The Slow Way: Unfolding into Wholeness
Wholeness is not asking for an entirely new way. It’s simply asking us to take what’s already there and press out the creases, a little at a time.
Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here beside my heart.
and the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.
Antonio Machado,
Translated by Robert Bly
Dr. Linda’s face is on the other side of the screen. She’s been sharing my most recent brain mapping, showing me via color-coated squiggly line that my focus is improving. And look! The line on this picture that shows the anxiety that has ruled my entire life is shifting to less of a monster. (She doesn’t say this, but I infer.) She wants to know how the headaches are and I tell her that as if this week, my head has been okay. My neck still hurts, but what if my head is improving?
I’m supposed to finish the treatment next week and I’m afraid that not enough has changed. I would keep going forever, slowly zapping my brain back to health if I had endless time and money. But alas, life doesn’t work that way, and the daily drive I’ve been making 35 miles there and 35 miles back for the past 8 weeks so that first Ace could receive the treatment, and now I can, has been a commitment I definitely can’t keep forever.
Dr. Linda says that the improvement my brain has made will stay. The only thing that would wear away the progress I’ve made is stress. I nod my head as if to say, “Sure, Dr. Linda. No big deal.” But this, reader, is a very big deal. I have longed for my brain to heal from the concussion I suffered exactly four years ago this week. And it’s beginning to. And I am the one who chooses what happens now. Just don’t be stressed anymore, Micha, and your precious brain will continue to heal itself.
I’m ever a good patient. So I smile at the screen and try to imagine the life she’s talking about. The one where I prioritize a morning walk to increase serotonin and endorphins. Where meditation and prayer are consistently part of my schedule. Where I don’t rush from appointment to appointment for my kids and myself, while trying to write books and minister to teenagers while raising my own, alongside a child with multiple disabilities.
Perhaps, she’s saying, you should tell your body, “We’re doing a new thing now. The season of having migraines is over.”
Sometimes we can only do that new thing by choosing new habits, she continues. I wonder at her words. Do I know how to do a new thing? Do I know what it means to change how I hold my stress, what I take on, how to prioritize morning walks for the sake of endorphins?
“You’re going to have to convince your body that your brain is getting better, you know,” Dr. Linda says.
My therapist gave me homework a couple of weeks ago. A book called Radical Acceptance: Embracing your Life with the Heart of a Buddha. In it, psychologist and meditation guide Tara Branch writes about the two necessary practices of accepting the more challenging parts of your life: mindfulness and compassion. I’m pretty sure my therapist wants me to read it because I don’t know how to step back, how to recognize that though the needs around me are big, I can change how I hold them. Instead of receiving the challenges of the day with compassion, I tighten my shoulder muscles and charge into them. I don’t know how to tell my brain we’re doing a new thing. My habits are: wake up, get stuff done, help my kids, write the things, go to the appointments, plan the church stuff, connect with the kids, feed the family, return the emails, go to bed. But the spiritual path, of course, is the thread that runs through the habits. Mindfulness and Compassion. The Buddhists are onto something.
Branch summarizes Carl Jung’s ideas that the spiritual path is an unfolding into wholeness. I like that word unfolding. It’s gentle, isn’t it? It’s not asking for an entirely new way. It’s simply asking us to take what’s already there and press out the creases, a little at a time. In my new book Blessed Are the Rest of Us, I write about how the word we translate from the Beatitudes as “blessed” could be understood as “whole” or “flourishing.” The Beatitudes, Jesus’s strange and wonderful poem about the weak, the poor, and the ones who suffer is also a poem about wholeness. Unfolding into wholeness, through the ache of our own lives.
I wanted to spend some time considering compassion and mindfulness, and what words we give this practice in the Christian tradition. As ever, I came back to the practical guide Paul offered in one of his letters to a church. This one is Colossians. Because we’re already holy and dearly loved, Paul writes, we can choose to clothe ourselves “with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.” Holy and dearly loved.
Most of my life I’ve read that practice of compassion as an outward task. Show compassion to the mean dude in the giant truck who steals your parking spot. Show compassion to the mom at the pick up line who can only talk about her child’s ridiculous soccer talent and how hard it is to drive to tournaments every weekend. Show compassion to the kid in your house who lets his inner-fear loose at you in the form of anger after holding it together all day at school.
But as Dr. Linda says I can teach my brain to be in the world in a new way, I think about the Apostle Paul’s idea that we can clothe ourselves: putting compassion on our own hearts like a soft t-shirt, practicing daily, moment by moment compassion on our very own lives. The kind of transformation that comes with gentle acceptance in the present moment.
The kindness of receiving our weaknesses, as they are, with love.
New habits, I think. And even in the thinking of it, a bit more wholeness unfolds.
A Slow Practice
Let’s practice “putting on compassion” today. You’ll need a pen and paper for this one.
Take five minutes to write out the biggest challenges of your life right now, whether those are physical, emotional, or spiritual. When you consider creating new habits in your own life, what stands in the way? What parts of your feel like they need large doses of compassion? Let yourself get it all down on paper.
Now, take another five minutes to make two columns. On one side write: “What is true about my life.” On the other side write: “What is not true about my life.”
You may need to go back to your needs list to get started. In these two lists you’re looking at the challenges of your life but considering what’s underneath them. For example if you wrote down “the stress of getting out the door every morning,” as a challenge, I want you to consider what is true about your mornings and all you need to accomplish. Maybe you’ll write: get the kids dressed and fed, make lunches, school drop off. But on the other side of your column, write what isn’t true about the way you’re experiencing your morning. For example: “It’s not true that there’s not enough time to enter my tasks with a peaceful presence.”
Write all the trues and not-trues out until you feel you’ve completed the list.
Take a final five minutes and enter a time of prayer. Ask the Spirit to show you what you need to understand from these lists. Pray that you might put on compassion like a pair of glasses, to see your life as God sees it.
As you read through your lists with compassion, invite the presence of God to hold what is true and what isn’t true.
End with this prayer: Lord, today I choose to put on your compassion like a pair of fresh lenses. In every moment I can’t control, teach me to look with compassion on my own life.
Thank you for the lenses of compassion 😎
Thank you for this slow practice ❤️ timely for the beginning of the school year.