Weaving our way toward wholeness

In her beautiful book, Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer tells the story of moving to with her two young daughters to upstate New York. New to single parenting, she was striving to be a good mother and for her, being a good mother meant providing a home her children could enjoy. On her daughters’ wish list, among other things, was for their new home to have a swimmable pond. Robin found a home that checked all the other boxes, except this one. There was a pond on the property, just not one fit for swimming. The potential was there though and soon after moving in, she began the slow, tedious work of returning the pond to health.

This looked like spending hours in the mud netting and later raking layer after layer of algae. It involved plucking tadpoles from her net and cutting willows back from the shore. It looked like rubber boots full of brown water. Even for a woman with a botany background, the work of debriding what was harmful and restoring the pond to a swimmable state took 12 long years. Only one of her daughters was still at home to take that first swim.

Such is the slow, meandering way of wholeness (or healing or peace-making). Wholeness, not to be confused with perfection, has to do with making room to tend to whatever is keeping us separated from our souls, from our one another, from walking what the First Nation’s Translation calls “Creator’s good road”.

Jesus seemed to know firsthand that separation is at the root of so much suffering. Whether rejection or sickness or “othering” or one’s low social status, he kept shedding light on how our addiction to separation was causing harm. As we keep moving through the stories told in Luke, we will see Jesus as one who is weaving a way back to wholeness. This new yet ancient way of whole-making has to do with truth-telling, humility, connection, and non-violence.

Threads of this healing wisdom are not unique to Christianity of course. They are found in many other faith traditions, and in other healing communities. Over the next few months, during our Sunday gatherings, we’ll hear the stories in Luke intertwined with Indigenous wisdom and wisdom rooted in 12-step recovery communities (Alcoholics Anonymous, Al-anon, etc.), both of which have much to teach us about the path toward wholeness.

Years ago when The Well was just beginning, I shared these wise words attributed to the Dalai Lama: “The planet does not need more successful people. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers and lovers of all kinds.” This still rings true, maybe even more so right now.

This is why we are here - not to tear ourselves or each other into pieces, but to be curators of wholeness - weaving a more just and generous world together. Sure, just like in Luke's day, the Herods will always be here waging war and begging for our attention. While that is not to be taken lightly and we must do all we can to protect our most vulnerable neighbors, we must also not get deterred. We have important work to tend to. Let’s stick with it.