Care of the Soul

Not to be overly dramatic, but I often feel like I’m living inside a medieval castle, hiding behind the battlements, making sure that the drawbridge is up, and hoping that the moat will keep the invader at bay. And who is the invader?  It’s the culture—the music, the media, the news, the outfits, the parenting styles, the sex, the speech habits, the gurus, and the influencers. Most days I feel like I don’t belong on this planet. Yes, it has occurred to me that this sense of alienation may be nothing more than a manifestation of old age, which would make sense—except that I’ve been in this state since the 1970s.

This being out of synch with the times caused me some self scrutiny over the years. Who was I, after all, to feel that I didn’t belong to my era, I asked myself. Was this sense of alienation simply a case of hubris? And were the invaders against whom I had barricaded myself all necessarily barbarians? I didn’t have an answer to these questions, mostly because I never discussed them with anyone, for fear of appearing curmudgeonly or conceited.

And then the other day I came across this, from Thomas Merton, “I have come to think that care of the soul requires a high degree of resistance to the culture around us, simply because that culture is dedicated to values that have no concern for the soul.” Merton wrote this in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, which was published in 1966. It was a time when the drumbeats of the coming revolution were beginning to be heard—the revolution against the Vietnam war, segregation, and the arms race, and the first salvos of the feminist movement—a time that felt pretty soulful to my young self. But in the decades that followed, I gradually lost that sense of belonging to the era.

Upon reading Merton’s words, my reaction was “Whew! I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels this way.” It was nice to be in company, and even nicer to be in the company Merton. Nicest of all was the realization that, as I hunkered behind my castle walls, I wasn’t just running away from stuff I didn’t like. I was actually taking care of my soul! There’s nothing like getting validation from one of the 20th century’s foremost spiritual writers.

Heaven knows that our souls are more in need of care now than ever. And, like Merton felt in his time, I believe that the first duty in caring for the soul is resistance. However, even for those who were not, unlike Merton, secluded in a Trappist monastery, it was a lot easier to resist the culture in the era before smart phones and computers. You could, in the 1960s, turn off the radio and the television, although people were already finding that hard to do. But to go shopping or to the movies, you had to get dressed and get in the car, which required planning and effort and made it easier to just stay home. But today, with the world at our fingertips, the temptations of entertainment, shopping, and the news are almost impossible to ignore. There is a tribe in the Amazon whose members recently acquired cell phones. Before long, the chief had to forbid the use of phones except on Sunday afternoon. Otherwise, the hunters on whose work the people depended were neglecting their blowguns and arrows and scrolling their days away, putting the tribe at risk of starvation.

Sometimes I worry that, despite the moat and the battlements, my soul is in great danger. The culture has seeped in through the chinks between the stones and forced it to flee into the dungeon, where it hides from the battering rams and fiery arrows of Facebook and Instagram, TikTok, X, and Amazon. I need to bring it sustenance on a regular basis—a good serving of peace and quiet, some music by Bach, and meditation, which I have been neglecting. Otherwise I may find that the algorithm has breached the moat, and done its worst.