FOSTERING SPIRITUAL GROWTH AND WHOLENESS

  presentation by Carolyn Brock

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In the deserts of northeastern Kenya, a small garden grows. Covered by a humanly constructed shade during the scorching mid-day sun, irrigated by water carried from a nearby well, it produces vegetables that the nomadic Turkana people have never before had in their diets. The vision for the garden came from Alicia and Elkana Odupa, Luo church members who moved to Turkana to work for the government in the mid-1980’s. They brought the seeds and taught the people how to plant, fertilize, and cultivate. Over a period of years the Odupa’s presence brought transformation to a desperately poor community.

It’s not so much that the poverty is gone in that place or that all problems are resolved. No, we cannot really say that. But what we can say is that there has been growth toward wholeness. The well being of the community, the quality of life has been nurtured, supported, and changed in a variety of creative ways. The people of Lodwar, Turkana are becoming whole because the Odupa’s heard the Spirit calling them to become a healing, empowering presence in their community.

When we speak of wholeness we mean God’s dream of shalom, the scriptural vision of Zion, the healing of the entire created order. We mean a condition in which there is justice, health, well being, goodness, beauty, and peace for every person, every creature, the creation itself. This kind of radical transformation of life is rooted in our relationship with Spirit. In scriptural language it is the metaphor of the branches drawing life from the true vine. (John 15)

Alicia and Elkana responded in compassionate but practical ways to the movement of God’s Spirit in their hearts, minds, and bodies. They found that spiritual growth issues could not be addressed unless wholeness and healing issues were also addressed in the lives of their Turkana friends. And unless spiritual life and growth was continuously attended to, the practical material programs began to fall apart. All aspects of human community had to be held together around a central dream, a central calling, a central source of life.

This story speaks to me of the call to be ministers of spirituality and wholeness. Our districts, stakes, and congregations are somewhat like gardens, some of them perhaps quite small, some of them perhaps struggling not to die from spiritual dehydration. How can high priests foster their growth, nurture their spirituality, empower them to move towards wholeness?

High priests are called to be ministers of integrated vision. In other words those who see the whole, the big picture, the way things fit together, the relationships between things. The ability to see in this holistic, accurate way is a spiritual capacity. It is a way of knowing that goes beyond logic and rationality, though these too are spiritual gifts. Yet for transformational spirituality and integrated vision we must draws on other ways of knowing, we must explore other dimensions of the intuitive, the mysterious, the non-local nature of mind and consciousness, the sacramental nature of the universe and our own beings.

High priests themselves are called to spiritual growth and wholeness, invited to deepen their spirits, care for the wholeness of their own bodies and lives. Growing a garden, bringing transformation to a congregation or a community are strenuous callings demanding time, energy, compassion, practical wisdom. Neither can be done from a state of physical depletion or spiritual pessimism. Who must we be, then, how must we live if we are to be whole and full enough to respond? What is the central reality that holds all the pieces together and allows us to discern what is most essential?

One definition of wholeness is life integrated around a spiritual center. It is my belief that what heals and energizes, what fills and renews, what inspires and empowers, is our relationship with God’s Spirit. If we are to be ministers of vision, integrators, planters of new seeds, those who nurture and support, those who “foster” wholeness and spirit in others, we must begin by placing Spirit at the center of who we are and what we do.

In the fall of 2001, the theme for the Temple Peace Colloquy will be “Seeds of Spirit, Harvest of Shalom: Healing for all God’s People.” Reflecting on the imagery of this statement I hope that you will experience a rich planting of seeds of the Spirit and that the seeds will take root in your hearts; that you will feel them swelling and expanding and starting to grow. And when they do, may you and those you serve know a rich harvest of shalom. May you become a tree of life bearing the fruits of healing and wholeness in your life together and in God’s world.