Website Overseer:  Claire Anderson, M.Div.

Website created 29 October 2007

Email: claire@eraofwholeness.net

Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA

 

© 2008, All Rights Reserved

Have you ever wondered what’s after Postmodernism?  I believe that it’s not “Post-Postmodernism” but the Era of Wholeness… wholeness not so much as an achievement but as a value.

 

Who has not been broken by the searing violence, blatant discrimination, and the multiple abuses that surround us daily?  Humanity is hungering for wholeness—interpersonal, intra-personal, and global wholeness.

Some consider movements such as environmental protection, holistic medicine, liberation theology, fair trade, and organic agriculture “fringe elements” of society, but I believe it is exactly phenomena such as these which are shaping us into more a whole-oriented people.

In recent memory, humanity has been the victims and perpetrators of genocide, atomic bombing, terrorist attacks, starvation, rape, and every conceivable crime against humanity.  We have committed these crimes against each other, against our earth, and against ourselves.  The world family is weary of brokenness.

You and I, like it or not, live in an era in which we can no longer afford not to think globally and locally.  We can no longer afford not to consider how our decisions impact the cosmos and each other.  We cannot afford not to consider the interconnectedness between our bodies, our minds, and our spirits.

“Wholeness” is a more common word than “holism,” but “holism” points to a value worth observing:  it is “the theory that reality is made up of organic or unified wholes that are greater than the simple sum of their parts” (American Heritage Dictionary, 1982).

Holistic, “whole-istic,” and global thinking are the values I am lifting up for consideration, especially for the Millennial Generation.  It is they who will be called upon to bind the wounds of a philosophically divided world, broken spirits, and a plundered earth.  The coming epoch calls for wholeness, integration, and healing.

 

I use “Era” in general here rather than “Age” because the boundaries of an “age” seem more identifiable.  The membranes around an “era” are more permeable.

My suggestion is that both the term “postmodern” and the term “New Age” point to a reality (“Age”) that is yet to come, but in a negative way.  “New” and “Post” don’t get us farther ahead.  Let’s name it, and my humble suggestion is “The Era of Wholeness.”

The Era of Wholeness

Post-postmodern reflections

on faith and living