conspire issue 18 - becoming whole

“You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, with your whole soul, and with your whole mind and all your strength….and love your neighbor as yourself.”

The great commandment is premised on loving God and neighbor with our whole selves, which seems to depend on being whole ourselves. But these ancient words echo down to a very modern time, and there are many ways in which our lives are fragmented. We are highly mobile. After generations of family, work, and social lives rooted in a specific geographic place, our lives happen over many places. Some of us move between worlds that don’t understand one another, separated by race, culture, age. We yearn for lives that bring our disparate parts together.

Our summer issue explores wholeness. How do we deepen our spiritual core in a distracting and fragmented world? How might we build community in a world whose technologies of transportation and communication are spinning it wide open and connecting us at the same time? How do we take the scraps and leavings in our lives and make beautiful art with them?

Here are testimonies from people who had to leave certain situations to become whole. Every situation is different, but they all ponder this question: Jesus, can you make me more whole?

We hope it will strengthen you as you strive to become more whole.

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