The word for this new year
that came to you
–of all the words, this one
and of all people, you–
what if it isn’t what you should be
but what you already are?
What if it isn’t what you should do
but what God is already doing in you?
What if it’s both what you seek
and what you already have?
–Esther Hizsa, You Know Enough
Whole
was the word on the back of the star I picked
from the church bulletin board–
a yellow star like all the others,
each hiding a different word for the year.
The one in my hand read
whole.
I put it in my pocket,
walked around with it,
wrote about it
and lost it.
A week later, our contemplative group made mandalas with our word-for-the-year.
I perused the magazine cuttings, spread out on tables and counters,
let images and words draw me and arrange themselves on a circle of green.
It had to be green, something in me said.
I cut out letters, spelled Whole
and glued them on the dark space in the middle.
Afterwards, I propped the mandala on my spiritual direction chair
so I could see it when I was writing or working,
and it could see me.
Whole:
something I already am,
something God is doing,
something I’m seeking,
and, my mandala-spiritual-director added,
something that’s seeking you.
The koan accompanied me on my hillside hikes or rides through the valley,
but the mandala got in the way whenever I needed to sit where it was.
I temporarily placed it in the closet and
forgot about it
until I found myself falling in love with the land,
making friends with lilies and birds,
saving gray water for the silver birch in our yard
when stage three water restrictions were announced.
I realized:
just as separation from God is an illusion,
so is our separation from all living things.
I am connected to creation,
whole in relationship
with the forest, the mountains, lakes, oceans and stars.
I pull out my mandala again and
know why it had to be green.
I begin to see how each word describes my budding relationship with creation:
Open
Awake
Burial
Honest
Pilgrimage
Connection
Desert
Finding
I know why each image I chose was of wilderness–
welcoming the ocean,
walking in a forest,
sitting in the mountains,
finding myself face to face with a tree,
floating in a clear blue lake,
painting the stars–
this is me whole.
“Uh-huh,” my mandala-spiritual-director nods.
I look out my window,
at the hill where I say hello to purple
and make eye contact with deer.
I see my friends: the dry sage, the tall fir, the endless blue sky.
“Uh-huh,” they say.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
–Mary Oliver, Wild Geese
An Everyday Pilgrim 