"The word "soul" is important to me. But it's a word I hold lightly because it points to a mystery known by many names, for which no one has the true name...
Secular humanists call it "identity and integrity." Hasidic Jews call it "the spark of the divine in every being." Thomas Merton called it "true self." Quakers call it "the inner light." Buddhists call it "Big Self" and "No-Self." If there’s a universal word for it, perhaps it’s the “being” in “human being.”
WHAT you call it doesn’t matter. But THAT you call it something matters a lot, I think. If we fail to name it, we are more likely to treat each other like objects to be manipulated, or raw material to be formed in ways that meet market needs, or empty vessels to be filled with someone else's agenda for our lives.
We need to do whatever we can to remind ourselves of the sacred center in ALL of our brothers and sisters—especially at a time when that simple principle is being violated day in and day out by ordinary people and the Powers That Be..."
~ Wislawa Szymborska, the revered Polish poet who won the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature
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