March 25, 2018 USNH Lay-led Service
“Balancing Acts”
Homily: In Praise of Imbalance
Sue Linsley
Reading
In Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There, Syvia Boorstein writes
“Equanimity doesn’t mean keeping things even; it is the capacity to return to balance in the midst of an alert, responsive life. I don’t want to be constantly calm. The cultural context I grew up in and the relational life I live in both call for passionate, engaged response. I laugh and I cry and I’m glad that I do. What I value is the capacity to be balanced between times.”
Although the title of her mini-essay is somewhat misleading, I like what Boorstein says about returning “to balance in the midst of an alert responsive life.” And about not being “constantly calm”.
I like to think of balance and imbalance in terms of potential energy vs kinetic energy.
Potential energy is what we have as we stand at the end of a diving board or when a slinky toy is poised at the top of the stairs. We know, in fact we may even anticipate what will happen next. But there is nothing that demands the dive into the pool or the placing of the top of the slinky on the next step down.
Potential energy is standing still; it is the staying put; it is the thought. Kinetic energy is the movement, the action.
Where would we humans be if we never gave action to the thought? Would we ever have had the impulse to leave the trees? Or the courage to cross the Bering Straits? Or to go to the moon. Or to dive into the pool.
Kinetic energy is the grappling hook flung out to the unknown.
Potential energy is the anchor, keeping us in place.
Actually, we are often in a state of what I call dynamic imbalance. Walking, for example, is sometimes referred to as “controlled falling”. In that brief moment between lifting a foot and putting it down again we are in a state of dynamic imbalance. And if you don’t believe that, watch a toddler’s first steps.
Most of us have ridden a bicycle at some time in our lives. How is it that we can’t balance on a bicycle at rest, but we can carve some awesome curves when we’re pedaling? I won’t go into the dynamics of the moving bicycle, but we all understand that we can balance on a moving bicycle.
Many of us here pursue yoga. What does it feel like when we are asked to do the Tree Pose, standing on one leg? For me, it is rarely a serene, unmoving stance, more often an unsteady wobble. In those uncertain moments, I am not actually balancing, but seeking balance. Always seeking balance. I wonder if being in a state of dynamic imbalance is a more real condition for all of us. Perhaps that is when we are truly alive.
So, savor those exquisite moments when potential energy becomes kinetic energy. Take a deep breath…and dive.
Reflection #2: The Spiritual Balance Sheet- Jim Peters
Reading:
“For everything in this journey of life we are on, there is a right wing and a left wing: for the wing of love there is anger; for the wing of destiny there is fear; for the wing of pain there is healing; for the wing of hurt there is forgiveness; for the wing of pride there is humility; for the wing of giving there is taking; for the wing of tears there is joy; for the wing of rejection there is acceptance; for the wing of judgment there is grace; for the wing of honor there is shame; for the wing of letting go there is the wing of keeping. We can only fly with two wings and two wings can only stay in the air if there is a balance.”
- Joybell C.
As we continue this morning’s series of reflections on our theme, let’s turn to an accounting of balance — here I’m thinking of a balance sheet or of balancing our checkbooks.
I’d like us to consider a spiritual, or essential, or personal, balance sheet. Please hold the word that works best for you.
So we are going to become our own accountants for a few minutes. Reflect with me as we take stock together and look for the balance inside.
We’ll begin with tallying up our personal assets. In your mind, with eyes open or closed as you prefer, think of that which you value most in this world.
- The people you love.
- The people who love you.
- Your communities of caring– places of friendship and connection.
- Those acts, those choices about which you are most comfortable, proud, which uplift you when you think of them.
- Are there objects of art, or works of music, or performances which you’ve created, or collected or attended, which give you special pleasure or hold special meaning?
- Are there places in the world that bring you special joy or peace when you visit them, or even when you think about visiting them?
- Are there qualities of character in yourself that you honor — ways in which you persevere, ways in which you are courageous, in which you extend yourself, when you were particularly compassionate or generous? Let’s put those in the asset column too.
Now I may have missed some entire asset class in the list I’ve just shared. If you value something positively, put it in your personal asset column. Be as inclusive as you can. In short, if some part of your life experience contributes to your being your best self, by your own reckoning, it goes here.
Now I want to shift to the next piece — to our liabilities, our faults, our misgivings.
- Here I would ask us to reflect on the shadow side of all that we’ve just been thinking about. For it is certainly true that in every life lived, there are paths not taken, or taken in error, relationships that did not flourish as we had intended or hoped, choices that fill us not with pride or satisfaction, but with regret…or worse.
- I am here reminded of the “un-resume” — a listing of goals or accomplishments that were not achieved — some job that turned out not to be the right fit, some school or program that we were not admitted to, some new year’s resolution that didn’t make it past the Ides of March, some recognition or award that might have been due but for one reason or another didn’t come our way.
- And as we are all human, there may be within us qualities of character which we may not consider to be reflective of our best selves.. We may at times be less patient, and more judgmental, less other-regarding and more self absorbed, less empathetic and more inconsiderate.
Again, here I may not have named explicitly something you feel belongs in the liabilities column — if you can identify it, include it.
So, next, if we were doing some traditional accounting, at this point we would total our assets, and we would total our liabilities, and we would subtract one from the other. Depending on their relative value, we would then determine if we were “in the black” or “in the red.” Central to this understanding is the process of subtracting — the greater our liabilities, the deeper a hole we are in, and the greater our assets need to be to keep us balanced.
Well, I would like to suggest an alternative accounting system here today. I do believe we should indeed add up our pluses and our minuses, but then, and I think this is essential, we shouldn’t subtract one from the other.
Instead, I believe, we must add it all together.
For life is not a zero-sum game in which our strengths can be credited against our weaknesses. That’s not how we balance things out. We are, instead, the sum of all of it. Our good acts don’t cancel out our mistakes any more than our poor choices are expiated by better ones.
We are all of it.
We are our acts of thoughtlessness as much as we are our kindest deeds.
We are all of it.
We don’t read from the book of Joys OR Sorrows. It is the book of Joys AND sorrows.
Because we are all of it.
If we have a net worth, I think of it like a fisher’s net cast into the water. As that net is dragged along, it catches everything — the keepers and the small fry, the flotsam and the seaweed, the edible and the inedible.
The net catches it all — that which was intended and everything else.
We are that net, and our worth is everything in it.
I just think this is true. I think it’s part of being human that we’re better understood as a mixture of the good and the not so good. We are fabulous. And we are faulty. We are beautiful. And we are broken. We are our greatest accomplishment and our deepest regret.
So I’d like to ask us all to balance our spiritual accounts with this in mind. Try to hold everything together. Try to find the forgiveness in the midst of guilt. Try to find humility within the pride of achievement and success.
I believe that we experience balance in the wholeness of our being — our strengths plus our weaknesses, our successes and our failures, our experiences of genuine love alongside those relationships which were fatally flawed.
And so my friends, let us remember that we can only fly with two wings, and two wings can only stay in the air if there is balance. And let us find the balance in the additions, not the subtractions. Let our net, cast into the ocean of life, be strong enough to hold the widest range of our experiences and our choices.
Let us be. All of it.
Finding Balance in Difficult Times
By Deborah Pascale
Some of you know that last July my wife, Lillian, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She had been in considerable abdominal pain for a month and when she finally went to the doctor he ordered a CT scan thinking as we did that she might have a blockage in her colon. When we got the results of the scan we were shocked to learn that she had a large mass on one of her ovaries. Oh my God, I said to myself; this sounds like cancer! It was a harsh reminder of just how tenuous and fleeting life is. I imagined all sorts of horrible things happening to her before she finally succumbed to death.
We were referred to an oncologist at Smilow Cancer Center and I hoped and prayed that the diagnosis would be a benign tumor. Alas, it was ovarian cancer, but because of the rapid growth of the tumor it had been caught in stage 1 rather than 3 or 4. This was the first hopeful thing I had heard. Surgery was scheduled and although it was a long procedure it went well. The surgeon told me she was very confident she had removed all of the cancer from my Lily’s abdomen. The next steps were recovery from the very invasive surgery and then six months of chemotherapy. The doctor was sure Lily would have a complete cure. I swung between confidence in our doctor’s pronouncement and abject panic that I might lose this woman who was the love of my life.
At church I told folks about these events and received many heartfelt words of encouragement. This was enormously helpful to me, however, most of the time I walked around in a fog of fear and anxiety. I don’t think I had any idea just how deeply scared I was and therefore didn’t seek the kind of care I needed.
I spent all my free time taking care of Lily. I cooked, cleaned, helped her bathe herself and change her clothes. I sat up with her at night when she was in pain or scared. I was effectively working two full-time jobs.
I was so intent upon easing her post-op pain and exhaustion plus the onset of post-chemo symptoms that I completely ignored my own needs. I simply didn’t see or understand just how deeply my new responsibilities were affecting my own body and soul. My physical and spiritual health started to deteriorate. I started missing work due to burnout and panic anxiety. I contracted several respiratory infections, had a spate of stomach and other digestive ailments. In short, I was a mess.
I’m told I’m a stubborn person and my inability to see just how far I had spiraled out of balance was a good indicator of how destructive my stubborn streak could be.
About a month ago just after the end of Lily’s chemo treatments I contracted a serious G/I infection that required me to be on two very powerful antibiotics. All of these events made me realize that I had to stop and think deeply about what was going on inside of me.
I restarted my mediation and breathing exercises and during one of these sessions I began to realize how ignoring my own needs had made me unbalanced and in danger of losing myself completely. Not only was I not helping myself but the deterioration of my psyche was becoming harmful to my loved ones as well. I decided that in order to get my equilibrium back I needed to stop making kneejerk decisions and evaluate requests for my time before I responded to them.
I have recovered from my infection and Lily just had a CT scan that we are hopeful will tell us she is cancer free. I have promised myself that I will take at least 30 minutes a day to meditate and breathe so I stay centered and in touch with myself.
It’s been a long road and along the way I have learned some important things about myself. Most importantly I have reinforced my desire to stay in balance with myself and with my spirit,
Thank you for your time – Namaste
PS: Lily and I got the post-chemo tests back and she is indeed cancer free!!