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” expresses our experience of brokenness at the personal level, then being “ripped” might help to name our experiences at the interpersonal level.
It is especially heartbreaking when this ripping happens within the social unit of family. Families ripped apart by the separation of migration histories. Families ripped apart by the patterns of violence and addiction that occur across generations. Families ripped apart by the rigidity of religious belief. Families ripped apart by the discord of domestic violence and overbearing narcissism. There is simply so much ripping. Too much is ripped.
Over time, we come to believe that our reality is marked fundamentally by being ripped apart, rather than already made whole. The weight of the assumptions that comes with “just accepting things as they are” is yet another contributor to the already burdensome sense of feeling ripped apart by life.
Over time, patterns and poor habits form like crusted minerals in a toilet ring or on a shower head. All of these unhealthy habits diminish wholeness and hold up partiality and limitation. These habits look and sound like: “Boys will be boys.” “I don’t see color (or skin).” “A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.” “She’s losing her mind in her old age.” “Children should be seen and not heard.” “God is dead,” or “God is my government (or father, or church or wealth).” All of these expressions are markers of partial stories that we tell ourselves. We even live and die by them. So many of our daily, interpersonal encounters with family, friends, and strangers are tainted with the partiality and limits of these lies.
What would living and dying look like when we spin stories and narratives that point to wholeness rather than to the ripping apart of the fabric of our society?
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 of a time when your family, or another group you belong to, has been ripped apart. What forces, beliefs, or assumptions led to the rip?
- What assumptions have you held, or what partial stories have you told yourself, that have shaped your encounters with others and led to division?
- What stories could you tell instead that might point to 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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