WATERmeditation May 2024
Follow-up to WATERmeditation with Corbin Hannah
Monday, May 5, 2024 at 7:30pm EST
“To Be Whole”
Notes by Mary E. Hunt
Warm thanks to Corbin Hannah for leading an inspiring meditation entitled “To Be Whole.” The video can be accessed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBOEEiF1fNc&ab_channel=WATERwomensalliance
Corbin (who uses they/them pronouns) is a Sister of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, IN. Corbin is a social worker by training, and spent the last 3 1/2 years cultivating resilience and allowing healing from a traumatic brain injury. They have recently begun to offer their gifts and skills through writing, guided meditations, and retreat experiences. Corbin will earn a Certification in Spiritual Guidance (Direction) in January 2025.
Corbin generously shared their notes from the presentation:
My dear friends, may you spend the next hour remembering that you are whole.
We are whole.
I know this might be hard to hear and believe.
Especially when we are very aware of all we think is wrong with ourselves.
Or we look around and see so much hatred and violence.
The world seems to be overflowing with chaos.
How can we be whole when everything seems so broken?
After a serious injury,
when this body and mind seemed to be breaking down
and the messages I had received when I was younger
kept telling me that I was weak and worthless,
I felt utterly broken.
Unable to turn away from the pain,
I chose to turn toward it.
I became more aware of the thoughts, messages and experiences
that seemed to all be saying that I was broken.
In facing the thoughts and messages,
I realized that they were simply not true
but were pointing me to a much deeper truth,
to my truest self that is whole, connected, beautiful,
and wants to live life to the fullest in every situation.
This compassionate, expansive self I discovered
showed me how to hold all of those parts of me that were struggling.
I invite you to take a moment and see if you can tap into a sense of wholeness.
Connect to and allow a feeling of wholeness to fill your mind, body, and heart.
What would it feel like to connect to a deep knowing that you are whole?
Or in other words, complete, abundant, full, at home?
If you could feel it, what would wholeness feel like?
What would it feel like to be complete, abundant, full, or at home?
What if everything has purpose, what if everything belongs to a much larger whole?
Feel into your truest, whole self.
Stay connected to this awareness.
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After 12 minutes of shared silence, there were a number of comments. Here is a sample:
- One colleague referenced Rumi’s poem “The Guest House” which describes an important dimension of the human condition.
- Another resonated with the images of being “homeless” and wanting wholeness.
- Still another came up with weaving images and the importance of thread.
- One participant spoke of the many ways of belonging as part of the whole—to the Milky Way, and to the solar system, indeed to humanity.
- Another described feeling part of the whole when walking down the street in protest.
- The image that was displayed made one participant think of the fragility of wholeness.
- In the chat Corbin wrote about the graphic: “Kintsugi also known as kintsukuroi (金繕い, “golden repair”), is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with urushi.”
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Discussion continued after the ‘official’ closing. Even more people sent notes the next day expressing their gratitude, mentioning their own attempts “to be whole”. All of this indicates that Corbin’s presentation struck an appreciative chord. We look forward to welcoming Corbin back.
An afterword: It is striking how this shared contemplation fosters such a deep sense of care for one another. Many of us have never met in person, but there seems to be a shared sense that our well-being is important. This is a ‘wholeness’ all its own.
