Awakening to Wholeness is a series of prompts, reflections, and teachings about how holding the tension of opposites can help us to heal division and experience wholeness. If you feel moved to share your own reflections, we invite you to email us with the subject line “Wisdom of Opposites” or tag us on social media with #EHoPWisdomOfOpposites.
Early on in my training as a spiritual director, I met with a young man who struggled intensely with controlling sexual desire. Through my own personal reflections on the experience of companioning him, I came to articulate the “God-gap.” In him, I sensed that the weight of his personal sin was anchored to one side of an abyss, and far away, on the other side of the wide-open space, was God: distant, judging, and out of reach.
We all carry the weight of this anchor, though it takes many forms in many theologies. My weighted anchor comes through a sense of unworthiness, certainly not helped by statements from significant people in my life. I remember my dad looking down at me as we contemplated buying a $15 banana-seat bike and asking, “I don’t know. Are you worth it?”
The God-gap—our perceived sense that God is somehow separate-from, beyond, and far-away from the world—is the source of so much personal brokenness in the world. And, when personal brokenness piles up in heaps, we are left facing a societal sense of fragmentation. Loneliness, anxiety, and depression are hard to deal with when you are facing a wall of fragmentation—one that seems even bigger when the fires of division are stoked.
But fire is a source of warmth and light as well. In virtually every religious tradition, God is represented as Source of Light. In our lived experience, light defies division. I feel the warmth of sun on my skin even as I cover my eyes to block its light. The abyss of the God-gap might seem empty, but it can also be filled with light. How might Light help us to navigate our false sense of separateness from the Holy One?
Contemplative Questions
We offer the following questions as prompts to help you reflect on the presence of opposites in your spiritual practice and your life.
- What situations, emotions, or personal struggles cause you to feel that God is distant, judging, and out of reach?
- What people, teachings, or prayer practices help you to remember God as a Source of Light?
- How might holding the tension of these opposites help you feel at one with God, Self and Others?
Join the conversation!
If you feel moved to share your reflections, we invite you to email us with the subject line “Wisdom of Opposites” or tag us on social media with #EHoPWisdomOfOpposites.
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