I remember standing before Mark Rothko, No. 16 (1960), an 8½ x 10 foot canvas in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.   I could not move.  Rothko had captured what was in my soul, the pain, the loss, the yearning.  I felt exposed, almost violated.

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The soul encodes our experience in the language of earth and sky, of gravity and entropy.  The soul connects us to to all life on this planet, including generations that we have never seen.  The most urban of New York artists clarified my experience of wilderness.

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Life on this planet is not easy.  Partly it's our fault; wrapped in self, we have blind spots, misunderstandings, and shortcomings.  Partly the problem is life itself, full of promise and limitation, transcendence and mortality.   Our lives are balanced between meaning and emptiness, between connection and isolation.  That the structure of the soul is consonant with the structure of the planet provides a sense that we belong and allows us to list toward affirmation.