Holes Make Us Whole

Do you ever feel like you're just a bunch of holes? Seeing out your eyes, inhaling air through your nose, ingesting sustenance in your mouth, absorbing sounds with your ears, eliminating waste, and so on. Things go in and out of our holes. Without them, we wouldn't exist, but with them, I sometimes feel like I don't anyway. Like I'm trapped in my body, peering out peepholes that don't let me fully live. It's a strange awareness that first hit me erratically, but that I now induce at times, though I only let myself experience it fleetingly or else I'd freak out. Engaging in sensory activities helps it subside, as does talking (especially in conversation with someone else who is physically present). The more I feel and interact, the more real life seems.

What if spirituality is like that? Could our inner sense of emptiness or yearning exist to show us our need for God? Imagine the soul as a hole, through which we receive from and give to Him who made us and knows us even better than we know ourselves. The one who keeps his soul closed cannot ever satisfy the longings that transcend his physical existence. The one who opens her soul allows it to be filled with faith and released of fear. And that is only the first course in a spiritual feast that continues on for a lifetime of emptying and being nourished. What comes out of our souls is pain, selfishness, remorse, gratitude, and worship and what comes into them is grace, forgiveness, healing, peace, love, truth, strength and the intimate presence of our Heavenly Father who is also our creator, savior and friend.

Maybe this body feels like a bunch of holes because we are meant for another existence - one that continues on beyond this material world. Perhaps the sensation of being more than our bodies (and our brains), of desiring meaning and purpose and permanence occurs because there is more, a reality that we can start living now if we seek to fill our spiritual hole as earnestly and often as we do our bodily orifices.  When we pay attention to our soul - first by seeking God, and later by continually practicing his presence (through the spiritual disciplines which empty and fill us)  -  we become whole and holy, instead of just feeling holey.

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.  1 Corinthians 13:12