“I’ve studied with my people on streets and in church.” –Dialated Peoples “Worst comes to worst”
A quick note. As I was writing one day, I noticed how the word wholly and holy are pronounced and spelled similarly. I wrote in an earlier post that people who live in contradictions with themselves must work towards self-recovery. The similarity of the words struck me as I had been thinking about how intellectuals promote an anti-religion, anti-spirituality stance to life. Specifically, I am reading a book on Marxism that unfortunately opposes Christianity while the author takes on the worthwhile task of debunking some political beliefs of the conservative right. Also, I listen to Erykah Badu sing, “Most intellects do not believe in God,” which has been my experience among folks who would call themselves intellectuals. So I have repeatedly raised the question: can one be (and become) whole without being concerned about the holy? I have been arriving at the thought that it is not possible. There is more to us than our physical selves. After investigating the etymology of the words “holy” and “wholly,” I confirmed their shared root meaning. This signals to me a historical understanding of the connectedness of these states of being.
While the pre-Christian meaning of “holy” is unclear, it may come from “inviolate, inviolable, that must be preserved whole or intact, that cannot be injured with impunity.”* This meaning later developed to involve the gods.
The word “whole” appeared afterward, chronologically speaking. The Germanic adjective “has the meanings (not all represented in every dialect) of ‘uninjured, sound, healthy, entire complete’; the sense ‘healthy’ gave rise to its use in several languages in salutations.”
To be whole is to be healthy. Holy also shares this past meaning: “it might also start from hail- in the sense ‘health, good luck, well-being’, or be connected with the sense ‘good omen, auspice, augury.’”
I’m arguing that being healthy requires being whole and does not exclude being holy, which I define as being tied to our spirituality and not necessarily organized religion. Yet being pro-religion or spiritual is not the magic bullet to capitalism or imperialism. However, these historical ideas demonstrate how being anti-religion or spirituality is not a solution either. We can pursue wholeness as a means to greater ends. By itself, individual work cannot successfully fight structural inequality, but individual, personal work to heal enables us to commune with others to create larger changes.
*etymology provided through Oxford English Dictionary
