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An encounter with Almighty God, Creator of heaven and earth, cannot help but touch us in our entirety — our emotions, intellects, and even bodies. But in addition to calling us to love God with our hearts, minds, and strength, Jesus calls us to also employ our souls in this supreme endeavor. We're not quite sure what "the soul" is exactly, but for the sake of this column, let's say it is that part of us that most directly processes spiritual experiences, that mysterious part of us that connects in some immediate way with, as the mystics put it, "Ultimate Reality."

As we begin another Lent, it seems fitting to meditate on the state of our souls. And many will do that, and all for the good. But I suspect this will be a mistake for others. Instead, let me suggest that caring for our souls might be the most significant thing we can give up for Lent.

We shouldn't give up thinking about our souls altogether — any more than we should abandon pondering our minds or our bodies. Part of the human adventure is to understand ourselves, the mysterious and divine gift that is us. You are not going to find someone who writes a column called "Soulwork" suggesting indifference to the soul!

But Lent is that season of the church year when we deal with those thoughts and habits and addictions that get in the way of loving God. For many in our narcissistic culture, soul care is somewhere between an obsessive-compulsive disorder and an addiction.

Given our natural fascination with ourselves, it's hard to write about the soul without ending up talking about the self and stuff that makes us feel better about ourselves. The title of a soon-to-be-released book — Your Soul's Plan: Discovering the Real Meaning of the Life You Planned Before You Were Born — seems to mean well. But it appears to be about finding meaning for your life.

Similarly, another title — Soul Wisdom: Practical Soul Treasures to Transform Your Life — infers that focusing on the soul will transform your life.

The entire Chicken Soup for the Soul series is about feeding your soul.

A modern classic, Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life, by Thomas Moore, describes the soul as "a quality or a dimension of experiencing life and ourselves. It has to do with depth, value, relatedness, heart, and personal substance." Moore says caring for the soul is "in many ways a return to early notions of therapy." It comes from the Latin word cura, which "means several things: attention, devotion, husbandry, adorning the body, healing, managing, being anxious for, and worshipping the gods."

While many such books employ Christian terminology, they often wander from traditional Christian understanding. It's no surprise that in these books, soul discussion can morph into humanism or spiritual self-interest.

Unfortunately, we hear much talk these days in evangelical circles about "caring for the soul" and "feeding one's soul" and such. I won't name names, because this isn't about finding a villain. It's about our — my! — instinctive drift to make spirituality about "me." We worry about the depth of our commitment to Christ, so we get busy with some new spiritual discipline, something we can do. We dissect our motives as if we're peeling an onion, with the same ultimate results. We strive to "make time for prayer" in our busy schedules, not recognizing that this very phrase suggests how utterly peripheral God has become to us — an add-on that we fit in, if we can manage it.

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February (Web-only) 2009, Vol. 53