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.
This is a guest post by EHoP community member Dianne Schlichting, in response to “Healed and Whole” by Christine Luna Munger.
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Can you think of moments when you’ve seen life instead through a fractal perspective? Or when you’ve managed to honor your personal needs and individuality while also feeling yourself to be part of the Whole?
This summer we will enjoy a Schlichting family reunion in early August. The gathering is providing me with insight into “holding the tension of opposites.” The opposites I am thinking about are whole vs. part; the idea of holding a fractal perspective in thinking about family reunions grabbed me.
This reunion will be—for the second year in a row—one that first cousins, rather than aunts and uncles, are planning. Our adult children felt the need to reestablish this tradition; they felt the tension of being disconnected but wanting connection, so they up the task of organizing and inviting their relatives to come together. They felt like pieces apart, fragmented parts of something more. When the “elders” could no longer plan and execute a reunion, they expressed a desire to experience “the Whole” of family.
I am thinking that deep inside many of us have this fractal perspective on family, a perspective that celebrates the whole while recognizing the beauty of each part, a perspective that also recognizes that each part reflects the whole even when we are not physically together. Have you experienced this as well?
Last year’s reunion was a major success, and we anticipate the same wonderful feeling of Family when we gather this year!
Join the conversation! If you feel moved to share your reflections—either in response to one of our posts, or on the topic of the wisdom of opposites more broadly—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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Dianne Schlichting
Dianne is a member of EHoP; she and her husband John value the opportunity to share contemplative prayer and outreach with others who make the House of Prayer their spiritual home. Dianne is a wife, mother, and grandmother who loves spending time in nature, especially canoeing with John.
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