In her book Making All Things New Ilia Delio points out that we like the concept of wholeness. We buy groceries at “Whole Foods.” Some of us have tried the “Whole 30” diet. We try to do a “whole body workout” and we increasingly rely on holistic medicine. And Augustine, a key thinker who shaped Christianity said, “ You have made us for wholeness, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until we rest in thee.”
I was startled by this because it seems to me that we live lives that are segmented and fragmented. We sometimes proudly compartmentalize our affairs and exclaim “well that is business but this is theology.” Or we draw an imaginary line to divide the heart and defend a decision by saying, “well that is politics but this is faith.” But if wholeness is our goal, can we really separate life into neat file folders? Our calendars divide our activities into a grid: exercise, chores, family time, work, travel, leisure, church. We try to get in so many steps a day to make Fitbit happy. But if we value wholeness, then every step we take reflects the wholeness of God’s presence enveloping our lives. No file folder is devoid of God’s holiness.
For the last several days, I have spent most of my time pouring over the Bible and books of theology as a way of planning ahead for the next six months of sermons and worship at the church. It is a very intellectual process. But this morning I became stuck. Too many scriptures. Too many ideas. So I put down the ipad, shut down the computer and set out on a long walk. About an hour into the walk I sat down on a log in the woods and sketched out the series I had been stuck on. Wholeness. Sometimes the body knows what the mind does not. We are whole people: mind, body, spirit. So sitting at a kids baseball game can be theology and meditating in church can be politically motivating and resting the mind can awaken the soul to a deeper spirituality .
Author Ilia Delio is both a Catholic nun and a scientist with a deep interest in evolution, physics and neuroscience. She writes, “Modern science, therefore, suggests that we do not invent a whole; rather the whole exists prior to anything else. We are to awaken to the whole we already are and deepen it by becoming more whole and unified through creativity, convergence and consciousness.”
Grace and peace,
Carla
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