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.
When both of my children were still “Littles,” one of my companions explained the season of life we were living as “the longest shortest time.” We recognized how in such times, a single day can feel like an eternity, and yet all of a sudden, a whole week, then another month, then a year flies by in a seeming flash.
Conversely, when lifelong dreams remain unrealized month after month, year after year, the long stretches of longing also feel like an eternity. At the end of the calendar year, especially in regions of the world when the darkness prevails over the light for most of the hours of the day, we also feel this warping and stretching of time. These blips in our perception of time can be attributed to what some teachers call our “amphibious” nature: we are both grounded in the gritty, concrete, often messy complexities of history and chronological time, and, we are also immersed in the expansive and eternal reality of Spirit.
We are capable of perceiving the heights, depths, and lengths of reality both within and beyond time. The exhausted sighs of midnight feedings for little ones resonate with the deep sighs of longing for union with the Holy One. Perhaps the longest shortest time is not just a season of life, but a sacred marker of the whole shebang!
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.
- Think about a moment, situation, or season when you’ve felt grounded in the gritty, concrete, messy complexities of daily life or chronological time. How did it feel? What did it teach you?
- Think about a moment, situation, or season when you’ve felt immersed in the expansive and eternal reality of Spirit. How did it feel? What did it teach you?
- How do you hold the tension of your own “amphibious” nature? What can you learn from these two opposites?
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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