Awake My Soul, Rev. Josh Pawelek. November 30, 2025

            In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die / And where you invest your love, you invest your life / Awake my soul / Awake my soul / Awake my soul – words from the British folk-rock band Mumford and Sons.[1] I’m not deeply familiar with their music. My colleague, the Rev. Carolyn Patierno, mentioned back in October she was using the song in a worship service. I liked it, so I asked Jenn (Richards) if she could play it for us this morning. She already knew the song and really liked it, so she was pleased that I asked. Check out a beautiful version of the song here. Awake my soul / Awake my soul / Awake my soul.

            There are many reasons why it is beneficial to participate in or belong to a spiritual community—congregation, church, synagogue, temple, masjid, sangha, coven, etc.—but there’s one reason that stands out to me especially at this time of year—this waning time, this light-is-less time, this advent time—and that is soul work. Spiritual communities provide opportunities for human beings to engage in soul work. They invite us first to recognize the soul—our own souls and the souls of others. They invite us to center the soul in our living: how do we live in ways that are soul-affirming as opposed to soul-crushing? They invite us to intentionally nurture, grow and expand the soul. And when our souls fall asleep, which they do from time to time, spiritual communities invite us to wake them up.

Awake my soul!

         What is a soul? I am aware that for some of you, soul is one of those haunting religious words that you don’t find useful, but which won’t go entirely away. We inherit it from the ancient Christian church, but it’s not actually a Biblical concept. That is, you won’t find a highly developed concept of soul in either the Hebrew scriptures or the Christian New Testament. Soul was a concept in ancient Greek philosophy which later Christian theologians wove into church teachings as a spiritual entity, unique and essential to each human being, that survives physical death.[2] But of course the post-death dispersal of the soul—where it ultimately goes—is fraught. Does it go up? Or does it go … down? For many of us, the first multi-sentence prayer we learned as children was: “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” That was supposed to help us fall asleep. But there’s something terrifying about it, especially for four-year old concrete thinkers, especially if said four-year-olds were simultaneously learning about the agonies of hellfire.

When I talk about the soul, I don’t situate myself in the Christian tradition. If anything, I situate myself in that space where spirituality and mystical experience meet psychology. For the last ten years I’ve been taking my cues from the one-time Catholic monk turned psychotherapist, Thomas Moore. Some of you will be familiar with his ground-breaking, 1992 book Care of the Soul. Others took my class on his 2014 book, A Religion of One’s Own. Moore doesn’t define the soul in precise terms. He gestures toward it. He invites us to notice it as a sacred dimension of our lives. He says “Soul is the unreachable depth, felt vitality, and full presence of a person…. [It] is the invisible, mysterious, and softly radiant element that infuses your being and makes you human. It gives you a sense of meaning, feeling, connection, and depth.”[3] This is one way to begin contemplating what the soul is.

Earlier I shared Israeli poet and journalist Michal Snunit’s 1985 children’s book (which is really for adults), The Soul Bird.[4] Her view of the soul differs from Moore’s in the way she emphasizes emotion and gives the soul a quasi-mind of its own. I’m drawn to the simplicity of her language—the spaces between the words. I’m drawn to the simplicity and playfulness of the illustrations—the dancing spaces between the lines. And I’m drawn to the soft blue color of the pages. She writes of an invisible depth that is always present. “Deep down, inside, lives the soul,” she writes. “No one has ever seen it, but we all know it’s there. Never, never has a person been born who didn’t have a soul. It sparks the moment we are born and never leaves us—not even once—for as long as we live.”[5] This is another way to contemplate what the soul is.

The older I get, the longer I practice ministry, the more I gravitate toward the word “pantheism” to describe my personal theology. For me, pantheism suggests that all existence is infused with divinity, that everything is connected though an indwelling, animating spirit, that “everything is holy now,” as the UU singer-songwriter Peter Mayer says.[6] I hear the language of our seventh Unitarian Universalist principle, “The interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part,” as an affirmation of pantheism. For me, as a pantheist, the soul is the part of us that opens up to and experiences that connecting, animating, indwelling spirit. The soul is the part of us that experiences its magic, power and dynamism. The soul is the part of us that apprehends our interdependence with other people and creatures, with the planet and, ultimately, with the entire cosmos.

Well, at least on our good days.

And, spiritually speaking, we don’t have very many good days. Our apprehensions of our interdependence are infrequent at best, and fleeting when they do come, if they come at all. There are many reasons for this. First and foremost, we don’t live in a society that truly values the experience of genuine connection with other people and the wider world. We don’t live in a society that cares about interdependence. There are certainly societies that do care about and center these things, but United States society isn’t one of them. There are so many reasons for this, so many layers and constructs and United States life-ways that stand between us and our souls: capitalism, reliance on industries of extraction, authoritarianism, societal toleration of extreme poverty, the commodification of virtually everything, the Protestant work ethic, social media (which really should be called social isolation media). I’m only scratching the surface, but I also don’t want to dwell on any of this. Not this morning. Mumford and Sons describe the results after all these forces put our souls to sleep: How fickle my heart and how woozy my eyes / I struggle to find any truth in your lies / And now my heart stumbles on things I don't know / My weakness I feel I must finally show. Or as Michal Snunit puts it, “sometimes [the soul bird] calls us and we don’t hear it. This is a shame—it wants to tell us about ourselves.” Bottom line: our society is not very soul-friendly.

I said soul work stands out to me especially at this time of year. I know why that is. Soul work requires us to strip away all the layers I’ve just alluded to, so we can get to the essence of ourselves. And right now, in our part of the world, at our particular latitude on the planet (which I know you all know is 41.78° North) the earth itself is doing exactly that. This stripping away is what the Rev. Mary Wellemeyer described in our opening words entitled “Late November.” Listen to them again. Listen for how the earth very naturally strips away layers and layers.

One day it happens— / often it comes after rain. / Suddenly the leaves are gone / from the trees of the hillsides; / only some oak and beech trees / cling to curled brown souvenirs / of summer. / Now comes a special time / of seeing into the depths of woods, / discerning shapes of hills, / locations of boulders and cliffs, / pathways and streams. / Now comes a time for stone walls, / for cellar holes and ruined barns / to tell their tales of farms now gone, / of lives lived out in open fields/ now covered again in forest. / The underlying shape of Earth, / the hints of stories from the past— / these offer themselves to eye and mind, / now, between the falling of leaves / and the coming of snow. / Looking deep and seeing what was hidden / opens a secret doorway / for seeing deep within ourselves.[7]

My prayer for us this morning, as we move now more deeply into the holiday season (which brings its own layers, distractions and stresses) is that we can find time and space to let the natural world’s late autumn emptiness serve as a mirror for us. I pray that the earth’s grayness, barrenness, calmness, stillness, darkness, and its simple spaciousness will prompt us to strip away our own layers, to find the spaciousness in ourselves, so our souls can awaken.  Here’s what I envision:

As you strip away your layers, as that secret doorway opens, as the soul bird opens its various drawers—choose your metaphor—perhaps a creative spark is kindled in you, and the song you want to compose, the poem, short story or the novel you want to write, the painting you want to paint, the dance you want to dance, the statue you want to sculpt comes flowing in, and you create, because your soul has come awake.

Perhaps that secret doorway opens, and there are the people you love most in the world—except you haven’t expressed your love for them recently, or you owe someone an apology, or there’s someone you need to forgive, so you go do it, you tell them you love them, our you say you’re sorry, or you offer forgiveness, because your soul has come awake.

Or perhaps the layers peel away, and you suddenly realize there’s a change you need to make—some role you’ve been playing for too long and it’s time to let go; or some work you want to do before you retire; or some new way in which you want to volunteer or spend your time; some new way in which you can make a difference in the lives of others, so you go do it, you make the change, because your soul has come awake.

Or perhaps you notice the squirrels preparing for winter rest, and you realize “I need rest.” That’s what this season, this time of year, is supposed to be about: easing up, slowing down, pausing, being still, turning inward, resting. So, with intention, you rest, because your soul has come awake.

Or perhaps the bird opens the sadness drawer, and you realize you haven’t fully grieved the death of someone dear to you, it’s time to really say goodbye so they can take their place among your ancestors and play the role in your life that they actually want to play. So, you cry an ocean of tears you’ve been holding back, you welcome the tears, because your soul has come awake.

Or perhaps you gaze out at dark branches, swaying gently against the backdrop of the barren gray sky, and their motion speaks to you of that indwelling, animating, magical spirit that flows through everything, gives power and grace to everything, connects everything; and suddenly there are no boundaries between you and the rest of reality. For a brief moment there is no you, and there is no not-you. Then you feel the energy of blessed oneness traveling up and down your spine, bringing you back into your body, and you are happy, because your soul has come awake.

Or perhaps the last leaves fall from your favorite tree outside your kitchen window, spinning gently in the breeze, eventually landing on the cold, barren earth, and you recognize, as if for the first time, your own mortality, and it does not frighten you. You understand that it is the way of all life. You understand as the song says, in these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die / And where you invest your love, you invest your life. So, you resolve to live the remainder of your life with all the grace, compassion, kindness and love for yourself, for others and the earth that you can muster, because your soul has come awake.

Friends: as we move into this season of stripping down, of peeling back, of settling in, I pray that secret doors will open for you. I pray that your souls will come awake.

Amen and blessed be.

[1] Mumford and Sons, “Awake My Soul.” I’m recommending the live version with Jon Batiste at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjM6Jbd__Qc.

[2] For a very brief history of the soul in the west, see Harvey, Van. A, “Soul” in A Handbook of Theological Terms (New York: Touchstone / Simon and Schuster, 1997 edition) pp. 226-227.

[3] Moore, Thomas, A Religion of One’s Own (New York: Avery, 2014) p. 2.

[4] Learn more about Michal Snunit at https://kids.kiddle.co/Michal_Snunit.

[5] Snunit, Michal, The Soul Bird (New York: Hyperion, 1999).

[6] Mayer, Peter, “Holy Now.” See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiypaURysz4. 

[7] Wellemeyer, Mary, “Late November” Admire the Moon: Meditations (Boston: Skinner House Books, 2005) p. 2.