I taught myself to live simply and wisely,
to look at the sky and pray to God,
and to wander long before evening
to tire my superfluous worries...
~ Anna Akhmatova from "I Taught Myself to Live Simply"
No one really knows what the soul is, but tremble forth it does and, just as mysteriously, shudders away again...The soul is the name for the unifying principle, power, or energy that is at the center of our being. To be in touch with soul means going back to the sacred source, the site of life-releasing energy, the activating force of life; to venture forth and confront the world in all its marvelous and terrifying forces, to make sacred our hours here; to learn to pay such supreme attention to the world that eternity blazes into time with our holy longing. Soul-making, this.