UUs Reflect: I am passionate about…Wholeness.

This week, each of our three Soul Matters small groups met to discuss this month’s topic: Wholeness. Wholeness was also the topic for our Sunday service last week. In my opinion, there is more diversity among our groups (and probably within our congregation) on this topic than any of the others. What is Wholeness? And as our small group packets ask, “What does it mean to be a people of Wholeness?”

Pondering this topic the last few weeks, I have come to understand wholeness as all – accepting all of who I am. Strengths and weaknesses are not always opposites, but rather, subtleties of my own personality.  

Last Sunday, I used the Pixar film “Inside Out” to help explain the many personality traits often at war within our minds. The film imagines that our past experiences form “islands” of personality based on our core memories. In the film, the main character is Riley, an 11-year-old girl who is experiencing an overwhelming amount of change. Riley’s islands (the areas of memory that make her uniquely herself) include Family, Friendship, Hockey (a true Minnesotan), and Goofball. In the sequel, when Riley turns 12, new islands emerge: Fashion, Boy Band, and Vampire Romance. As human beings, we are always changing — so our Wholeness must change with us.

Wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life. Knowing this gives me hope that human wholeness — mine, yours, ours — need not be a utopian dream, if we can use devastation as a seedbed for new life.

Parker Palmer

Wholeness also reminds me a bit of another Soul Matters topic: Balance. A see-saw is in balance for only a brief moment before it tilts one way or the other. Our wholeness is relative. It is our integration of all aspects of ourselves, and in order to maintain it, we may find ourselves diving deep. We may seek to know ourselves in all ways: physical, spiritual, emotional and psychological. This is essential.

In the big picture of life, sometimes we, as individuals, are not enough (despite what we hear). Sometimes it takes all of us being whole together to accomplish the task at hand, whether that be to raise our children, be more effective justice makers, or build a beloved church community.

If you are not at church this coming Sunday, Happy Easter. And may your Spring be wholly magical in all ways.

So may it be.

Rev. Joan