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.
Years ago, while training to become a spiritual director, I learned the phrase, “God desires our healing and wholeness.” The phrase became like a mantra, a guide to point toward each next step on my vocational journey. Healing and Wholeness: the first in flux, always coming into being, and the second already holding the perfection of Love that undergirds all that is.
From the human side, the powerful phrase is inspiring and easy to consent to—who wouldn’t want healing and wholeness? The tricky part is grasping the tension from the Divine lens. If each soul rises up in particularity and individuality, then does the soul not break from the Whole? To me, separation from the Whole sounds devastating. Could we not somehow be particular within the Reality of the Whole? A whole lot of souls making up One Whole?
Professional theologians also warn against this conclusion—God is more than the sum of all the parts of creation. The something “more” that pantheism points toward is pan-en-theism, all of creation within the larger Reality of God. Yet the something “more” of the professional theologian lens often ends up feeling like, or getting interpreted as, separation again. God far away, way up on the clouds in the sky.
How do we live into the tension of being neither separate from, nor the same as, God? How can I be a Soul and also part of the Whole? Perhaps there is more to the “more” that is the sum of all parts. Maybe it would be a really big deal if all of the parts collectively remembered our wholeness. There might be magic in the mystery of deep remembering. Something truly magical and miraculous might come into Being as each Soul forgets separation and remembers wholeness. The collective, conscious act of remembering might be the third thing that brings forth the mysterious “more,” when the Soul and the Whole fully know one another again.
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.
- Describe your own experience with Healing and Wholeness: how have you journeyed toward each in your spiritual life? What tensions or roadblocks have you encountered?
- Have you ever felt that your own unique individuality separated you from the Whole or kept you distant from God? What did it feel like? What did you do?
- How do you live into the tension of being neither separate from, nor the same as, God?
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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