soul keeping

“The whole area of spiritual formation essentially focuses on soul work as a spiritual endeavor. Fundamentally, it pertains to the mysterious inner formation of our spiritual soul. The lifelong process incorporates the elaborate notions of soul renovation soul shaping, soul becoming, and soul keeping. Concisely put, it is about the care and cure of souls, or soul care in short.”

Wil Hernandez, Henri Nouwen and Soul Care


What a beautiful description of spiritual formation. It is the care of our soul – or, my personal favorite of the descriptors, – soul keeping. Whether it my own soul I am attending to or the privilege of sitting with someone else and witnessing their ‘soul becoming’, ‘soul renovation’, or ‘soul shaping’, it is indeed a mysterious process that we can participate in but cannot make happen.

It is like planting a garden. We can prepare the soil, provide water and a sunny area and we can even plant the seed. But after that, what happens under the soil and what we see when that tender shoot breaks through the surface of the ground is not because of us. That is the miracle of life, of regeneration and transformation.
The same is true with our soul keeping. We can sit in silence and solitude. We can abandon ourselves to the Spirit and ask for transformation. We can read books, study the Word, and practice spiritual disciplines…but, the bottom line is that the transformation is not of us, it is of God.

What is it that you are currently doing to ‘keep your soul’? What are you involved in that helps make the conditions right for the shaping of your soul? Do what it is that you can and then rest in the knowledge that the Spirit is doing a beautiful and meaningful work in your spirit.

Grace and peace-
Deb