The ancient Hebrews told a story about how we came to be: the One formed us from dirt and breath. The word for “breath” can also mean “spirit”. In other words, the ancient wisdom about who we are is that we are both breath and dirt, spirit and soil.

We are soil. This is our measurable life. It is our coming and going, our shopping and working, our glucose levels and our letter grades. It is what we can see and touch and taste and photograph.

But we are also spirit. It is our immeasurable life. It is our sense of beauty and meaning, our fears and our joys, our awareness that there is more to our lives than our bones and savings accounts and Facebook pages.

The work of living whole lives, then, according to the ancient Hebrews, was in taking both of these realities seriously, both spirit and soil, and living them as an integrated whole.

This blog is about discovering, naming, and living authentically into our spirit and soil lives.