The world is in a whole-mess. (Yes, I’ve made that a new whole-word) and it feels like wholeness is another world away such is the achingly real fear and fracture we carry and wrestle with (if we turn to attend to it and take it in). As you hold this truth, here’s something to play with. When you read the words

WHOLE-MESS and

WHOLE-NESS

There’s only one letter difference and they live next to each other in order – M to N.

These seeming polar opposites can be spoken of, known and felt in the same breath. This is wholeness, made up of the wholemess and it lives both within and outside of us. The wholemess is you and me and us – we are all a part of it. While it doesn’t feel like wholeness,   what becomes whole is made of the efforts to tend to the mess. Committing to this is as noble, if not more, than anything you can give your life to.

We must choose again and again to keep our heart’s open and remain with the conviction that life is good, beautiful and true

The extent of suffering and games we are witnessing across the world are heightened. Turning away from the messiness in the world and within ourselves is an understandable and human response. But we can’t. This is not a moral judgement. It’s a statement of reality about the fact that the mess of the world requires us to change it.  We are the people we have been waiting for.

In the face of fragmentation, competition, division and fear it’s understandable that we turn towards bunkering down, isolation and control. But we must choose again and again to keep our heart’s open and remain with the conviction that life is good, beautiful and true. And more so, we must continue to try and participate in whatever way we can, to the co-creation of the experience and encounter of love, community, freedom and respect.

The mess in ourselves and our world is an invitation to allow love in and upon encountering that love, live in the world with courage to be all you can for that love to become real.

A long, hard, loving look at the real.

Being whole is not a shiny arrival, but a constant turning towards what is broken within me and the world. It enters into the whole-mess with as much as openness as one can bring. From a spiritual perspective, this capacity is what we are capable of and it’s what Franciscan Richard Rohr names as contemplation – a long, hard, loving look at the real.

Love always leads us where we need to go. But we must be willing to believe in it and in ourselves. And it’s emergence flows out of it’s tender meeting with our own brokenness.

When you notice the mess taking over, which it will, notice…pause…whatever you can do for some space to arrive. Turn towards beauty or create something beautiful. Risk – can you share your heart with someone you trust about the mess you feel? Gather – sharing your heart with others and creating beauty as a group enables the energy of love to really come alive. Solidarity – do what you can to stand alongside those who are experiencing diminishment and lack of power.

Most especially, believe in the goodness of life and your heart and like Rilke said ‘rise up rooted like trees’

JOIN ME in Co-Creating Wholeness

I offer programs and experiences to support the personal and collective reawakening of the preciousness of life and the sacred.