Discerning A Call 4 of 4: Wholeness in Ministry
To be great, be whole;
Exclude nothing, exaggerate nothing that is not you.
Be whole in everything. Put all you are
Into the smallest thing you do.Fernando Pessoa, Poems of Fernando Pessoa
It was early Sunday morning and it was raining, which seemed appropriate. Rain is a Jungian Archetype, a universal symbol connected to life, death, and their mingling: resurrection. I was sitting in a church parking lot, rain washing over the windshield, and struggling with these concepts. Going to church, at that time in my life, required I amputate part of who I was whenever I crossed the threshold. Jesus promises to give us abundant life (John 10.10), but for those who cannot come to service without excluding or hiding parts of themselves, it feels like a half-life.
That moment in my life is why the ELCA’s Wholeness Wheel resonates with me. The idea that no single part of our lived experiences is separate from the whole encourages me to be authentically myself. Also, it reminds us that being authentic, being whole, is never a completed process. We, like the characters in The Last Battle, find ourselves always moving closer to the example of wholeness set by Christ, “in which every chapter is…
