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.
There is a time for war and there is a time for peace (Ecclesiastes).
When you are in desolation, remember that consolation will return. When you are in consolation, remember that desolation will return (Saint Ignatius of Loyola).
Both the shadow and the light compose the full Self (Carl Jung).
Every time and place speaks to the constancy of the hard work of tending to opposites. The language and the context change, but the invitation to the work remains, always.
This is true even within a single lifetime. I can hardly count the times that I have presumed that once I “deal with” the tension of a particular issue, it would go away and I would not have to face it again. Not true. So not true.
The familiar faces of my triggers and traumas come back over and over again, to keep transforming me. Back and forth. After repeated encounters with these friendly foes, the familiarity of their patterns does help to soften the impact that they make on the house of my soul each time they come to visit.
After some time, the hardest blows come, not because of the peculiar ins and outs of the issues themselves, but because I have forgotten their constancy. I forget that opposites are always at work, and I get blind sided by their return.
Good and bad. Joy and Sorrow. Receptivity and assertion. Welcome back, again and again. Make yourselves at home. May I become more and more at ease with welcoming you in each time you visit.
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.
- Can you think of a pattern in your life, a trigger that comes back again and again, a tension that reoccurs to keep transforming you? How would you describe it?
- How has your relationship to this pattern or tension changed or evolved over time?
- What prayers, practices, or teachings have helped you learn to welcome these tensions throughout your life?
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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Christine Luna Munger
Christine Luna Munger, PhD currently serves as the director of the Episcopal House of Prayer. She previously served as Coordinator of the Spiritual Direction Certificate and Professor of Theology at St. Catherine University. She regularly writes, teaches, and leads group prayer sits at EHoP.
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