You have seen I am a collector; I have all sorts of weird and wonderful objects in my life. I wonder whether you do too.
I don’t mean valuable things, or impressive things, or things that would make sense to anyone else at first glance. I mean the small things we keep on a shelf, or in a drawer, or around our necks, or tucked into a book. The things that seem to hold a little piece of us.
One of the things I do these days is gather objects that speak to different parts of myself and I intentionally reflect on what they say to me about myself and the world and the people around me.
The feather is from my friend Sheena, to remind the perfectionist part of me to let go. To drift rather than strive. To remember that I am not always required to push, force, solve, improve, achieve. Sometimes I may simply be a feather floating on the breath of God.
The scallop shell is that great symbol of pilgrimage. Pilgrims would ask for food on their journey, just enough for the day, enough to fill the shell and no more. I use it to speak to the anxious part of me. The part that is always scanning the horizon, always wondering if there will be enough time, enough money, enough love, enough strength, enough of me.
And to that part I say:
I do enough.
I have enough.
I am enough.
Many of us live with a voice humming away somewhere in the background, asking: am I doing enough? Am I useful enough? Am I kind enough? Am I good enough at being a parent, a friend, a colleague, a partner, a human being?
The world does not exactly answer gently. It says: do more, try harder, improve yourself, become more impressive, become more productive, upgrade your house, your body, your life. It can begin to feel as though life is a kind of exam we are perpetually sitting, and the passing grade is always just slightly out of reach.
So perhaps it is no wonder that we need reminders. A feather. A shell. A stone. A photograph. A mug. A necklace. A scrap of paper. A thing that looks like nothing much to anyone else, but to you says: remember who you really are. All of you.
This morning, Mary Oliver has taken us to the edge of the sea, to broken shells and scattered remnants, things split and opened and left behind. She says it is like a schoolhouse of little words. First, you learn what each one means by itself. Then, slowly, you begin to read the whole story. If you don’t have a sacred book, make one, you will collect fragments of your life and your soul and slowly you will read the whole story.
I love that.
We often meet ourselves in fragments. A part of us that wants to play, and a part of us that wants everything under control. A part that believes, and a part that doubts. A part that is brave and capable, and a part that is tired beyond words.
There is a temptation to tidy all this up. To become one clear, serene, consistent person.
But that is performance wearing the dress of wholeness.
Actual wholeness is stranger, messier, and more demanding. It asks us to read the fragments honestly. Mary Oliver let’s the broken fragments lie there, strewn on the beach, and is able to read the whole.
The poem attributed to Rumi gives us another vibrant image: the self as a guest house. Every morning, a new arrival. Joy, sorrow, irritation, delight, fear, gratitude, confusion, a crowd of unexpected visitors.
A feeling may arrive, and we may welcome it, listen to it, learn from it. Yet it does not follow that every feeling gets to govern our choices. An anxious part may be trying to protect us, and still make us controlling. A wounded part may deserve tenderness, and still lash out. A competent part may have saved us many times, and still drive us into resentment and exhaustion.
Wholeness asks more of us than self-acceptance alone. It asks for relationship, discernment, and responsibility.
There may be a part of you that is grown-up, sensible, organised, managing the whole system. Thank goodness for that part. It has probably got you through a lot.
There may be a part of you that sits anxiously waiting for things to go wrong. It may be exhausting, and perhaps it has also been trying, in its worried way, to keep you safe.
There may be an inner child. Perhaps she is playing happily, finding joy in ordinary moments. Or perhaps she feels sad, or lost, or confused, or unheard.
There may be a critic in you. A worrier. A rescuer. A rebel. A dreamer. A cynic. A mystic. A practical person with a list. A person who wants to throw the list out of the window.
And perhaps they contradict each other.
Of course they do. Human beings contradict themselves. We are living souls, made of memory and desire, body and spirit, courage and fear, mud and moonlight.
Let’s listen to Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul,
The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me,
The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate into a new tongue.
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
I am large. I contain multitudes.
What a thing to say. What a thing to believe.
It gives us permission to stop treating complexity as failure. Anxiety does not make us weak. Anger does not make us bad. Tiredness does not make us useless. Longing does not make us needy. Contradiction does not make us broken.
We are large. We contain multitudes.
The reading from Chris Jimmerson gave us a grounded version of the same truth. Wholeness is not either/or. Some aspects of ourselves may be both problematic and beneficial. The same tendency that makes us overfunction may also be part of why we care deeply. The same sensitivity that overwhelms us may also make us compassionate.
This is where the edge of the service is.
Gathering the self does not excuse the self.
To say “this is part of me” is only the beginning. The next question is: how will I care for this part so that it does not do harm? How will I listen to it without letting it dominate? How will I understand its fear without making everyone else live inside that fear too?
Self-acceptance without responsibility becomes self-indulgence or even just good old fashioned naval gazing. Responsibility without self-compassion becomes cruelty. We need both. Enough mercy to tell the truth, and enough truth to make mercy real.
Here is the practice:
Instead of asking, “What is wrong with me?” we might ask, “What part of me is speaking now?”
And then: “What would love have me do next?”
That moves us from inner reflection to outer action.
Perhaps by Tuesday morning one of us will apologise for something a reactive part of us said.
Perhaps one of us will set a boundary with the part that always overfunctions and then quietly resents everyone.
Perhaps one of us will speak kindly to the anxious part, and then do the brave thing anyway.
Perhaps one of us will choose an object at home – a shell, a mug, a photograph, a stone – and place it somewhere visible as a reminder of the self we are gathering.
Spiritual life should make love more possible in ordinary time. Not only here, in this hour, with music and candles and poems, but on Tuesday morning, when the inbox is full, when someone is irritating, when the old pattern rises again and asks to be obeyed.
***
That word, gathering, matters to me.
One of the things I love about being Unitarian is that when we speak of unity, we do not mean sameness. We are not here because we all think the same thing. We have not signed up to one creed, one doctrine, one approved way of being religious. We gather.
We bring different stories, different theologies, different wounds, different hopes, different temperaments. The sceptics and the mystics. The certain and the uncertain. The quiet ones and the ones who cannot help joining in.
And somehow, by listening to one another, by making room, by returning week by week to the practice of being together, we become more than a collection of separate individuals. We become a community.
Perhaps the self is like that too.
Perhaps wholeness is a choir. Not always perfectly in tune. Not without tension. Still, somehow, music.
The deeper work is not to force all the parts of ourselves into agreement, but to give them space enough to be heard without letting any one of them become the whole truth.
There is a part of me that needs the feather. There is a part of me that needs the shell. There is a part that needs to be told to rest. A part that needs to be told to be brave. A part that needs silence. A part that needs laughter. A part that needs to hear, over and over again: you are enough.
And I suspect you have your own inner gathering too.
So perhaps the question is: how do I gather myself with love?
To be great, Pessoa says, be whole. Do not exaggerate or leave out any part of you.
For we are large.
We contain multitudes.
And every part of us is invited into the work of love.
