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.
This is a guest post by EHoP community member Dianne Schlichting, in response to “Two-Way Streets.”
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Delighting in “two-way streets” caught my attention this morning. As someone greatly influenced by Benedictine spirituality, the rhythm of work and prayer is part of my life. One word that was used in this reflection particularly caused me to stop and think: the word “disrupt.” That word has powerful connotation for me: chaos, discord, disturbance, destruction, or drastic alteration.
When prayer is disrupted or conversely, when work is disrupted, a choice confronts us: Do we react immediately with our emotions, or do we breathe deeply and take a moment to discern what is the opportunity that is being presented?
I like to use the milder word “interruption” for what I experience daily: the unexpected phone call, the need to run to the grocery store for a missing ingredient, the unwanted emails from places unknown, or the doorbell that rings long before my prayer time has concluded. Making our work a prayer and our prayer time a part of our scheduled “work day” is a skill that takes practice and perhaps a lifetime to master, if one is able to ever do so consistently.
However, trying to balance work and prayer—to integrate the two—does allow for a flow, a rhythm, a pattern in life that bears the fruit of being more peaceful, more attentive, more responsive to one’s own needs and the needs of others, no matter when and how they pop up in our daily routines.
Join the conversation! If you feel moved to share your reflections—either in response to one of our posts, or on the topic of the wisdom of opposites more broadly—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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Dianne Schlichting
Dianne is a member of EHoP; she and her husband John value the opportunity to share contemplative prayer and outreach with others who make the House of Prayer their spiritual home. Dianne is a wife, mother, and grandmother who loves spending time in nature, especially canoeing with John.
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