As we walk a pathway toward rediscovering wholeness in a world that is highly fragmented and divided, one of the most important choices we can make is to build and maintain our relationships with old and new friends. As Margaret Wheatley in her book, Who Do We Choose to Be? Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership, Restoring Sanity (Berrett-Koehler, 2017) reminds us: “We are not broken people. It’s our relationships that need repair. It’s relationships that bring us back to health, wholeness, holiness.”
The late Archbishop Desmond Tutu understood this when he wrote, “We exist in a bundle of life. We say, “A person is a person through other people.” It is not “I think therefore I am” [but rather] I am human because I belong. I participate. I share.”
For me, the reason why we need to build and maintain relationships with old and new friends is because of two key concepts. The first is called “the dear neighbor,” and the second is called “the beloved community.” The former is one of the fundamental tenets of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Philadelphia, a congregation of 550 Catholic Sisters who live and work in 12 states throughout the country. This group works on issues related to justice, peace and the Gospel imperative of active, inclusive love. The idea of the dear neighbor is reflective of our union with God, and an understanding that our union with God and with our neighbor are inseparable. The later concept, the beloved community, was popularized by the late Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. during his lifetime of activism. For King, the beloved community was a place where everyone was cared for, and it was absent of poverty, hunger, and hate. Together, the two concepts can transform our world, one relationship at a time.
Yet, the first step is to build and maintain these relationships. As Arthur Brooks in his book, From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose In The Second Half Of Life ( Portfolio/Penguin, 2022) writes, “Friendship is a skill that requires practice, time, and commitment.” I think we forget that it takes practice, time and commitment. In this age of instant messaging and 24/7 internet access, we often think that relationship building and maintaining should be effortless. But in reality, if we want to have people in our life with whom we can grow old together and to count on during difficult times, then we need to invest in creating these relationships and taking care of them.
As a seminar participant once told me many years, “we need to make friends before we need them.” And, as Margaret Wheatley reminded us in my post yesterday, relationships “bring us back to health, wholeness, holiness.” For me, they are an important source of deeper meaning and fulfillment. They are the place where the beloved community becomes real.
Focus On Gratitude
When we choose to be friendly to ourselves, and when we choose to build and maintain relationships with old and new friends, we discover something important about gratitude, happiness, and wholeness. As Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Catholic Benedictine monk and scholar, noted: “It is not happiness that makes us grateful. It is gratefulness that makes us happy. Every moment is a gift. There is no certainty that you will have another moment, with all the opportunity that it contains. The gift within every gift is the opportunity it offers. Most often it is the opportunity to enjoy it, but sometimes a difficult gift is given to us and that can be an opportunity to rise to the challenge.”
Whether it is a gift which we enjoy, or a gift which comes with the opportunity to rise to a challenge, we must start from a foundation of gratitude for what we have, who we are, where we have come from, and for the strength and clarity to move forward, one step at a time. As we all know, the different seasons of life ebb and flow, moving from one to the next, naturally and effortlessly. When our thoughts are centered on gratitude and when we live from the place of gratitude, we then understand that our lives, the sum of our thoughts, memories and feelings to date, are a foundation for continued growth.
In retrospect, our lives are always moving toward wholeness. And the idea of wholeness is always evolving as we move through life. The key is to be grateful for this on-going and emerging understanding that wholeness is not a defined and fixed state of being as much as an on-going and ever evolving state of being. Wholeness is not equilibrium. It is not a fixed state of balance between opposing forces or actions. Instead, wholeness is a state of being where one has the capacity to adapt and engage with the complex and ever changing nature of life. In essence, wholeness happens when we choose to live in a dynamic state of engaged gratitude.
Finding Love And Discovering Community
For me, there is Tibetan saying that helps me put it all into perspective: “Wherever you have friends, that’s your country, and wherever you receive love, that’s your home.” In a world that is fragmented and divided, all of us are seeking the unique place called “home.” We want to be with people who are grounded, clear, and compassionate. We want to feel safe, healthy, and whole. We want to give and to receive love and support.
Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze in their book Walk Out Walk On: A Learning Journey Into Communities Daring to Live the Future Now (Berrett-Koehler, 2011) understand all of this. As they write, “Whatever the problem, community is the answer. There is no power greater than community discovering what it cares about. Only when we turn to one another do we discover the wisdom and wealth that is so abundantly present in us, our traditions and our environment.”
As we continually seek wholeness during these challenging times, let’s turn to one another, and to our local communities. Let us rediscover each other and rediscover what we care about as a community. Then, with this clarity and unity, let us work together so that everyone can find wholeness, meaning, and gratitude in their lives.
As Ram Dass, an American spiritual teacher and psychologist, wrote, “We are all walking each other home.” Let’s walk together to the place where health, healing, wholeness and that which is holy are one. Let us travel home to the place where we receive love and support on a daily basis.
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