wholeness is holy.

The fever of Tennessee summer hasn’t quite broken yet, but class has started up again and I’m staring down the road towards fuller schedules and cooler evenings. And I’m feeling all the big nostalgic feelings about the end of summer.

A brief stint in fundamentalism instilled inside of me the belief that I need quiet time with the Bible and prayer every morning otherwise the day is ruined and it basically doesn’t count. That no longer sounds true to me, but sometimes I feel stuck, suspended in between two things. I want to de-program the belief that I need the Bible to connect to God. However, I still crave a practice – some way to spend my time that reminds me to ground in the love of the Divine. I crave routine, but it doesn’t have to be that routine. 

Lately, I’ve been operating with the belief that wholeness is holy. What makes me feel whole is where my time needs to be spent.

Feeling whole doesn’t always mean doing the most fun thing, or the most relaxing thing. But sometimes it does mean choosing to take a few deep breaths in the backyard instead of washing the dishes.

Lately, wholeness has meant a commitment to breathwork for grounding. It is astounding how taking 5 or 10 minutes to breathe in a particular way reorients my brain and reconnects me to my body and my life in a way meditation never quite has. 

Wholeness has meant morning walks with the dog as a reminder of place, of the particularity of where I live. Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing has been influential in shaping my thinking around connection to place. Wholeness has meant learning about the native trees and flowers in my neighborhood – when they arrive, when they blossom, when they sink back into the ground.

Wholeness has meant prayer beads. Prayer beads have become part of my practice lately, providing structure and focus to my prayer life in a way that has felt satisfying. I didn’t think this was going to be my jam, but it is.

Wholeness has meant ditching my standard definition of “productivity” for a day to putter around the house and cook and call friends. This is a deep luxury that comes from being in grad school and sharing a home with a partner who works full-time. Historically, staying around the house all day probably meant I spent two hours on Instagram and watched TV and took naps (also fine and good!). But right now, I’m trying to remember that my personal definition of a Good Life means tending to deep, loving relationships around the world, doing things with my hands, and getting out of my head and into my body. Cooking meals for friends and calling to check up on the people I love means cultivating a life I’m proud of. A life of richness.

My definition of a Good Life has historical meant “a life where I achieve all of my goals and succeed at everything,” which is code for burning the candle at both ends and being fueled by low-grade anxiety. Now, it’s starting to mean “a life where I stay connected to people and do work I believe in,” which means avoiding unnecessary exhaustion.

The other week a friend dropped by on a Monday afternoon to drop off blueberries they picked in Maine. I spent the rest of the afternoon calling friends and making cobbler (this is the cobbler recipe that defines the summer for me. Biscuit-y, not crumbly, transcendent). I want to be a person who has the ingredients for cobbler on hand and enough time to linger in the living room with a friend – I didn’t know that until I had the space to experience it. 

Giving my days some room to breathe helped me realize what makes them come alive. Everyone’s definition of good living is different. For me, it’s having the physical and emotional bandwidth to tend to relationships, to tend to my own body, and to tend to the neighborhood around me. 

I realized what a good life was for me when I had enough room to do it – when I shook out the stuff I thought I “should” do from my Google calendar and just took a deep breath and did what felt good.

It doesn’t have to be moving between the productivity vortex and the dissociation cave.

There’s something in the middle if we protect some space and let it emerge.