Leading with Soul
Pixar’s “Soul”
I don’t really care to watch animated movies—I can’t pinpoint any particular reason why. I tend to overlook them as not being engaging. Not so for Pixar’s Soul, which I watched for the second time this past week. There is much to reflect on in the story of music schoolteacher and avid jazz pianist Joe Gardner who, in a moment of euphoria at getting the gig he had always dreamed of, falls into a manhole and ends up in a coma. Because he is devastated about the prospect of losing that long-yearned-for performance opportunity, Gardner struggles to get back to Earth and not remain in the Great Beyond.
His soul is no longer one of the fresh, yet-to-be-defined ones he sees all around him in the Great Before, hurtling down to Earth to share their spark for life with humanity. After a lot of resistance and erroneously re-entering Earth in cat form along with a precocious soul, who’s never experienced what it means to be human, Gardner realizes what his soul has missed—not a solitary purpose, but the daily activities and interactions that give life meaning.
Tapping Into Soul
Soul music is a pulsating rhythm, like a steady heartbeat, an ever-resonating groove and focused flow, like the in and out of every breath with neurons, nerve endings, and muscle fibers reverberating in blissful reverie.
Soul food is textured and spice-flavored leaving deeply satisfying notes of life expression on our palettes.
Soulful people live their values—discovering meaning and crafting joy, even in the face of seemingly insurmountable hardship.
In the Netflix series High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America, food writer and host Stephen Satterfield takes us on a soul food journey to Africa and the southern United States to understand how the ingenuity of Black cuisine has informed what we currently enjoy on our daily plates. Satterfield says, “This is the type of food you can feel when you eat it.” Each time he took a mouthful of a dish crafted in ancestral love, his reaction started first in his body, then his face, followed by a short—because he was on to another bite—expression of awe and understated delight. The stories of our food and those who created it flowed from one chef to the next, told lovingly and with deep reverence. From water villages and restaurants in Benin, West Africa to re-enacting hearth-cooking of slaves to the chefs of Presidents Jefferson and Washington, Satterfield leads us on a journey of feeling the food we have become so accustomed to enjoying. It’s an amazing journey.
Soul energy is an energy of creation—profoundly fulfilling and rewarding. Soul creations are connectors of human experience, revealing the essence of living life to its fullest.
Banker turned brewery master Marcus Baskerville is the founder and head brewer of Weathered Souls Brewing Company, the only Black-owned brewery in Texas. According to the website, the name reflects that we are all a little weathered by life, but we shouldn’t mind because that’s part of the adventure. After the murder of Breanna Taylor, George Floyd, and so many others, Baskerville decided to create a chocolate stout named Black Is Beautiful to “raise awareness for the injustices people of color face daily and raise funds for police brutality reform and legal defenses for those who have been wronged.” Baskerville listed as many of the victims of police brutality on the bottle label that he could fit. He says there wasn’t enough room.
To create a collaborative effort among the brewing community and its customers, Baskerville took his initiative a step further—he shared the recipe with breweries worldwide and asked them to donate the proceeds to local foundations fighting for justice. To date, 1200 breweries in the US and 22 countries have joined the Black Is Beautiful initiative, raising more than three million dollars.
I intend to ask our three local breweries to join the initiative.
There is an intelligence and harmony infused in soul creations. They emanate from a place of intention, undergirded by tenacity peppered with joy. Soul creations are imbued with grace—allowing space for others to be and experience, because that’s the beauty in the creation—it’s never just for the creator.
