I’m making a joyful noise! Well, I don’t know if I would call it a joyful noise, but I’m teaching myself to play the recorder. I haven’t played an instrument since the cornet in Junior High School, so it feels nice to take up music again. I’ve longed for many years to play the piano, guitar, and cello, and the recorder is a great way to learn to read music again. So many other things have seemed more important in my life that I forgot to feed my soul.

Life has a habit of getting in the way. Maybe I should say instead that we have a habit of letting life get in the way. We let ourselves become so wrapped up in work, family, church, and social activities, and time thieves like television, video games, and texting, that we forget to make room for personal time and activities that the soul needs to thrive.

Feeding the soul is important for well-being, joy, optimism, and knowing yourself. Spirituality, learning, and loving are personal actions that make us unique, but the soul needs personal attention too. I feed my soul with hikes in the forest, canoeing, camping, and finding places where I can look out over the ocean and dream. Writing feeds my soul too, especially when I get lost in the story and time loses any meaning and I write and write and write. That’s when my soul is working hardest as it pours me into my writing.  These are the things that feed one’s soul, these things that we do that affect us only in the most personal manner possible.

Now, music will feed my soul. I love listening to music, especially classical, but making music, freeing my creative impulse to take me away on a soul trip, is one of the most powerful ways to feed the soul. The soul thrives on me – you – time. It’s time spent on myself – yourself – that the soul needs in order to feel welcome, healthy, and needed. The soul is the most important part of your being, you can’t ignore it if you want to remain not a human, but a human being. Your soul is you, and wants to be caressed.

What are the things that feed your soul?