In medicine & leadership scientists & CEOs seek answers to life & death questions. The best learn that the highest wisdom is that our deepest truths are beyond "knowing."

Our soul is apparently "unknowable." We rely on belief instead of scientific evidence. I believe that it exists beyond, & ultimately separate from, the bodies we occupy. Mystically, some credit listening to their unknowable soul as the source of their creativity or success. 

Do you "know" that God planted the seed of Jesus in Mary? Or do you believe that God's "seed" was Love?

When the body is sick, we become reporters: "Why, what, where, when, how?" The more science finds answers the more it demeans the wisdom of unknowing.

When an organization is dysfunctional similar questions arise.

Scientists & leaders seek facts to diagnose & rules for treatment. Some answers produce hard-edged cures.

Yet healing & organizational energy can be as unresponsive to concrete approaches as is love.

"Tell me how to cure my team's dysfunction," leaders ask me.

"Love your staff," I answer.

When the lawyer asked Jesus, "How do I enter heaven," Jesus answered, "Love God & your neighbor."

"Who is my neighbor?" the lawyer asked.

Instead of a concrete answer Jesus told the parable of The Good Samaritan.

In "Bone" Mary Oliver tries "to figure out/ what the soul is,…" For fear you might shun poetry I reprinted only the first & last verses. 

"Understand, I am always trying to figure out
what the soul is,
and where hidden,
and what shape…
…
"…Though I play at the edges of knowing,
truly I know
our part is not knowing,
but looking, and touching, and loving,
which is the way I walked on,
softly,
through the pale-pink morning light."

How does one create great art, inventions or organizations? There are rules & training. But, "Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius," Mozart wrote.

Like Oliver, Mozart stopped asking "Why, what, where, when, how? Instead, he wrote music he heard from Love's unknowable soul. 

-Erie Chapman

Photoart – "The Eternal Madonna & Child" – Erie Chapman – 1978 & 2019