My turn. I'll try to spend about a very few minutes on the history of this project and a few more on its future.
As Peter has mentioned, this project started after Steve's service on death, when Peter mentioned to me that he had a quest, that of finding an opening for the soul. And my brief conversation with him at that time led me to believe that he was looking for an objective approach, something "out there" that offered incontrovertible evidence of the soul.
"What an absurd notion," I thought. So, I initiated the email campaign by clearing away the dust, that is, by eliminating all of the sources of information about the soul that might be "out there," God talking to you, near death experiences, that sort of thing.
Well, Peter and I are still clearing dust. We shall, I suppose continue pushing our brooms in opposite directions, on and off, for some time to come. But we have both realized that this foray into the mind-body problem and the status of the supernatural, wasn't getting us any nearer to the soul.
So, backing away from the dusty morass of metaphysics (hack, choke, cough), let's see if we set out some objectives for the Soul Project. What is the soul? What's the Soul Project and why do we need it? What should go into it?
I'll talk about the soul in the same way that I've talked about it with Peter, although he thinks my approach is too vague and overinclusive. To me the soul is whatever lends ultimate significance to our individual lives. The soul is what's at the end of that long chain of becauses that answer the questions, "Why am I here? Why, of my own free will, do I do what I do? What gives me deep down contentment or discontent?" The soul, to paraphrase Shel Silverstein, is where the chain of reason ends.
Now, about the Soul Project. What's is it? Why do it? What's in it for ME? Right now, the project is nothing more than an occasional service, like this one, on matters pertaining to the soul. "Aha," you say, "you've just told us that the soul can't be approached objectively. I'm an independent U-U. Go find your own damn soul, and leave mine alone. And stay away from my kids, too, you theistic prevert."
Well, sorry, but we're social animals, and everybody's soul is everybody's concern. Sometime in the long distant past, society established this institution, organized religion, dedicated to the care of the soul. Now, organized religion has taken a wrong path or two and has not always been an effective caretaker of the soul. But for breadth of influence and staying power, it has few rivals among social institutions. Not even bathrooms are as old or as widespread as churches.
What's more, YOU are sitting here today in this church, and therefore come under this church's concern for your soul. So the real question is not "Why do the Soul Project?" but "Why doesn't it occupy all our efforts?" (Maybe, indeed, it does, in some sense.)
One answer is, "Because we're U-U, and we'll just yap, yap, yap about the issue, until we're sick of it and then we'll start yapping about something else. What good is that?"
This is the kind of thinking arises in those who've been watching too much TV. On TV, all life comes in episodes and things get resolved in a half hour, an hour, eight at the most.
Well, I don't watch all that much TV, but I do have this fondness for food. I've been eating all my life, and I expect that I'll continue eating for the rest of it. For me, the care and feeding of the soul is not an episode, to be resolved in a month or a millennium of Sundays. Rather we have to keep feeding our souls just like we feed our tummies. There are many ways of doing so, and yapping is one of them.
So let me just end with a three dietary suggestions for the Soul Project. Peter, I'm sure, favors the pure, spare, unprocessed diet of fruit, nuts, and the other raw stuff that nourish our thoroughly rational philosopher. And I'll be interested, genuinely interested, to see if there's any way that reason can illuminate the soul. (So, at least the email exchange has changed my attitude from "absurd," to "interested.")
But hey, what do I want to put on the soul's table? Beer, tamales, chocolate and a feast of thorougly unrational issues. Here are three of them.
First, I was moved by John's account of the fossil that he found someplace out there, and it occurs to me that our soul is necessarily bound up with the shadow that we cast on the sands of time. We are social animals living now in a physical world, passing through on a road that we may never travel again. It is our soul, or some aspect of it that stays on the road like footprints long after we have passed. To not set your course with a view to what you leave behind is to neglect your soul.
Sorry for the change in metaphors, there, especially since it's metaphor and such things that I next want to lay on the Soul Project's plate. How do we talk about the soul?
Peter's preference is for the denotative and rational. I'm sure that's part's of the soul's diet, but not all of it. You've probably noticed that my remarks are heavily laden with gobs of mixed up metaphor That's because some aspects of the soul can only be approached in a figurative and analogical way. A Christmas Carol is far more precise and informative about the Christmas spirit than any strictly descriptive account could possibly be. Christ's parables fill the vessels they were meant to fill exactly, with no room left over for exegesis. The Easter story, as I've pointed out, needs to be told, in its entirety. It's an essential part of your soul's healthy diet.
Finally, I think that feelings are at the heart of the soul. Feelings drive what we do, or at least what we consciously do. Whatever you are doing you do because you feel like it (even in cases where you don't feel like it). If your feelings change, what you're doing changes to deal with the changed feelings. What we find significant gains its significance through feelings. So, if your soul's diet doesn't include the awe engendered by a sunset or the despair engendered by lost love you stand in serious danger of spiritual malnutrition.
This is not to say that I'm not a fan of the rational. Indeed, I consider myself to be hyper-rational. So rational that I think of Peter's favorite (or once favorite) philosopher as being fuzzy headed. But reason can only address what to make of your soul, what to make of the significance of your life. It is feeling that will tell you what that significance is.
I started this discussion with a mention of Peter's quest. Maybe I should close with a mention of mine. It is, if anything to reconcile our deepest feelings and our truest thoughts. It's in such a reconciliation that I think the soul is to be found. If the Soul Project does not touch the soul, in addition to teaching us about the soul, it will have failed.