I believe the deepest questions of every soul are:
1. Who am I and Why am I here?
2. Who are my people?
3. What are my deepest desires?
4. Why is "this" happening to me?
5. How can I experience inner freedom?
6. What is a love that will last?
7. How can my life become sustainable?
8. What can I do with childhood wounds and deep hurts?
9. How can I learn to forgive and be forgiven?
10. What will heaven by like and how do I get there?
There is no care for any soul apart from attempting to answer most of these questions. These questions comprise most of the conversations most of us have. Sure, there are others. Perhaps, better questions. Feel free to suggest your most daunting questions in the comments below. Most of caring for our souls involves "unlearning" what we have picked up along the way and discarding "emotional baggage" that many of us have carried for far, far too long.
I'd encourage you to take a journal and begin by giving a few pages to each question. Look at these questions from time to time and write down your thoughts. Better yet, if you are in group or want a lively dinner conversation, use these questions to begin a conversation that will take you far below the water line. Take the plunge!
I'd love to be in a small group, where we could discuss these questions without fear of judgement for what we might share; experience a safe place where we could dialogue and think outloud and experience love and acceptance for the sheer fact that we are being courageous by asking such deep things.
Take the plunge. Start with your own thoughts and then as you can, find a few safe folks to share your responses with.
If you were in my group and we were doing this, I'd need a brief introduction before I'd feel free to begin and it would go something like this.
"Before you say anything, please just give me the grace and space to think out loud with you here. I could be wrong about what I'm about to say. I want to acknowledge that fact at the very beginning. But if you can please give me the grace to sort of "prime my heart pump." Let me just start talking and and please don't hold me to anything I say at the beginning. For me, the water is deep and my heart pump needs to be primed--so to speak. So the first few things that come out---please don't hold me to it. "
And I'd need to add this disclaimer. "If you start quoting Scripture at me because you have perceived I am out of bounds in my thinking, then please just know I will withhold my responses and judge this space and you as unsafe for my soul to show up in right now."
If you want my soul to show up....just love me; accept me and put up with me as I begin to get a few things out...
And also, to all my preacher friends, feel free to use these questions but please don't answer the questions for your congregation by trying to tell them all your answers. That takes the fun out of it. Titillate us with better questions, stories of folks who tried this answer then abandoned the answer they got too quickly---that kind of thing. Stories of how people sought to answer life's great questions are supper to make us think for ourselves and thus find the Truth we all want and need.
Go for it. I'm eager to see where this might lead.