This recording features the Sunday Talk portion of the service. For the full service watch here.
Becoming Whole Together – Rev. Aimee Daniels
DESCRIPTION
What if the greatest spiritual practice available to you isn’t something you do alone — it’s the person sitting beside you? Join us as we explore the radical, sacred possibility that we were never meant to become whole by ourselves. This is an invitation into the ongoing, imperfect, beautiful practice of becoming whole — together.
SUMMARY
Rev. Aimee Daniels explores how human presence, community, and spiritual practice help individuals become “whole together,” emphasizing that no one navigates life alone and that simple, non-fixing presence can be profoundly healing. Drawing on personal stories of grief and support, she illustrates how friends who simply sit with us in hard times can act as medicine and healers, revealing the light that exists even in painful experiences. Integrating insights from Mark Nepo, Ernest Holmes, Howard Thurman, Martin Buber, and Brené Brown, she contrasts “go away” versus “come teach me” postures toward others, “I–It” versus “I–Thou” relationships, and fitting in versus true belonging, arguing that authentic encounter and mutual seeing allow the “light of the soul” and the “sound of the genuine” to meet and transform us.
She presents practical spiritual disciplines: choosing the “Come Teach Me” tribe by noticing and softening our reactivity; meeting “just this person” by setting aside history, judgments, and expectations; and practicing compassion as staying present to others’ suffering without trying to fix it, summarized in the stance “I can’t, but I’m here.” Reframing the myth of Sisyphus, Daniels invites listeners to see themselves not as endless rock-pushers but as “light followers” who can transform grinding effort into meaningful becoming by “pushing light” even in difficult tasks and seasons. She concludes with a communal prayer affirming divine love, oneness, healing, and a shared journey of continual beginning again, calling the community to practice together, embody compassion, and reveal love and belonging in their lives and in the wider world.
TRANSCRIPTION
This transcription was auto-generated, please excuse typos, errors and omissions.
Rev. Aimee Daniels:
Okay. I just want to say wow, Chelsea. That was quite the finish on that. My husband was giving me a hard time about choosing that song because it’s a little old school. But I have to say, I absolutely love that song. And I think it’s a perfect song for us today because none of us are doing this alone. And it’s about how we show up for each other. But I also believe that spirit shows up for us that way in our life if we’re simply listening. So I love that song. All time favorite and they killed it. So thank you.
So I want to start with a question for everyone this morning. Has there ever been a moment in your life? Maybe it was a hard moment or a moment where you felt like you were really lost, where someone’s simple presence with you changed everything for you? Not what they said, not any advice they happened to share, not the solution they offered, but simply that they were there. And I think most of us have experienced that in our life. And if you think about it, you can probably think of some examples right now where that was true for you. This is kind of a weird week in my family, okay? I’m just going to out myself here because 10 years ago on whatever day that was, Thursday, my oldest brother passed away. And three years ago on this day, my oldest sister passed away. So this is like an auspicious, strange week in our family.
It’s also one of my other brother’s birthdays. And he’s always like, I hold my breath now. We hold our breath now because it’s like the weird … Isn’t that weird?
But when my brother died, I had two friends who just said, “We’re on our way over to your house and we will bring wine.” And what they did is they just sat with me. They didn’t say anything at all. They just sat with me. And you know what? It felt like the kindest thing I’d ever experienced in my life, to be honest with you. After all that you go through when someone’s heading to their transition and his was dramatic, it’s like they were the healer in that moment for me. They were the medicine that I needed. And they were just there. And Mark Nepo talks about that in his book. He writes about what it means to become who we were born to be. And we don’t do that alone, right? We don’t do that alone. We become ourselves in contact with one another. And sometimes there’s friction, right?
Sometimes someone triggers us. Sometimes it’s fantastic and we’re like, “Man, I’m jazzed.” But there’s also moments where we feel like someone really sees us, right? And so we’re doing this together. And what Mark Niepo says, he’s a beautiful writer if you’ve never read him. He’s a poet. He’s quite amazing. The stories he tells, I just love the man. But he writes about moments when the light of the soul meets the light in the world. And he says it this way, “We glow in all directions.” I might say it a little differently. I might say, “We experience light.” We experience the lightness of the world. And I want you to hold that image today. I want you to hold the image of us bringing light together here in community and not because we all have our act together in our life. I mean, everybody has something they’re working on.
Anyone who tells you otherwise, don’t believe them. Just don’t believe them. But everyone’s decided to show up, right? Show up as who you are. You don’t have to be perfect, right? Just show up honestly as you are and where you are, by the way. 10 years ago, I was a hot mess for quite a while, by the way.
But people around me were great. They were just like, “Here, let me help you. Here, let me do this for you. ” And so we are where we are. And that’s what I want to say to you right now. Wherever you are, it’s fine. You’re good, right? Even if you’re going through something hard. And what I’m going to talk about today is what becoming whole together actually means not just a nice idea, but a practice, some ideas on practices that we can bring into our life. Because I was thinking about this, as I was driving in today, I was thinking about, I don’t believe in the devil, but I think sometimes the devil lives in my head. I’m not talking about an actual devil. You know that little voice in your head that’s not the most helpful thing on the planet. Sometimes that voice lives in my head.
I’m going to be honest. And you’re just kind of like, “Could you be quiet already? I’m just going to be quiet.” And that’s why we practice. So we’re going to move through four ideas today. Okay, my little thing is acting up here. Okay, here we go. We’re back. See, I’m trying something new. I’m trying an iPad. So I just thought, “Hey, let’s get a little more modern here.” Okay. Where was I? Okay. So Mark Nepo tells a story in his book, and I want to invite you to imagine this story in your head. Imagine the first time one human being came across another human being. And before there was all of this, before we had cities, before we knew how to communicate with each other through language, before any of these structures that we have today existed, one person, maybe that person was in a cave and then they look out and they see a stranger on the horizon.
And in that moment, something inside them has to choose how to be with that, right? Nepo said there’s only two possible responses. The person in the cave could say to the stranger, “You’re different. Go away.” And he calls it the go away tribe or the person in the cave could look at the stranger and say, “You’re different than I am. Come teach me. ” And he calls that the come teach me tribe. And if you think about that, it’s humble and liberating at the same time, right? Because we’re in both tribes, right? There are times when we’re in the, “Hey, leave me alone tribe.” We’re pushing away like, “You’re not like me. ” Hard not to do that right now in some circumstances, let’s be honest.
And there might be times when that part of us that’s like, just there’s too much going on, there’s too much uncertainty that’s like, just leave me alone, right? It’s normal. But what do we do when we do that? We pull in, we protect, we might not connect, right? And our spiritual practice isn’t to pretend that we don’t have a go away tribe because we all have that part of us sometimes, right? It’s remembering what tribe we committed to. I’m trying to commit to come teach me. How about everybody else? Come teach me. I’m open to learn. And also to ask the people around us, if they notice that we’re in that pushing away to say, “Hey, come back, you’re away.” And it’s a blessing when we have people in our life who will tell us that, right, that we’re a little off track. I was with one of my friends this week.
I hadn’t seen her in a while and she had a falling out with her brother over something in business and they were forced together when her mom was at the end of her life. And she said, she walks into the hospital and he’s standing there and she was just like, everything in her was just so she noticed after a while, they were there all day at the hospital with her mom. She noticed she had this terrible headache and she said, “I just got to go lay down. I have this terrible headache.” And she did some clearing stuff and she did some prayer. And then she realized that even though their relationship wasn’t healed, she didn’t have to be so resistant, right? She could just be more neutral. And she said her headache went away immediately. Isn’t that interesting? Because our body holds whatever’s going on with us, right?
Headache, I think Louise Hay said headaches are resistant, but we can all probably relate to that, right? Does anyone have anyone in their life that triggers them?
Okay, every hand should be up here, right? But there are some people that we encounter where we are just a little like, no thank you, right? But spiritually, it’s our job to notice and shift. It doesn’t mean we have to accept bad behavior. It doesn’t mean we have to have that person be our best friend, but like something inside of us when we don’t honor our spirit, it knows. If I’m not being my better self, I get this like icky feeling in the middle and I’m just kind of like, oh yeah, right? So our invitation is to live in the Come Teach Me tribe, but that’s what we do together. That’s what we do in our practice. That’s what we do in our practice together, whether it’s in a class, whether it’s a prayer partner, whatever you’re doing, that’s what we do together. We’re in the Come Teach Me tribe.
Ernest Holmes said, he’s the founder of Centers for Spiritual Living, the one life is not solitary by nature. It moves toward itself. Love is not something God has. And you can use another word if you don’t like the word God. It’s what God is expressing through us toward one another. So think about that. Your own longing for community and belonging, I think we all have that, right? We want to know we belong. And when you feel isolated, that ache you feel inside of yourself when you’re feeling isolated or you feel like you’re not being seen, right? You wonder if you belong. That’s not really weakness. That’s just your spirit saying, “Hey, come back.” Right? Come back. There’s something you need right now. Ernest would say it’s the infinite recognizing itself as you.
So you were not made to be complete alone and that’s what we all have to share with each other. Lots of people are feeling isolated right now and the way we live and work in the world today can really add to it, right? So it’s important for us to realize that we grow through our interactions with others. Some of them are bumpy, some of them are lovely, but we’re growing, right? We’re growing. Howard Thurman said, “There’s something,” and Paul read to us from this, “There’s something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It’s the only true guide you will ever have. ” And he goes on to say, “If I hear the sound of the genuine in me, and if you hear the sound of the genuine in you, it’s possible for us to truly meet each other.” And when that happens, I begin to see myself as you see me and you begin to see yourself as I see you, which is a beautiful gift, isn’t it?
Sometimes we don’t see ourselves. That’s a beautiful gift when you can give that to someone else. I see you as someone offering this gift right now, because I think a lot of times we don’t see our gifts. Other people see them. We don’t see them. I know about you. I think it’s true.
And what happens when we see each other, right? The walls that separate us dissolve because we’re singing the same song of the divine. It just is showing up in a different expression. And isn’t that beautiful? Because we all have different things to offer. It’s wonderful, but we need other people to reflect back to us too. And community, this community, other communities, maybe it’s your family, whatever community you’re part of, isn’t the backdrop to your becoming. It’s what calls you’re becoming forth. So you could have been someplace else today, but you’re here, so thank you for being here. I want to introduce a few other things. Mark Niepo has a chapter in this book called Just This Person, and the practice is exactly what it sounds like, and it’s harder than it sounds. It’s a practice of setting aside everything you think you know about somebody and your history with them, which can be hard, especially in families.
There’s some history sometimes, your judgments about them, your hopes for them, maybe you have expectations, your disappointments, rights, but it’s about simply meeting the person exactly where they are right now. And in this moment, and you’re not who you were last week or last year or 10 years ago, and neither are they. So could you simply get curious?
Who’s this person that’s right in front of me right now? And just be there, which is hard because we all have our electronic devices. Thankfully, mine is not on my body right now to pull out. So just this person. Martin Buber, the Jewish philosopher, wrote a book that was revolutionary in the time it was written in 1923. It was called I and Thou. And his insight was this. There’s only two ways of relating to the world. There is I it and I thou. So what’s the difference? If I relate to you as I it, you’re sort of a means to an end for me, right? I don’t really see you as a person. You’re someone who serves a role in my life. It’s easiest to think about that like you’re at the grocery store and you don’t even notice the person checking you out because there are means for an end.
That’s kind of what it means, but you can probably think of other examples. But when I relate to you as a thou, what am I doing? I’m relating to you. I’m seeing you, right? Something entirely different happens. And in that moment of genuine encounter, I’m changed by you. Have you ever had that happen where you just maybe had a feeling of magnified presence when you were with someone? It can happen when you pray. I mean, I’ve seen it happen in the work I do outside of Cityside and Vistage. I run these peer groups. I’ve seen a group be really present for someone who’s going through something and like the energy in the room is palpable. Have you ever experienced that? It’s pretty incredible, right? Martin Buber said, when two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.
I love that because the divine doesn’t live somewhere else that lives in the space between us, right? And it lives in us. Brene Brown has spent decades researching what she calls wholehearted living, and one of her most important findings is the distinction between belonging and fitting in. So fitting in is when you assess a situation and become whoever you need to be, to be accepted. Anyone besides me guilty on that one? I actually had a coworker said to me once, and he meant this as a compliment, but he’s like, “You’re a chameleon.” He goes, “You can work with anyone.” But I’m like, now I think about that, I think, wow, is that good? Is that good? I probably didn’t show up as my whole self, right? I was trying really hard to fit in. It’s not actually … Now I don’t consider it a compliment anymore, but belonging, real belonging is when you show up as yourself and you discover you’re still wanted.
And that’s the gift we offer to each other. I remember one of my friends who’s been married for 40 some years, told me years ago about this about her husband, she goes, “He knows the worst thing about me and it’s okay.” Think about that. I mean, we all have people in our life who are like that for us, right? I have one friend, I’m like, I could call and tell her I shot someone and she’d go, “Well, that was a bad idea.” Right? I mean, we all want that person in our life, don’t we? Who just sees us and who just like, they’re not judging us, they’re just with us, right? And that’s what we do for each other. So being truly seen, not your performance, not your polished self who’s all spiffed up, right? But the most vulnerable you, that’s really healing when that happens, right?
When you can be that person.
So what if our most radical spiritual practice today isn’t something we do alone, right? What if it’s simply turning to the person beside you and deciding to actually see them, right? I’m actually going to ask, and I know my online friends, you can’t look around the room right now, but you can look around your room at home. Maybe there’s a person or an animal there with you or something that’s living. But I just want to invite everyone. We’re just going to take 10 seconds, just take your eyes and look around the room and make eye contact with people. Hi, Danny.
How are you? I’m good. Especially good here. I’m getting a warm, fuzzy feeling watching all of you. I just want to say, it’s wonderful to be connected, isn’t it? So I want to talk about one other chapter from Mark Nepo. It’s called Hearing the Cries of the World, and it’s about compassion. And it’s not about compassion as a feeling we generate or a virtue that we practice. It’s really the way that he’s using it, it’s really about staying present when there is suffering around you and not turning away, not fixing it, not fleeing, just remaining, which is hard, right? I’m sure we’ve all done that at some point, but being willing to let what’s hard touch you and willing to stay in contact with another person’s reality when it’s hard to just stay in the moment, right? And he tells a story I love. He was in a bar and there was a Vietnam vet at the end of the bar and the guy was really loud and he was really angry and no one wanted to talk to him.
I mean, people were literally ignoring him and Mark Nepo decided he was going to go sit with him and he drank a beer with him and he listened to the man’s stories and they were terrible stories. They clearly were still very alive in his body and his experience, as many people who were in war have experienced that, right?
But Mark Niepo at some point said to him, “I can’t imagine.” And the man said, “No, you can’t.” And Mark Nepo said to him, and I probably wouldn’t have been smart enough to say this in the moment. I was going to say, “I can’t, but I’m here. I can’t, but I’m here.” And think about that because those words are pretty much the whole teaching, right? Not, “I understand you. ” Not, “I know how to fix this. ” Not, “Let me offer some perspective.” Just, “I can’t, but I’m here.” It’s actually the biggest gift that any of us can offer to anyone, right? To simply be present. And that’s what he means by hearing the crieds of the world. Howard Thurman said, “The beloved community is not built on agreement or ease. It’s built on the willingness to stay present to one another’s reality, even when it’s uncomfortable, and especially then.” Ernest Holmes said, “Every act of genuine compassion is the universe healing itself through us.” I love that.
“And it’s love doing what love does, recognizing itself across the apparent distance between two people, so you don’t have to have the right words, you don’t have to fix it, you just have to be willing to stay, just stay in the moment.” Mark Niepo also shares one story which really kind of spoke to me, and it’s the story of Sisyphus. You might know this. It’s the story in ancient Greek mythology and Sisyphus, because of his wrongdoing, which I’m not going to get into, was forced to push a stone up a hill for eternity. And he’d get to the top and the stone would roll back down again, and he’d have to go and roll it up again. And it’s become a great metaphor for futility in life, for how heavy life can feel. And I read it and I thought, “Yeah, sometimes I am pushing a stone up the hill.” And Mark Niepo does something beautiful with this story.
He says, “We don’t need to negate the myth of Sisyphus. We need to complete it. ” And the way that we complete it is to ask ourself the question, what makes us turn from rock pushers to light followers, right?
In how we live our lives, we can learn, we work our tasks, right? And we love the light, and he calls that survival. That’s just getting through. But if we love the task and work the light, then that’s transformation, that’s becoming. And I loved that story because I feel like when I feel like I’m pushing a rock up the hill, my Enneagram three friends in this room understand what I’m talking about. I have to remind myself, I’m pushing light. I’m pushing light. I am not pushing a rock. I’m pushing light. That’s what I’m doing. And that’s what we can do together.
We can let go of grinding, right, pushing the rock. I mean, if you think about it, it’s kind of funny metaphor for yourself. I’m pushing the rock up the hill and then it fall down down and it hits me, right? But what if there’s light in that rock, right? Even the hard things that happen in your life, there’s light in them. What I was telling about my brother’s death, there was light all around that. All my siblings being together, it’s like love was palpable, so there is always light. We’re called to see that light, and that’s what we do together.
Brene Brown tells us true belonging never asks you to betray yourself. The community worth belonging to is the one that wants the real you, not the finished you. You as you actually are right now, and that’s what we want to call forth in our community. And that’s what we want to call forth in the world, because our spiritual life is not a destination, it’s a journey, and it’s a practice that we return to, and we are always beginning again. We begin again every day, but we do that together. So we’re going to go into prayer now, Greg, if you want to come up.
So I just invite you to close your eyes and turn within now. And let’s just take a few deep breaths together. Just breathing in love, breathing in light, just releasing anything that you’re carrying, anything that doesn’t serve you. And in this moment, just know that we are surrounded by this light and love always and everywhere, that the divine is expressing in as and through each and every one of us with love, with grace, with ease, with wholeness, with healing, with love, with goodness. And I know that we are all one with this energy of the divine. We are one with this light and love itself, that it’s the truth of our being. It’s the only truth of our being. There is no other truth to our being other than this light and love. So from this place of oneness, I speak a word of transformation for each and every one of us.
May we come together in community to practice? May we do our own work? May the divine support us beautifully in all of this. And I know that spirit knows what it wants to do with your life and the love in your life, the connections in your life, all of your life. God’s got this. So this is what I say yes to for all of us. And I also just speak a word of healing for our country and the world, just knowing that love comes forth, that love is the only thing happening and that love is revealed. Where it seems absent, it’s there. I just know and declare that love is revealed now. And I know for each of us that we are having a profound experience of love and belonging and connection. Just giving thanks for this, giving thanks, knowing that spirit makes the way forward for all of us, giving thanks knowing that the love connects us, that we belong, giving thanks for coming together in community here and in our lives and giving thanks that we are always and everywhere becoming more of who we are called to be.
And with so much gratitude for all of us, let us say together and so it is amen.
Thank you very