Does the Soul Sleep?

wonderings from the still-dormancy of winter

The snow is melting this weekend and we’ve had a lot of it. There is a small patch of grass in my front yard, and a small patch of dirt in my garden. The icicles have all fallen. The drip drip is non-stop. This time of year, as winter starts to think about spring, as the birds start to think about coming back, before the wild Rumpus of it all, while my world is still dormant, I think about big things. I think about them with questions not themes. Wonderings.

Today I bundled up and sat on my dripping front porch, thinking about the soul and wondering if it sleeps. And I remembered this little essay I wrote a long time ago. I never tried to get it published. And with a book coming out in April all about wonder, and so much pain in this worried world, I sat in awe in the drip drip drip, asking questions. About death and life and the soul. What do you wonder about, I wonder? I’m not sure I’ve gotten anywhere in my answering, but that’s not as important to me as the questions themselves. I still wonder:

Does the Soul Sleep?

Sometimes I wonder if the soul sleeps. If it gets tiring being free from mortality. And especially considering the re-entry into flesh. That’s when I’m believing in souls. That’s when I’m wondering about re-incarnation.

Because sometimes I don’t believe in anything at all except for the green of grass and its dying into brown and into flattened detritus by ice and snow and then in the new green grass that follows, and browns, and flattens again. Sometimes that’s all the re-incarnation I need to believe in.

More than anything, I know that it’s my place in the kingdom which is where I need to be—sitting in that grass, believing in it. Watching it around me in the wind. Watching the ascending lady bugs not caring if they are going the right or wrong way. Not aware of anything but tiny foot after tiny foot. Or maybe they’re more aware than I’ll ever be.

There is a field below my house. I go there and sit as often as I can. I try to be as open as I can to the grass, whether it’s wet or cold or muddy. I try to just sit and breathe and receive whatever is there. I guess you could call it meditation. Though that’s not what I call it. I just call it sitting in the field. It’s a response to the Rumi quote I love: “Outside of rightdoing and wrongdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” I like that field. It’s about yes. I want to be able to receive that yes. Sometimes I am too concerned about the lady bugs and their trajectory. And the bears that wander through this migration corridor I’ve chosen to make my Montana home. It’s wild here and I’m afraid of my wildness. That’s when I go instead to my garden to sit.

It’s smaller there and it’s a design I am somewhat responsible for creating. I can trust the apricot ragosas to bloom from June to September and the Queen Anne Lace to grow up around the tiny St. Francis statue and the borage to come up between the spaces on the pathway of heart-shaped rocks. There are ladybugs there too, but somehow I am less concerned for them, so many aphids to eat on so many rose leaves.

In my garden, I make it easy for myself. Like I’m in kindergarten and it’s nap time, I lay out a yoga mat and sit on it in the brick pathway between the two borders. I am contained by a picket fence on one side and my house on the other. There are gates and trellises on each end covered in clematis and honeysuckle, crystals from my grandmother’s chandelier hanging from the old vine wood, catching light even on a gray day. I am enclosed. And that helps on those days when the field is too big and the yes feels less possible. Sometimes I bring tea on those days. Green tea with jasmine in my favorite mug. Sometimes I bring a pot of tea. Sometimes I bring my guitar. Sometimes I sing. Sometimes I don’t exactly sit—I squat for a while before I decide I can sit. And sometimes, I just stand there and take in a few breaths—in through my nose, out through my mouth the way I’ve been taught. Sometimes I walk through fast, holding my breath, not wanting to know what yes is. The echoes of no too loud to sit at all.

Here’s what that no sounds like. Who do you think you are, sitting in a garden doing nothing when you should be cleaning the house, doing the dishes, folding laundry, weeding, working on your book, getting exercise, grocery shopping, cleaning out the kids’ closets, vacuuming the mouse shit in the basement so the kids can have that slumber party they’ve wanted all summer, applying for that grant, applying for that residency, pitching that magazine editor, paying your bills, canning tomato sauce, volunteering somewhere like Meals on Wheels which you said you were going to sign up for but haven’t, helping that friend with the four kids and the slipped disc, remembering your niece’s five month overdue graduation present, baby present, birthday card, wedding gift, calling your mother. Who do you think you are just sitting there considering the lilies? It’s folly to sit there. Selfish. You have work to do. The ladybugs will be fine without you and so will the grass for that matter, never mind the roses. And by the way—they need pruning.

Perhaps you can relate.

Oh the fences we build, the gates and trellises even, in order to not sit in the field. In order to say no.

A few weeks ago, my dear friend decided to die. No warning. No one saw the signs. She and I weren’t in each others’ daily lives. Still…I feel helpless for not helping her. Not knowing to help her. Not calling her the last time I thought to check in. Where is her soul? Can I find her in my garden? I need to tell her that I’m sorry for her pain. I need to tell her that I’m sorry I wasn’t there for her. But does a soul need apologies? I doubt it.

So it doesn’t surprise me that it is easy to sit in the field these days. In fact, I have been doing practically nothing else but sitting in the field. I’ve been choosing deer beds where the grass is flat not from ice and snow, but from creatures of prey finding warmth and cover before hunting season. Before rut. Everything is so vivid. The squirrels chattering in the trees, the magpies coming in like caped crusaders, the turkeys waddling and flocking like they know what’s coming at the end of November, the logging trucks downshifting fast for something—likely a deer or a moose. I find myself praying for us all to be protected. Especially from our pain. I sit in the field and feel how small I am before a dragonfly and how even smaller I am before the sky.

Suddenly, with all this sitting, pondering my friend’s life and death…I feel a shift. Movement. Movement toward living the particulars of my life. I find myself cleaning out closets and putting baby blankets into plastic storage bins marked in Sharpy “For grandchildren.” I haven’t had a baby for years. My youngest is in sixth grade. I find myself getting rid of sippy cups that have lurked in kitchen drawers. Vacuuming up that mouse shit in the basement. Putting up a white sheet and buying a projector and blowing up air mattresses—we will have those movie night parties with the kids’ friends. We’ll watch Funny Face and An American in Paris and make popcorn and ice cream sundaes. No will become yes. And sitting, whether in the field, or in the garden…helps.

Do souls sleep? Do they laugh? Do they cry? Do they remember? Do they forgive? Do they make agreements to heal in ways they couldn’t before? Do they have agendas? Do they sit and say yes, or are they restless? Is it all field where they live? Is there ever garden and fence and gate and the heat of the sun on the house and the yoga mat promising safety. Is it easy to go to the field? Are there bears and moose in their fields? Is there dying there?

Come wonder with me in Montana at one of my top-ranked Haven Writing Retreats.

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