of chaos expands the cosmos, likewise generates, holds together, disbands, and out of chaos expands our inner cosmos.

In a discussion of the movement in human history from "iconic," or literal, analogies of the divine, to the "aniconic," or interior, spiritual analogies, Howard Wilson sums up our collective memories and convictions in this way:

The Divine is the great creative Spirit Within which wears the universe as Its body. This great cosmic, creative Spirit underlies all that exists and moves the world toward its completion not by almighty power but by kenotic self-giving.2

Each of us in some way knows or intuits "this great cosmic, creative Spirit" which underlies the disparate compartmentalization of modern life. Bishop Richard Holloway of the Episcopal Church in Scotland puts the same conviction this way: "Some great self-giving love seems to haunt the universe."3 Earlier in the century Swiss psychologist Carl Jung said in an interview, "Somewhere there seems to be a great kindness."4 We know this Self-giving love, this great kindness, because this same Spirit of self-giving love "empowers us, from within, to meet ... situations with Divine skill"5--at once sparking a vision of integrated harmony and rekindling Spirit's interior mission of guardianship which enables us to live flexibly in the dis-integrated, postmodern, post-Christian world.

My thesis is quite simple: Spirit coordinates, or "narrates," our inner lives, acting as inner witness and guardian. The "fruits of the Spirit" are also hidden, manifesting themselves as interior: mission, silence and solitude, still prayer, community, and guardianship.

First, though, let us review the ironic neglect of Spirit in our Western Christian tradition. We do so with thankfulness for this irony, because as the sometime Dean of Emmanuel College, Oxford, Don Cupitt, writes, "Irony is spiritually liberating. It delivers one from the tyranny of power, and from idolatry. "6

Forgetting Soul, Neglecting Spirit

"Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul? and why are you so disquieted within me?" (Psalms 42 and 43).

Our souls, the divine within the body, are disquieted within us. We sense this not so much from the muddle of our minds-this seems to be the natural human condition-but rather from the ache of distance from the Great Kindness of the universe and from our own sense of self-worth. One reason for this ache is that the soul itself is sorely neglected, crouching in the dark corner of her inner temple, as psychologist Marion Woodman describes her: a little girl-weak and insecure, wondering if she has anything to offer the more dynamic duo of body-mind.7 Soul has been passed over, as it were, in favor of mind and body. The mind is fed with ideas and exercised with challenges, the body, with food and physical activity, but the soul is no longer fed with symbols and metaphors necessary for imaginative liveliness and fortitude.

Moreover, the very context of soul's nurture is in flux: We live in a time of "faith-quakes... chaotic and transitional."8 In this era of chaos and transition, ironically there has been, as there was in a similar transitional period of culture in the seventeenth century, a great revival of interest in spirituality among all peoples. Old systems and languages are either being cast off or experimented with. As Howard Wilson has said, "The Divine has not died, but our language about it has proved inadequate to our contemporary needs."9

A third reason for soul's disquietude is that the guardian of our souls is frequently forgotten in prayer and attentiveness: God the Spirit is sorely neglected.

The anchorperson of a religious talk show recently commented to a caller: "Even those who have no earthly family are part of a larger family: We have God our Father, Jesus our Brother, Mary our Mother and the Saints." Where, one wonders, is Holy Spirit? Catherine Mowry LaCugna wonders the same thing in her book, God For Us: The Trinity and Christian Life, in which she says that if the concept of the Trinity were to drop out of Christianity altogether, it would hardly be missed or noticed by most contemporary Christians, so focused are Christians on the singular person of the Trinity, Jesus-perhaps remembering God the Father, but consistently neglecting the co-equal and co-eternal God the Holy Spirit.10

In Christian gatherings, if Spirit is mentioned, it is usually something of an afterthought-a bow to the Trinity on Trinity Sunday, or in a supercharged-almost apologetic-way on the Day of Pentecost. As the late liturgical scholar H. Boone Porter has pointed out, The only familiar and easily recited prayer directed to the Holy Ghost (Veni, Creator Spiritus) is no longer printed out anywhere in the Prayer Book .... It may be regretted that in the last revision (of The Book of Common Prayer) we did not seize the opportunity to restore strong emphasis on the Third Person of the Holy Trinity ... Of course both books (1928 and 1979 BCPs) missed the boat in not clearly connecting Holy Communion with the Holy Spirit.11