Physical & Spiritual

Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the LORD descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled violently.

—Exodus 19:18

Even though so much of modern life and theology insists that what matters is my mind, my soul, my inner self, my heart, there is still this nagging part of me that knows on some deep level that the things we see and touch and hear and taste are spiritual, too. The dichotomy between spiritual and physical doesn’t make sense to me, and it didn’t make sense to the Exodus writers either. The olives and the wine and the ideas and the stones and the mountain and the soul all matter deeply and signify something important, instead of the ideas and the souls being truly important, and the rest just being props on loan from the theater department.

Exodus brought to the surface and brought to life this little part inside me that whispered, “I thought so! I hoped so!” I think the best stories always do that, always resound somewhere below our stomachs with a sense of rightness, a sense of congruence with the way we were made and the way we understand ourselves.