To drop into being means to recognize your interconnectedness with all life, and with being itself.
Your very nature is being part of larger and larger spheres of wholeness. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn

The King James Bible translates Matthew 5:48 as “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” The World English Bible translates the verse as: “Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.”

Recently a dear friend shared a story that she heard in a presentation some years ago at Luther Seminary in St. Paul. She said that the essence of the professor’s message has stayed with her and supported her ever since. The professor used the Bible verse Matthew 5:48 to distinguish the difference between being perfect and being whole: “When reading the original ancient Greek version of the verse,” he said, “the translation of the specific word in question is not ‘perfect.’ Instead, the accurate translation is ‘whole.'”

With that one change, the verse would read, “Therefore you shall be whole, just as your Father in heaven is whole.” In other words, we do not need to keep striving to be perfect (which is impossible anyway). Rather, in truth, we are already whole!

Here are a few thoughts on wholeness from the article, “Principles of Wholeness,” by Robert Atkinson. It’s on sacredstories.com.

“All things are part of the same web of wholeness, yet we live as if all things are separate, and even at odds with each other. This illusion of separateness causes just about every problem, conflict, and even war, that humanity has ever known….

“The challenge we have in seeing the whole through its parts, bringing the whole back together, and living in the understanding of this wholeness, is that uniting a divided consciousness into a consciousness of wholeness largely depends upon experiencing the wholeness that is always all around us….

“Consciousness ties everything in the entire universe together; it gives light its brightness and color, creates images in our mind’s eye, and adds meaning to everything. Our overarching challenge in healing this false separation, which is the cause of all suffering, is making a complete shift in how we relate to reality….

“The voice of our collective soul calls out to us to wake up to the story of who we really are….Even while we experience fear, anxiety, tension, and conflict all around us now, this is preparing us for something greater. Emerging through the evolutionary impulse is a bright future….

“The very nature of the evolution of consciousness – and the completion of the universal [underlying] pattern embedded within transformation and renewal – gives us an abiding sense of hope, a living active hope that engages us with the process we are participating in, to assist it along, toward its fulfillment.”

PARADOX
When we seek to be
Perfect, we are creating
More imperfection.
~ Barbara Shipka

Photo by Barbara
In a neighbor’s yard
Minneapolis, MN