I’ve often talked about death with aging folk. Invariably the subject of an afterlife comes up. The discussion soon revolves around ideas of a soul and whether such a thing survives after our death. The soul’s been talked about forever. It’s tricky to define and mysterious.

As a child, I recited this prayer as a nightly ritual. I knelt by my bed, reverently placed my folded hands on the covers while saying:

Now I lay me down to sleep;
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

Next, I prayed for all my deceased relatives, asking God to look after them. I didn’t want them to feel abandoned, the way I did when they died.

Their souls, I imagined, were like Casper the Friendly Ghost. Like wafting smoke in its incorporeal state, my soul would one day go through walls and closed doors like Casper unconstrained by any physical obstacles and soar between heaven and earth as it chose. I wasn’t frightened in imagining the soul’s ghostly mien. In fact, I thought it was really neat.

I believed that the best time for actually seeing souls during the day was when cumulus clouds rolled overhead. Their cotton-like configurations took various forms. I believed them to be the heavenly host, particular those recently deceased. Heaven, I noticed, had a lot of old men with long white beards and there were always loads of sheep. Like the childhood myths that I once treasured and that served me well, they became less credible as I grew older. The feeling that I somehow possessed a soul, however, I never lost. I had only vague notions about what it might be.

Many people believe the soul survives our bodies. The specific formulas vary with religious and cultural traditions, but the belief that there’s life after physical death is remarkably persistent throughout all traditions. Is it a wish? Is it a fact? On our spiritual journey, at some point, we’ll wonder about it.

As children, we see the world with a clarity we might never have again. A child is always curious. What he or she hears, sees or touches is approached with an anticipation filled with wonder. The child’s fascination at Christmas is a case in point. In childhood we live expectantly, anticipating the next wonder to appear. I believe that as children or early childhood, we are closer to what I understand a soul to be. To see deeply. The locus of a soul is in the imagination. I don’t mean this dismissively, like “It’s all in your mind,” but, yes, it’s really all in our mind. I would add “and heart” to that.

There’s a spiritual tradeoff when going from childhood to adulthood. The adult mind becomes conditioned by information that, rather than enlightening us about what we see, often skews the clarity of our perception. The greatest receptor in a child’s mind is his or her curiosity and imagination. A child’s curiosity is voracious and its imagination boundless. A child encounters the world by wondering. There’s a purity in that way of seeing that’s hard to retrieve as we grow into adults. By the time we are adults, we have developed “opinions.” Opinions are the gatekeepers of our imagination. These gatekeepers admit into our awareness only what has been first thoroughly vetted or censored. The imagination is quickly compromised. I believe that the search for our souls will lead us back to our imagination. We’ll find our souls, but only after having rummaged through all the opinions that have kept them hidden from us. Our souls are the elusive agency by which we see to the heart of a matter.

Einstein, one of history’s geniuses, changed the world because he had an insatiable curiosity, a florid imagination and some wacky ideas. As a child, he loved to imagine that he was riding on a light beam. This product of his imagination became the impetus for eventually developing his theory of relativity. He liked playing with his imagination – he called it “Gedankenexperiment,” the German for “thought experiment” or what some might call head-trips. The head-trips, however, were deeply rooted in the seat of his imagination. To say the revelation he had was all in his mind is not an understatement. The mathematical computations eventually validated the science of the idea, but the revelation of it came first; it appeared to him as an image, in his imagination.

In the spiritual life, the same phenomenon is called revelation.

An old tale gets at this mystery in another way.

The gods in their celestial abode convened an emergency meeting. Human beings were increasingly encroaching on the gods’ divine attributes and they were anxious that they’d lose their powers to humans. Humans had invaded heaven with their space rockets, decoded DNA, developed computers that speak, transferred hearts from one person to another and made new limbs for the lame to walk. “They think they’re god,” one minor divinity grumbled.

The gods decided they must hide their divine spark where humans would never find it. A variety of proposals were made: hide it in the earth’s core; lose it in black holes; or place it on the highest mountain. They finally agreed on this proposal: hide the divine spark deep in the human mind (I would add, heart) and they’ll never guess in a thousand years that’s where to find it.

Ever since we first walked the earth, we’ve been searching for our souls and, bless my soul, they’ve been right there within us the whole time.

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.

I had an uneasy reaction when President Trump recently announced he was planning a more spectacular July 4thcelebration this year in D.C. Bigger than ever, he described it: “a major fireworks display, entertainment and an address by your favorite president, me!”  

Might Trump crash the party? It’s a strong possibility.

Whether he does or not, his proposal offended me. I couldn’t see Trump as remotely reflecting American ideals, particular our ideal of servant leadership. The recent funerals of Senator McCain and President Bush were poignant. Both events surfaced collective mourning for our loss of inspired leadership and revealed a national yearning to reclaim its ideals.

When nations face dire adversity, servant leaders act in the interests of the people they serve. When Japan and Germany surrendered in 1945, I recall photographs circulating at the time, two in particular. One was Berlin’s destruction, the other the Japanese delegation signing the surrender on the U.S.S. Missouri.

I was an eleven when the WWII ended.

It was a jubilant time. America rejoiced. So, did I. Bubble gum and Hershey Bars were available again, butter was back on the shelves and rationing ended. Best of all, my father returned from two years at war in Europe.

I remember how The Stars and Stripes, magazines and newspapers were filled with photographs of the desolation that Germany and Japan sustained at the war’s end. The draconian devastation of Berlin, Hiroshima and Nagasaki eventually became visual commentaries on the horrors ofwar. But how each ended the war revealed the consequences of servant leadership and of those of a dictatorship.

At least two years before the war ended many Nazi leaders knew they could not win. Some advisors urged Hitler toconsider surrender. He would have none of it, essentially ensuring an apocalyptic defeat with devastating c0nsequences for civilians. In fact, a discussion of surrender Hitler regarded as treasonous, carrying the death penalty for anyone proposing it. Even as the Soviet and American troops were entering Berlin, Hitler authorized small children to fight and defend the capitaleven as it was being overrun. The Hitler youth were massacred. What became clear to me only years later was that Hitler had no feeling for the German people but onlyhis maniacal vision of a thousand year Reich. I recall my father commenting on the terrible material destructionand civilian suffering he witnessed when his division entered Aachen. I’ve included a picture of Berlin’sdevastation.

Hitler didn’t lead, he dictated. Dictatorships are efficient, often effective but only until things go bad. His stylespawned unnecessary suffering. The people became pawns in his appetite for power and control. Interestingly, Hitler liked huge military parades and making rousing speeches, usually about his greatness. During his rants, he especially liked excoriating Germany’s ‘Untermensch’ – the German equivalent of losers or undesirables. He vowed to rid the country of them. Sound familiar?

When the inevitable end came, Hitler blamed everyoneelse for his defeat. He and many of his key advisors committed suicide, leaving no functional leadership in place effectively abandoning the German people to suffer the brutal consequences of defeat alone.

The Japanese leadership handled defeat differently.

The Japanese held out hope for victory until Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The handwriting, was on the wall. They knew defeat was inevitable.

Their leadership mobilized to accept defeat, and the surrender was conducted with statesmanship, discipline, unusual humility and dignity. The Japanese people were included as a significant piece of the experience at that critical moment in their history. Their emperor publicly expressed compassion for them during the nation’sgreatest humiliation. He spoke directly to the people: “We must now endure the unendurable, and suffer what is insufferable.” It is believed to be the first time the emperor spoke directly to the common people. What I find remarkable is the “we” in that declaration. The emperor, including the political and military leadership did not abandon the people at their darkest hour. Together, they united to “endure the unendurable.”

Our enemies can teach us.

Why I find this particularly poignant is how critical saving face is in Japanese culture. The Japanese delegation hadassembled on the deck of the U.S.S. Missouri (see image.) The vanquished were surrounded by the victors, the ultimate humiliation. Japanese government officials dressed impeccably in morning clothes, white gloves and top hats and the military in full dress uniform. The leadership took full responsibility for their failure. Humbled, they remained in solidarity with their people, whom they represented honorably and with dignity.

July 4th is America’s birthday party. It’s our national blast, yours and mine. We celebrate our ideals and the famous men and women who are and have been our nation’sservant leaders.

I don’t like the idea of someone grabbing center stage at my country’s birthday party, someone uninvited and who, in my opinion hasn’t the vaguest notion of what thecelebration represents to the country.

We don’t hire bouncers at our national celebrations. We’re better than that. It could be that on this fourth, if Trump should speak, that we will have to “endure the unendurable.” As an inclusive people, I know we will be gracious, and maintain our sense of dignity and solidarity as only the American people can.

Should he not speak, he will have served his country well.

Best and Happy Fourth of July.