I don’t know about you, but I am drawn to writing with a passion. No, I’m not sure that’s the correct word because that seems too pleasant, and it isn’t always. With a vengeance? Maybe. Sometimes. I planned an academic site…with an academic name. However, as is often the case, that isn’t what enveloped me as I wrote.

Instead, I kept being drawn to the idea I’d read in a quote:

“You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.”

When I saw it, the quote was attributed to one of my favorite thinkers, C.S. Lewis, drawing me in all the more. I’ve later researched (see the academic side is still present) and found that it seems to have come from a variety of sources, none of which are Lewis. It appeared in a 1960 novel by Walter M. Miller, Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz, and was, “You don’t have a soul, Doctor. You are a soul. You have a body, temporarily.”

I like the temporarily part; however, even here the idea was most likely swiped from someone else. A few sources indicate it is attributed to Quaker George MacDonald in his 1892 Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood. Earlier still is an 1881 attribution to Reverend Dr. R. Thornton during a presentation to the Church of England’s Church Congress.

I guess the point is, our creative minds take in art and ideas and knowledge that dwell within us waiting until we release it back into the world in some format or another. The idea of being a soul rather than a body intrigues me. It makes me want to be a better person.

Do I think our body is unimportant? I don’t feel we can say that because we need it to be part of this world, and we are meant to be in this world at this time. Contemporary author and Oxford scholar Matthew Lee Anderson explains it this way:  “You are a body. But you’re a soul too. And your human flourishing is contingent upon being a soul-bodied thing.” You are meant to flourish now. And so am I. To do that, we must take care of the needs of this body we were given. In the long run will its beauty or strength or size matter? No, it will be that beautiful soul, what’s inside of us, what we have taken in from God, from one another, from nature that will matter. It will linger with us after our body returns to the earth.

So, does it matter who the original creator of that idea was? Do I need to continue my search? No. There is evidence that Lewis studied the works of MacDonald, but there is no evidence of his repeating of those words in his own works. Maybe MacDonald read Thornton’s speech, and maybe Miller read MacDonald’s. But did they remember where they first heard the idea that stayed with them? We’ll never know. Sometimes it is the seed that’s planted, and only that seed, that matters. For me, then, what matters is where the idea takes me. This one took me to consider the name of my site, which meant I was reconsidering much of what would make its way onto the site. Reconsidering the ideas I would share. Reconsidering my words. Soulful Being. That’s my site. More importantly, that’s what I hope to be.