Wholeness
Only whole people can imagine or call forth a more whole world. —Richard Rohr
What is it that makes your soul sing? I’ve been asking myself that question almost daily, especially as I acquire a more acute sense that on the outside things are never what they seem. The numerous intersections that create a story or a certain spin on social media is not always truth and does not always represent the full story. This practice of looking at things more deeply requires the skill of discernment; though not error-proof it enables one to sift through fact and fiction with more wisdom.
With that in mind those things that I seem to hold dear and treasure cannot be captured with anything but experience; something I can feel in my skin, body and senses but also perceive in other ways of knowing. For example going to a live violin and organ concert on a Friday afternoon. That set my soul afire, and brought me back to wholeness; especially after a scattered week.
Then, I started wondering what other things resonate with my soul and bring about a state of fullness. A conversation with a friend I hadn’t spoken with in several months created a similar effect. The gleeful way my pet, Pierre greets me when I come home, running from one end of the house to the other and back to me, wagging his tail vigorously; the mid-week Healing Prayer service at my church. You get the picture! These are not huge events, nor mere ideas, but experiences that touch the heart and soul and invigorate the spirit. It is those life-giving things that we all collect in our memory banks, without any attachment or attempt to re-capture the feeling — just there holding space in the heart, forever!
Too sentimental? I don’t think so—those are the little gifts that bring beauty, grace, and yes, wholeness to the planet. They are cumulative and leaven for a full life. Those events are the residual content for those times when we are feeling broken and need to raise ourselves to a higher vibration.
Maybe this is what John Philip Newell was referring to when he wrote:
…we need to find ways of sharing our intimate experiences of the Mystery, for we are one. It is through one another that we will know more of the Life that flows within us all. It is through sharing fragments of insight that we will come to be a fuller picture of the One who is at the heart of each life.
The other factor is that all the experiences I’ve mentioned above hold a Truth, they are authentic, pure, and joyful and puts one right in the present. They don’t need an interpretation, merely the acceptance of the moment; of being fully present putting the thinking, busy mind to rest, briefly.
But we have to practice—being conscious and develop skills in noticing those small gifts of Beauty in our lives which turn out to be incredibly powerful and the fuel for longer periods of wholeness. I get that this all seems a bit simplistic. Afterall, there was a tragic mid-air collision nearly a week ago which brought death and grief to families we didn’t know, but learned more about as the days unfolded. They became part of our story; not to mention the ongoing chaos in our government and other parts of the world—and here I am babblings about a classical concert, rambunctious greetings from a pet, and honoring the sanctity of a prayer service. But how else do we heal ourselves in order to heal others? Everything has to be brought into the equation of wholeness.
If it’s true that we are all connected, those stories of joy, strands of music and the prayers of reverence have an affect—a healing affect on us all. Candace Pert (1946-2013) noted this in her book, Molecules of Emotion: The Science Between Mind-Body Medicine. Pert’s explanation of the neuroscience of our connectivity is beautifully presented in a way that even a non scientific person like me captured the essence of her message —something I’ve never forgotten! Like it or not our moods and behaviors affect others, not just those in our close circle, but on a wider band-width. Consequently, the words “be kind” and “love your neighbor” are not mere sentiments, but truths to be heeded and lived by because the result is on a much larger scale, beyond our immediate focus.
Classical ballet, the dance form with which I’m most familiar is an incredibly intimate art. The relationship between dancers in the studio is important and partnering does not occur six-feet apart. Dancers work symbiotically woven into each other’s energies and aware of each other’s relationship to the space and the other dancers in the studio. Crafting shapes and positions artistically are not mere flips of the coin; it takes practice and perfection to be safe and keep the audiences buying tickets. I get that this is not the kind of work most people are engaged in, but the energy flow is the same and requires attention and attentiveness to every thing and every body around us; it’s the spiritual essence from which we all came.
How we behave affects the whole in both cruel and loving ways. You may think your outrage just allowed your personal release of anger toward the person you reacted to verbally and gesturally in the car in front of you. But, the fall out reaches way beyond that moment. Unless we cleanse the energies of that response, it lingers way longer then we care to admit — and that’s what we forget! — sometimes the rage that led to those actions become the pain, illness and dis-ease within our bodies until they are healed.
Our life is not just about us, but about the whole field. Taking that into consideration causes me to hold my tongue on occasions when I’d much rather react to an unthoughtful comment; or deciding to clear my head before I make the first response to an unsolicited rude comment. I call it “the gap” where one pauses, it’s a millisecond—a breath before one responds. It’s the difference between a retaliatory action and a humble, gentler response— and believe me, it takes practice!
Henri Nouwen reminds us that:
The more mature we become the more we will be able to give up our inclination to grasp, to catch, and comprehend the fullness of life and the more we will be ready to let life enter into us.
That sounds like healing to me and wholeness and forgiveness. It begins with each of us choosing to respond kindly from the gap to generate a different molecular flow of which Candace Pert spoke in her book. We don’t need to wait for a particular moment a few hours away to heal—we can shift the frequency instantly—that’s how powerful we are.
In the closing stanza of Padraig O’Tuama’s “A Prayer of Reconciliation” he writes:
Because if God is to be found, / God will be found / in the space / between.
I’m grateful for those moments when I am able to linger in the space between.
as ever, a post to treasure. thank you, diana!