…“ME” OF THE SOUL…
Stage 33 / Friday 29 May / From Marsolan to Condom / 26 km
I set out toward Condom today, in passing by the pretty little town of La Romieu, proud of its collegial and benign legend of the Angeline cats protecting the village from rats during a famine. I stop under a shady vault for lunch, and then savor a local Armagnac. Don’t they say that alcohol preserves? And rightly so, in tasting it I have the impression that a part of me is not growing old, this whether or not I try to preserve it with alcohol!
It’s this inbeing of my “me”, my most certain identity, the one that I recognize well when I feel a “cry of the heart.” This heart, which sometimes feels betrayed, sometimes in extasy! This heart that I cover sometimes with my secret “me” the most intense when it is attacked … it’s also this heart that I open a tiny bit with timidity when the weaker “I” lets itself go to romance. There are the moments when my “me” resists “with all its soul”, because to yield would be treason … and others when my “I” expresses itself with candor, at the risk of letting itself be manipulated and with the danger that thus “I lose my soul”!
Soul has a religious connotation, and many avoid talking about it. But the heart, yes, each of us (believer or not) can accept that he or she has a heart, which sometimes gets broken, and which at other times one is ready to give! And yet, cannot this more hazy and ancient concept of “soul” invite us to something more profound, more anchored in mystery? Why is it easier to say that the heart beats (vibrates?) while the soul resonates? As if the soul had this capacity, better than the heart, to be in unison with the universe, to let itself be cradled by the ebb and flow of an immense eternal ocean.
It’s my soul (if in the end I have one!), more than my heart, that I feel resonating with a deep wave which engages my deepest interior. This wave generously invites me, but without forcing me, to connect myself to the vast, beautiful and true world. Enveloping and sacred union by which anguish would disappear and all be ever serene! Invitation to a state of love, almost, but without the ineptitude of pettiness, sadness and materialism! The Armagnac vapors are also contributing, no doubt!
When I want to pronounce the word “amour” (love) I start with the sound “âme” (soul): is this so absurd? This coincidence of sound, is it an accidental occurrence in our lovely French language? No, I see in it rather the confirmation of what defines each person desirous of seeking an eternal and infinitely sure seduction. Wanting to find true love, one discovers his or her soul! We say that someone “has” a good heart, but we wouldn’t say they “have” a good soul. On the other hand, here is what we would say of someone who is exceptionally radiant with the love that he / she brings to others: “What a beautiful soul!” And it is there, in my deepest self, that I can be touched by this obvious fact: in the depths of myself there is a soul which can radiate, if I choose that my “me” gives it the freedom to love!
Good or bad things nourish my body. It limits itself to being of an objective, but mortal, materiality. My soul has this lovely ambition to “move house” in order to live in space and time. By so doing, it enables to connect my being to the infinitely good … It truly reveals itself when my thoughts seek to go beyond the object, to sidestep the trivial and merge with a supernatural ideal. Supernatural but not inaccessible! Beyond nature, it would seem … and at the same time incredibly cosmic, since the contemplation of the universe helps me in wanting to imagine my soul melting with it in order to know its whole extent … infinitely … eternally!
A soul animated by the best intentions! Actually, in Latin, the word for soul is “anima,” and one finds again the subtlety of this etymology and the nearness (in French) to the word “love” in the two magnificent verses: « Objets inanimés, avez-vous donc une âme … qui s'attache à notre âme et la force d'aimer ? » [Inanimate objects, do you have a soul … which holds on to our soul and commends us to love?] (Alphonse de Lamartine – Milly, ou la terre natale). What a dynamic rapprochement between what seems inanimate and what invites to love! And notice in this word “dynamic” the central syllable am – “âme” which means “soul” in French.
Oh my soul, discreet initiator of any creative dynamic, subtle serving president to the art of noble compositions, it is you my soul who shelters the “me” who wants to eagerly write these lines, while my “I” puts much of my heart into it!
