Did you know that an eagle knows when a storm is approaching long before it breaks? The eagle will fly to some high spot and wait for the winds to come. When the storm hits, it sets its wings so that the wind will pick it up and lift it above the storm. While the storm rages below, the eagle is soaring above it.
The eagle doesn’t escape the storm. It simply uses the storm to lift it higher. It rises on the winds that bring the storm.
I am also reminded that a jet plane spends 95% of the time in flight being off course, but gets to its destination by a continual process of slight corrections. I think that’s an apt metaphor for balance in our lives. It’s not staying the course without error, but continual correction to come back to center.
That reminds me of a joke – it’s about balancing a check book!
Tired of having to balance his wife Cindy’s checkbook, Mike made a deal with her; he would look at it, but only after she had spent a few hours trying to wrestle it into shape.
The following night, after spending hours poring over stubs and figures, Cindy said proudly, ‘I’ve done it! I made it balance!’
Impressed, Mike came over to take a look. ‘Let’s see… mortgage 550.00, electricity 70.50, phone 35.00.’ His brow wrinkled as he read the last entry. ‘It says here ESP, $615. What the heck is that?’ ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘That means, Error Some Place!
Balance is not staying the course without error, but continual correction to come back to center! – whatever it takes!!
I just came back from a retreat with a group of ministers spent at a Benedictine Abbey in Kansas City. We used the four elements of the Rule of St. Benedict as our focus for each of the first four days. Wouldn’t you know — the first day was about BALANCE! (there are no accidents in life!) The exhortation was that we needed a blending in life of work and recreation, inner and outer work, speaking and silence and attention both to the physical and spiritual aspects to our lives. The harmonizing
of these seeming opposites makes life work. Where in your life are you with these aspects?
Many parts of our life need to be brought into balance, and they may seem to conflict with each other: responsibilities to our family, earning a living, maintaining our health, giving attention to our spiritual lives, keeping up with the deluge of information required to function in the world today, our duties to community or church activities, and the myriad of other demands on our time and energy.
Everywhere we look we can see examples of people who are out of balance. There are people with heart attacks from years of poor eating habits and lack of exercise. There are people who are too much in their heads, who haven’t integrated head and heart. There are spiritual giants who die agonizing deaths from wasting illness from years of denying or neglecting the body. There are people so caught up in caring for their bodies, minds, and social lives that they never think about their spiritual nature. And there
are people so caught up in their feelings that they neglect their minds, or fail to use their reasoning ability; they, too, have failed to integrate head and heart.
To balance all these aspects of our life we need something to balance them on, some point of equilibrium. The more complex our lives become, the more we need to realize that there is only one reliable point of balance-and that is God. Only God pervades everything, underlies all the material and spiritual activities of life. We have to learn to make God our balance point. There is no other answer. When I look at life with clear understanding, it all boils down to this: Balance means finding God; and finding God
is all about spiritual practice.
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