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Spirituality as Wholemaking

When I speak or try write something, I find that I do a fair amount of new reading, plus continue to go back to some trusted resources.  I have a few people in my life---some of them are personal friends and others have been dead for centuries---who help me think.  I trust the way they have thought and written, so when I go back to their writings, I know they are going to help me.  They either have already addressed some particular issue I am thinking about and I can simply quote them.  Or they suggest a way of thinking or posing a question that enables me to clarify my thinking.

Recently, I was asked to speak on some topic dealing with Jesus.  Of course, that is a ridiculously broad area, so I ask specifically if they had something in mind. They expressed some interest in how Jesus understood the future.  I am confident they had in mind some traditional ideas, such as the kingdom of God, heaven and some of those fan favorites!  I know enough to do a traditional look at some of those issues.  I could consult some key passages in the New Testament, a couple early church theologians and someone contemporaneous and be done with it.  But I wanted to do something fresh for myself.

One of the contemporary theologians I find helps me think is the Franciscan sister, Illa Delio.  I know Delio, but not sure I can claim she is a friend---probably more like acquaintances who spent some good hours together.  Her background in science brings something to the table I cannot claim.  When a theologian also has a doctorate in pharmacology, you have to tip your hat to her.

I took a look at some of her work and landed a couple great quotations that frame how I want to think about things.  I appreciate how Delio uses the beginning to talk about potential endings.  Put in religious language, she borrows from her understanding of creation to think about the way the world is unfolding and its direction.  Let’s listen to her speak.  She says, “Creation, therefore, is not so much a past event as a present becoming that is oriented toward a new being up ahead.” (94)

The first important point here is Delio does not limit creation to what God did those initial seven days.  Creation is not just the story before the Garden of Eden.  To be sure, that first week was creative---incredibly creative.  Delio lets the Genesis creation stories tell metaphorically how our world and everything therein became realities.  Specifically, she couches the creative event in terms of evolution.

To do that means creation is not simply an event.  As evolution, creation is also a process.  It is still ongoing---and will continue to become.  She tells us creation is a “present becoming.”  The idea of becoming is key.  It is always coming-to-be.  In that sense it is not finished yet.  She implies that it may never be finished.  If we look at it that way, there will be no “ending” in the traditional theological understanding.  It would be natural to wonder, what about me, then?

Clearly, my own personal ending will happen.  It will happen in the sense that I will die.  Here I must admit, I am attracted to a more Buddhist perspective.  At death what truly will happen is the end of my particular form of being.  I will no longer be the person I am right now.  When I think about it, however, I am not the person I was a three years old either.  So that is not such a far-fetched idea.  Because I will not be the form I am not does not mean I cease to be.

Picking up Delio’s drift, I will continue to be part of the evolving, creative process of becoming.  Certainly, the physical element of my body will resort to being part of the larger physical world.  But they are part of that world now.  It is just that I typically don’t think of myself that way.  I know our society tempts us to think we are separate from nature, but that is an illusion.

This is where Delio’s idea of Jesus comes into play.  Seeing myself as separate from nature---and from other people by implication---suggests the ways spirituality is design to work in our world.  Hear how Delio puts it, “Jesus was a ‘wholemaker,’ bringing together those who were divided, separated, or left out of the whole.  He initiated a new way of ‘catholicity,’ a gathering together of persons in love.” (145)  Let’s call this the ‘saving work” of Jesus.  

That saving work can begin right now---in this world and as we are.  The first aspect of it is to rid ourselves of the notion that we are all separate beings and we are separated from nature.  We already are part of one, big whole called creation, which is evolving into a new world.  I am ok calling this the kingdom.  We can call it other things, too.  When we agree to follow Jesus we agree to become wholemakers, too.  I like that job assignment.  It is a work of love.  It is a work in which we all become catholic.  Likely, we are not all going to be Roman Catholic, but that’s ok.  

It’s going to be an incredibly diverse group, but that is already the nature of the world.  The goal is not uniformity, but wholeness.  We are a piece of it.  That’s how I see it.



The Unbearable Wholeness of Being, Delio


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