Lately, we have been pondering disposable plates. We know it's weird, but just hear us out.

We don't know about you, but our favorite kind of paper plate is the kind with the little dividers. You know…they have a section for each part of your meal, ensuring that no juices run together and everything stays completely separate. Because, let’s be honest, it can be a little gross when you have a plate piled high and you can’t tell the lasagna from the brownie, apart from color.

We've come to realize that this is how we view our humanity so many times. We like to think of ourselves in this sort of fragmented way; our intellect and emotions over here in this spot; our spirituality or relationship with God over here in this other spot; our physical body and our sexuality in another separate spot. Somehow, we like to think that they don't run together at all. We act as though we can think whatever we want and look at whatever we want without hurting or helping ourselves emotionally or spiritually. We act as though we can use and abuse our bodies and other peoples' without any sort of consequence to our mind, emotions, and spirit.

What we’re coming to know, (and you probably coming to know, as well), is this type of thinking and living is just not reality. As a human being, we are much more like that flimsy disposable plate with no dividers. No matter how hard we try to separate our food in different sections the juices still run over. We will still have our spaghetti sauce touch our brownie--whether we like it or not. And so this is our point: everything we do, think, feel is connected to our spirit…and to the spirit of others.

Here at the Wesley, we are coming to understand that we are all (not-so) disposable plates with no dividers in our work, our family, our romantic relationships….even the universe.

What if we stopped spending so much time dividing? What if we stopped seeing ourselves and everyone else as tiny separate compartments? What if we just removed the barriers?

We’re seeing that something interesting always happens.
At the very least, something real happens.