Olympics: Ultimate Gestalt Experience
When Jimmy and Jaminda asked me to speak at Micah’s service, I was honored. I wanted to include his love of WarHammer 40K lore. WarHammer is a complicated board game played with plastic model armies. Micah’s army is called Orks. From the WarHammer website, “Orks have a collaborative, collective psychic ability, meaning if enough Orks believe something is true, then it will actually become so, brought into realspace through the power of the Immaterium by their gestalt psychic ability.” I didn’t focus on the world “gestalt” then, but knew I would write about it here later.
Gestalt is not a word that people ever use in normal conversation, but it’s such a great word. It means something made of many parts that is somehow more than/different from the combination of its parts.
Our family’s been watching the Olympics. We got a Peacock subscription so we could watch dressage and rock climbing, but we’ve enjoyed swimming and gymnastics, too. The Olympics are a great example of a gesalt. All of the Olympians are so much more than their indiviudal accomplishents. We’ve followed the Brazalian vaulter, the St. Lucian sprinter, the French swimmer, the American cyclist. But more than watching indiviudals, we’ve cheered on every earnest athlete from many countries in addition to Team USA. I forget how much I love the athletes’ stories, the intense competation, Olympic traditions and history, even if the sport events themselves are things we only care about every four years. It’s a great gestalt experience.
Peace is a gestalt community. We set out a few snacks, rows of stackable chairs, a couple of sandwich boards, and a banner. Those small ingredients added with powerful messages, unforgetable music, and fellowship that carries us through all of our challenges is more than the some of the parts. Peace Christian Church is the definition gestalt, a word that I think we should use more often.
Creator,
Our world is a gestalt experience. A walk though a garden, a concert at a high school, a coffee on a patio, a laugh or a cry with people who know us better than we know ourselves are all part of a greater experience. Thank you for knowing how this earth and the people in it make our individual selves into the greater whole that is your humanity.
Amen
Michelle is a Program Analyst with the Department of Veterans Affairs. She’s a wife, mother, sister, friend, a chocolate and coffee lover, reader of books, listener of podcasts, and a travel enthusiast.