Spirit Matters: Your soul is one solution to this big problem

Who here has not heard the old proverb, “Every cloud has a silver lining?”

It is a great way to learn the art of gratitude. Applying these words to life, and seeing the world through the eyes of the heart, you learn even the most difficult times in your life have gifts to give.

I look back and see that those times in my life that were devastating when they happened have provided immense amounts of grace. Circumstances that I thought had burned my life to the ground were actually doorways into seasons of new discoveries and wisdom I so desperately needed.

Over the past 10 years or so, but particularly over the last six months, I have been working hard to find that silver lining in life as we know it now. Each day seems to bring more ominous news for the nation, the world and its inhabitants, human and otherwise.

We live in a time period of doom and gloom. And finding a silver lining in any of this when the voices in every direction are shouting their conflicting opinions, accusations and belittling criticisms is nearly impossible.

It is a sad reality that our culture has turned into one of excess and shallow living. Life in a technological age moves at a ferociously fast speed. There seems to be no consistent guiding morals and principles for younger generations, and lacking a guiding foundation in their lives, they turn to celebrities, social media influencers and sports figures for insight into how to live their lives.

This is not only a sad commentary on our society, it is downright dangerous.

And yet, no matter how dark the world stage gets – and the world stage has seen some really dark times through the centuries – humans have been given the remarkable gift of a resilient spirit. Overall, it is in our nature to search for hope when all seems lost.

Michael Meade is a respected storyteller; author; and scholar of mythology, anthropology and psychology. Through his organization, Mosaic Voices, Meade puts current events into context against the backdrop of ancient myths, history and an understanding of human nature.

His work is a silver lining in these very dark times. With his soft-spoken yet steady voice, he takes this student deep below the surface and provides a greater, long-view perspective through podcasts and classes.

Meade’s website, mosaicvoices.org, describes his work this way: “At critical moments in history, mythic imagination tries to return to our awareness in order to reveal the capacities for the renewal of culture and the restoration of nature.

“Without the visionary capacity and imagination of the soul, we are unable to perceive ourselves as having meaningful responses and being able to contribute to the necessary work of healing both nature and human culture.”

While we as a people, a nation and the planet are seemingly on a collision course with self-annihilation, Meade gently and consistently reminds us that each of us as individuals, and collectively as a species, have within ourselves what we need to save ourselves from catastrophe.

Over and over again, he tells us the answer to our serious problems is for each of us to return to our soul, and to engage with life from it and through it. Sadly, many people in our world don’t know what it means to live with soul – they have never been taught it, or they outright reject it.

A shift in the right direction will take place when more and more people choose to live their lives soulfully. It will happen when each of us gets in touch with ourselves and finds out who we are, what our gifts and talents are, and how we can contribute them to bring balance back to our collective existence.

To live from the soul, we each need to make those small daily choices to reject inflammatory “news” and other ways of being and consume meaningful and thoughtful materials.

That shift in the right direction will happen when we each choose to live our lives and communicate with one another in a humane way, trying to understand where the other is coming from and why they believe what they do.

We have a difficult road before us, but not one that’s impossible to navigate.

Our creator has given us a soul as a way of living our existence with meaning and intention. It is up to each one of us to do so, and to “be the change we wish to see in the world.”

SPIRIT MATTERS is a weekly column by Jerrilyn Zavada Novak that examines experiences common to the human spirit. Contact her at jzblue33@yahoo.com.