THE RELATIONAL SOUL has received good endorsements and press, so I wanted to check it out. The authors work together at CrossPoint Ministry, “a ministry designed to cultivate spiritual formation in the lives of leaders” --- Richard Plass as a seasoned therapist and James Cofield as a spiritual director and retreat leader. They have a lot to offer about soul work with respect to our relationship with ourselves, with our families and the larger community, and with God.

Their book does a good job of laying out psychological and theological basics. However, I admit that I felt a little bored for much of it, as if I was reading supplementary material (on attachment theory) for Psych 101 and later for Spirituality 101 (on spiritual disciplines), though maybe this was the authors’ and publisher’s intent. After all, every upcoming generation newly discovers relational dynamics.

"[The authors] have a lot to offer about soul work with respect to our relationship with ourselves, with our families and the larger community, and with God."

We were created as relational beings, communing with a creating and relational God. This side of paradise, things will not be perfect. But our fractured, isolated, lonely selves can be mended, bonded, fellowshipped (can I use that word?) as we understand and set aside our “false self” --- marred by early-life mistrust and dysfunction, reinforced as we resort to the familiar emotional comforts to which we’ve always resorted --- and walk toward healthy, trusting relationships, nurtured at the deep-soul level. Plass and Cofield deftly illustrate their teaching on finding “a life of trust, receptivity and love” --- a definition of “true-self living” --- with personal anecdotes from their own lives and others.

I personally gravitated toward their chapter on community, noting a thought-provoking Dietrich Bonhoeffer (LIFE TOGETHER) quotation that distinguishes between one’s “dream of community” and “Christian community itself.” The person who loves the dream more than the reality “becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.”  

Plass and Cofield admit several times that one doesn’t find wholeness in a book, though, of course, they commend reading as a catalyst for change. And where would we book lovers be if we weren’t looking for health and wholeness in the next book, on the next page, as I was when I picked up this volume?