When poets talk about the human soul, they do not talk about reason; they talk about feeling. The
totally human being, they enable us to see, is the one who weeps over evil, revels in goodness, loves
outrageously, and carries the pain of the world in healing hands.
Feeling is the mark of saints. It is Vincent de Paul tending the poor on the back streets of France,
Mother Teresa with a dying beggar in her arms, Florence Nightingale tending the wounded in the midst
of battle, John the apostle resting trustingly on the breast of Jesus, Damian binding the running sores
of lepers on the island of Molokai, the soup kitchen people in our own towns giving hours of their lives,
week after week, to feed the undernourished. Feeling, we know deep within us, signals the real
measure of a soul.
Without feeling, living becomes one long, bland journey to nowhere that tastes of nothing. Take feeling
away and we take away life. Feeling warns of our excesses and alerts us to possibilities. It attaches us
and opens us and warns us of danger. Because of our feelings we are able to persevere through hard
times and find our way to good times. Feelings lead us to the people who love us through life and
satisfy our souls when nothing else about a situation can sustain us at all. Feelings, devoid of thought,
made only of mist, become the inner lights that lead us out of harm’s way and home to our better
selves. Feeling leads us to love the God we cannot see and to see the God around us whom we have
yet to come to love. To talk about the spiritual life without feeling, to talk about any life at all without
feeling, turns the soul to dust and reduces spirituality to the most sterile of initiatives. And yet we do.
In situations that require insight, wisdom, and concern to resolve them as well as hard, cold
information, feelings bring an invaluable dimension. Feelings are the other kind of intelligence, the
alternate kind of knowing, the humane kind of reasoning.
What the world needs may well be less detached intellectualism and more thinking hearts, less law and
more compassion. Reason that is not informed by emotion is a dry and sterile thing. It comes up with
answers too flawed to be humane, too disjunctive to be moral. Reason can be a very dishonorable
approach to the task of being human. The kind of thinking that invented slavery trivialized feeling. The
kind of thinking that trivialized feeling invented slavery. The world that developed nuclear bombs and
made defense impossible, made fun of the peace movement for eroding national defenses. With the
subjective obscured, objectivity too easily becomes hardheartedness. As Alice in Wonderland noted, in
such a world “down is up and up is down.”
Feeling welcomes us to the human race, where, in the end, the fullness of humanity is all any of us will
have to show for being spiritual.
from Heart of Flesh: A Feminist Spirituality for Women and Men by Joan Chittister
totally human being, they enable us to see, is the one who weeps over evil, revels in goodness, loves
outrageously, and carries the pain of the world in healing hands.
Feeling is the mark of saints. It is Vincent de Paul tending the poor on the back streets of France,
Mother Teresa with a dying beggar in her arms, Florence Nightingale tending the wounded in the midst
of battle, John the apostle resting trustingly on the breast of Jesus, Damian binding the running sores
of lepers on the island of Molokai, the soup kitchen people in our own towns giving hours of their lives,
week after week, to feed the undernourished. Feeling, we know deep within us, signals the real
measure of a soul.
Without feeling, living becomes one long, bland journey to nowhere that tastes of nothing. Take feeling
away and we take away life. Feeling warns of our excesses and alerts us to possibilities. It attaches us
and opens us and warns us of danger. Because of our feelings we are able to persevere through hard
times and find our way to good times. Feelings lead us to the people who love us through life and
satisfy our souls when nothing else about a situation can sustain us at all. Feelings, devoid of thought,
made only of mist, become the inner lights that lead us out of harm’s way and home to our better
selves. Feeling leads us to love the God we cannot see and to see the God around us whom we have
yet to come to love. To talk about the spiritual life without feeling, to talk about any life at all without
feeling, turns the soul to dust and reduces spirituality to the most sterile of initiatives. And yet we do.
In situations that require insight, wisdom, and concern to resolve them as well as hard, cold
information, feelings bring an invaluable dimension. Feelings are the other kind of intelligence, the
alternate kind of knowing, the humane kind of reasoning.
What the world needs may well be less detached intellectualism and more thinking hearts, less law and
more compassion. Reason that is not informed by emotion is a dry and sterile thing. It comes up with
answers too flawed to be humane, too disjunctive to be moral. Reason can be a very dishonorable
approach to the task of being human. The kind of thinking that invented slavery trivialized feeling. The
kind of thinking that trivialized feeling invented slavery. The world that developed nuclear bombs and
made defense impossible, made fun of the peace movement for eroding national defenses. With the
subjective obscured, objectivity too easily becomes hardheartedness. As Alice in Wonderland noted, in
such a world “down is up and up is down.”
Feeling welcomes us to the human race, where, in the end, the fullness of humanity is all any of us will
have to show for being spiritual.
from Heart of Flesh: A Feminist Spirituality for Women and Men by Joan Chittister
What Does the World Need?
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