Today’s practice will be about writing our own Psalms, poems addressed to God that express our thoughts, fears, hopes and trust with wild abandon, often using dramatic language. It’s a bit like journaling in its introspection and tendency towards ‘shitty first drafts’, but goes beyond that. As I wrote in my post on Psalms as … Continue reading Soul Speech: Writing Psalms
When we think about sacred practices we in the West tend to think of engaging with our hearts, minds, and spirits — not our bodies. This is not a new issue, and has in some ways been a defining feature of Western thought for millennia. Whether intentionally or accidentally, we have internalized a dualism that … Continue reading Soul Speech: Sacred Movement
The aim of this series is to develop a toolkit of practices we can use to quiet the mind and so be better be able to connect with and listen to the soul. But so far, all of the practices we’ve looked at have still been pretty mind-oriented: things designed to ‘empty’ the mind, whether … Continue reading Soul Speech: Visual Art
There’s a famous saying that ‘There’s no place like home.’ It refers of course to the sense of peace and rightness that comes from returning to the place where we belong, whether it’s after years living abroad or just a long day at work. And yet, it’s a sad reality that for millions of people … Continue reading There’s a Place for Us: A Reflection on John 14.1-14
The figure of C.G. Jung has come up already in this series (to say nothing of my 2025 series based on some of his ideas). That’s because, not only was he the greatest advocate of listening to the soul (’the self’ in his terminology) in modern times, but also because his personal examples of how … Continue reading Soul Speech: Active Imagination
Matthew Root 