Wholeness of Darkness & Light

I believe that wholeness is something that we all yearn for yet find difficult to explain. We yearn to feel complete as opposed to broken. We yearn to feel fullness within instead of emptiness within. We yearn to feel peace instead of worry and anxiety. We want to, as Jan Richardson says, “not be good, but to be whole.”

What I also believe is that wholeness isn’t something we acquire, it is something we already have that simply needs to be found again.

Here’s one of the biggest fallacies I know… that to be whole we have to be perfect, or to be whole everything in our lives must be going smoothly.  We forget that wholeness does NOT equal perfection. Wholeness does NOT equal an easy life.

We can touch wholeness despite the chaos in our lives, despite our mistakes, despite not being perfect, because when we touch our wholeness we are touching the part of us that is MORE THAN. Wholeness is beyond everything we might label darkness and difficulty in life and beyond everything we might label light and goodness in our lives. As the psalmist reminds us, darkness and light are the same to the Divine Presence. We are all of it and more.

We are more than our mistakes and the things we’ve said or done that have hurt others.

We are more than guilt that we weren’t a perfect parent or spouse or sibling or friend.

We are more than our bodies with their issues, limitations and imperfections.

We are more than the hurt, betrayal, rejection, grief and loss that we may carry.

We are also more than our successes and accomplishments, our skills and talents.

Underneath all those layers resides a wholeness, a spark of the divine, a True Self, a soul.

I was reading one of Mark Nepo’s book, Exquisite Risk, in which he was talking about the first house he lived in on his own. Behind that house was an old oak tree that had a piece of barbed wire embedded in the center of its trunk. I’m sure you’ve seen trees that have grown around something (googling it produced all kinds of interesting pictures!). Yes, it has a horrible thing stuck in the middle of it, but what has happened to the essence of the tree? Is that tree with the barbed wire still itself? And so, is it still whole? Of course.

We have all kinds of barbed wire stuck in us. Some we were able to remove before they became embedded. Some is with us for life. Hopefully we can recognize our own resilience in living with the experiences that hurt and scar us. Hopefully we learn the wisdom of the wound so that we continue to live and grow. Hopefully we remember that deep inside, underneath all of it, the essence of who we are is still whole. Sometimes it is simply harder to find and touch than at other times. This time of year, is one of those times for many people.

Our wholeness does not deny the darkness and light we feel in our lives, but gently holds them and reminds us that we are more.

Advent Blessings,

Kaye