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.”
Growing up, I was taught that the Saints were a special class of people who, because of their intense goodness, were especially close to God. These people were to be emulated, since they were highly esteemed, but really, not actually were they to be imitated. Us regular, ordinary folk should not be inclined to think that we could actually achieve becoming holy, like them. Rather, in a practical sense, they were treated more like those special dolls placed on the top shelf—the ones we liked to look at because they were so pretty, but that we never actually took down to play with. Becoming holy was considered just a little too fancy for ordinary folk to aspire to.
Nonetheless, in the last 10-15 years of my life, I have noticed that many of the spiritual teachers that I admire and am inspired by, have been pointing to wholeness. From Nan Merrill’s invitation to wholeness in her book Psalms for Praying, to Richard Rohr’s emphasis on claiming the many stages of growth on the spiritual journey, to Cynthia Bourgeault’s examinations of wisdom and non-duality, to Ilia Delio’s The Unbearable Wholeness of Being, all of these teachers point to a convergence in wholeness. Comparing the recent pattern of these teachings to the teachings of my childhood, I can’t help but wonder if there might not be a more accessible and legitimate path to holiness though the wisdom work of being wholly committed to wholeness.
Perhaps one mark of holiness is to wholly remember the Divine Source of all that is. Perhaps one mark of holiness is to be wholly willing to include all that is—the good, the bad, and the messy—as important activity in the tent of the Sacred. Perhaps one mark of holiness is to learn how to wholly actualize all of my God-given capacities: intellect, affect, volition, senses, and spirit. Perhaps one mark of holiness is to be all-in, wholly committed to supporting the well-being of all beings in service to the common good. Perhaps one mark of holiness is wholly surrendering my grasp on everything that is not God, including my ways of praying and how I think things “should be.”
Each of these markers would be a big deal to live into, and yet, unlike the unattainable, fancy holiness of the Saints of my childhood, these markers of being wholly committed to wholeness, are like dolls that I can actually play with, like signs on a road that I can actually travel, even if it is one small step at a time on a journey toward becoming wholly holy.
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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