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.”
If being “torn” fundamentally marks our experience of the pain and struggle of twoness, then being healed is the ongoing, difficult, work of wisdom which points to the Sacred Whole.
I am repeatedly amazed to recognize that the English word for the balm that heals a physical wound, “salve,” shares the same etymological root as “salvation.” The connection between the two suggests that, undesirable as they might be, pain and struggle are powerful teachers about wholeness. In the way that the tenderness of a scab covering a wound might remind us of both the pain of being torn and the ease of wellness, to recognize areas of our selves that need healing is to honor both our finite tendencies and our Divine teleologies, or larger purposes.
Much like the powerful pairs that mark the patterns of our tornness (depression and anxiety, fear and anger, shame and blame), the particular patterns of areas that are in need of healing can become powerful guides in the healing work that points toward wholeness. For example, I recognized one of my need-for-healing patterns around my quarter-life crisis. At the time, I had come to value my capacity for receptivity, since I was training to become a spiritual director, and that was considered a valuable quality. Around the same time, I came to recognize a pattern of being overly irritated in the presence of what I considered to be “aggressive” women. (Really, they were being simply assertive.) Over time the pattern repeated so often, I was able to see it as “mine,” and not really about them. Furthermore, I was able to recognize my persistent irritation as an invitation. Since I was already good at receptivity, the call to wholeness prompted me to complete the circle and also develop my ability to become assertive.
Each of us has our own particular pattern(s) that draw from the need for healing. Rather than tearing us apart, the finite areas in need of healing can help to point toward the infinite possibilities for growth that we may not have recognized without the pain and suffering. In this way, healing work faces the tornness of twoness and points toward the transformation that the pull of wholeness calls us into. The finite parts of us point to the infinite possibilities before us.
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 from your own life that drew from the need for healing?
- How did this pattern lead you toward growth? How did (or didn’t) you heed its invitation?
- What helps you to recognize these patterns in your life? How do you keep yourself open to the possibilities of healing and wholeness?
Join the conversation! If you feel moved to share your reflections, we invite you to email us with the subject line “Wisdom of Opposites.”
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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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