"Tending soul requires patient and sensitive listening to inner needs and wants: resting when we need to rest, rather than when convention or habit dictates; respecting our desires for solitude even though others may consider it antisocial; weeping when there are tears to weep. With each compassionate and understanding response to our needs, with each authentic expression of who we are, our capacity to recognize and respect our nature increases. And inasmuch as and only to the extent to which we can acknowledge, allow and serve our own souls, we can acknowledge, allow and serve the souls of others.
Like a musical instrument, the soul and its physical form can express the symphonies of Self -- the songs of God -- only as sensitively as its own degree of delicacy and refinement permits. For just as a Stradivarius allows levels of a Bach violin sonata to be heard which cannot be heard on a beginner's violin, so a finely wrought soul allows more of God's voice to be amplified than one unrefined by spiritual and psychological work."
We walked on. I could feel the cold, as if someone's icy hand was palm-down on my back. And my nose and the tops of my cheeks felt cold and hot at the same time... When you go owling you don't need words or warm or anything but hope. That's what Pa says. The kind of hope that flies on silent wings under a shining Owl Moon.
