One Year on Substack: Rediscovering the Art of “School” and the Sound of the Soul

The soul is made to sing because it is made in the likeness of Divine Sophia.

Today I am celebrating my first anniversary on Substack. I had no idea what I was doing a year ago; I was just following a vague desire to write. Now I can say that this one hour of writing every morning is the best part of my day. It does something to me.

Aristotle defined happiness as “the performance of the activities inherent in our being.” (Eudemian Ethics). Happiness is what we feel when there’s harmony between what we do and who we are.

When Jesus asked the two disciples in John 1:38, “What do you want?” it wasn’t a trivial question. It’s essential for us to know what we want. God knows that. It so much easier for us to say what we don’t want. In ancient Greece, people regularly spent their leisure time figuring out what they wanted and what constituted their happiness. They called it “school.”

The word “school” originates from the ancient Greek word σχολή (scholē), which meant “leisure” or “free time.” It wasn’t a time of intense study. It was a time to relax and get in touch with who you are — to see if you “perform activities inherent in your being.”

Finding “that thing” is nothing short of a miracle. The two disciples in John 1:38 followed Jesus to his home and spent a day there. What did they do there? We are not told, but it’s quite clear that they were “just visiting.” It was their “free time,” their school.

When we have this “hour” of free time, we are in the school-as-it-should-be. Here, we don’t need to memorize anything or answer multiple-choice questions. All we need to do is become quiet, see, listen, and absorb what our inner being resonates with. What makes us alive? We are looking for a “vibration,” a “sound” that will make our soul sing.

We are visiting with Jesus. He’s asking us one question, “What do you want?” We don’t know, so he invites us to hang out with him for a while. Andrew the First-Called was the first to catch that vibration — hear the call. He knew it because it made him happy.

As Thomas Merton poignantly said,

“A saint is a person who has lived their own life, not someone else’s or a projection of what others think a life should be.”

What do we want? According to Aristotle, we can’t be happy until we have found an answer. Until we find this answer, our external actions will not proceed from our core. We will not be living our own life. We will live a projection of what others think a life should be. We will not resonate with the Music of the Spheres; the soul won’t sing.

We all long to hear singing souls; we want to visit with them and spend a day with them. Something happens to us and for us — we get closer to the wellspring of our desire. As one of my favorite songs from Secret Garden says,

The wheels of life keep turning
Spinning without control;
The wheels of the heart keep yearning
For the sound of the singing soul. (“The Gates of Dawn”).

The soul is made to sing because it is made in the likeness of Divine Sophia, who sang and danced when the first dust of the universe was formed.

“When He drew a circle on the face of the deep… When He established the fountains of the deep… I was daily His delight, rejoicing before Him always, rejoicing in His inhabited world and delighting in the children of man.”