c. 2008 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) I awoke this morning with a lot to do and one thing on my mind. My waking thought was a simple phrase: “The whole point.”

Why “The whole point”?

Maybe because I’ve been observing how few people experience wholeness in this fragmented age. I’ve been thinking a lot about the quote from the late Dutch theologian Hans Rookmaaker _ “Jesus didn’t come to make us Christian. He came to make us fully human.” I’ve been researching the Hebrew word for peace, “shalom,” which really means completeness.

Before I went to bed, I read the current issue of Time magazine with its cover article, “There Can Only Be One.” On the cover is a spooky picture _ one presidential candidate consisting of half of Barack Obama’s face and half of Hillary Clinton’s pasted together. Maybe I was trying to make wholeness of our disintegrating presidential politics?

On the way to the office, I listen to the news and hear animated chatter about the Miley Cyrus photo scandal. Reporters who spent serious tuition dollars to study journalism yammer on about Hannah Montana. Yet another innocent teen star is going from good girl to bad girl, her seductive Vanity Fair photos the first step on a downward path to ruin.

I remember Annie Dillard’s advice to writers: “Assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients; that is, after all, the case. What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?”

With all the serious societal issues facing us, I wonder how long the media will be the enablers of our codependent need to amuse ourselves to death.

I think about this column about faith and culture and cannot bring myself to write about inconsequential matters. I go back to thinking about “the whole point.”

I think about my own life. I moved to an island last year in part to detox from busy-ness on the mainland. Now I am tyrannized by deadlines and commitments off island and the compelling draw of being involved with relationships on the island.

Wholeness is more than balance, and it is more than fullness. The “life more abundant” Jesus talked about isn’t just spinning the plates better, nor is it about adding more good things to an already full plate of good things.

I get to the office and begin my morning routine of reading, meditating and praying.

This comes from Tolstoy: “Remember,” he said, “you do not abide but rather pass through this life. You are not in a home, but on a train that takes you to death. Remember only your body will die and only the spirit is truly alive.”

I know this much for sure _ fully human is sacredly human and requires attentiveness to the spiritual.

Then I turn to my “Celtic Daily Prayer: Prayers and Readings from the Northumbria Community” and read this: “If you cannot cherish what it is the Lord is doing in your life, at least do not waste what He is doing in your life.”

I decide I am blessed. My wife, Kathy, and I own a lot we can build on, and today we will make one more tour of available homes before deciding to build. She wants to build. I want to hold out for a home that’s already built since prices are starting to drop.

The phone rings. It is my friend Phill. In the mid-1970s his wife died of cancer. He remarried a few years later. Then last December, out of the blue he got the news his wife Sybil has a rare form of inoperable ovarian cancer.

She started treatment immediately and though a long shot, began what looked like an amazing recovery. Last week she experienced a relapse and was hospitalized.

Today Phill is calling to ask if I would preside at her memorial service.

The whole point? Cherishing life and not wasting a minute of it. Knowing it is spirit that lasts. Recognizing our time with friends and family is a gift that can be snatched away at any time.

It’s telling my wife I am ready to do her dream _ we will build a house and we will make it a home, knowing all the while that ultimately we do not abide, but pass through this life. We’ll be content knowing we are spiritual beings having a human experience and dedicated to nurturing the eternal in the here and now.

(Dick Staub is the author of “The Culturally Savvy Christian” and the host of The Kindlings Muse (http://www.thekindlings.com). His blog can be read at http://www.dickstaub.com)

KRE/RB END STAUB750 words

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