Balance

In a recent podcast interview, the host asked me how I nurture my own spirituality, and I answered that I do that by seeking balance. A few weeks later, my spiritual director suggested that I work on finding balance in my life, which has pushed and pulled me in many different directions this year. Many of us strive to achieve a work/life balance, with varying degrees of success, but we seldom think of balance in spiritual terms.

As a middle child, I migrate towards middle ground and seek to see all sides of an issue or argument. My temperament inclines this way as well. Some members of my family are driven and competitive and thrive on adrenaline, including my older brother. Others, like my younger brother, are more measured, steady, and risk averse. I am somewhere in between – willing to take some risks, but not to the point where I may topple over the precipice.

These tendencies were on full display on a family beach vacation when my niece decided to go skydiving. Two others signed on at once, but most (including their spouses and parents) did not even care to watch. I seriously considered joining the skydivers, but I feared the adrenaline rush more than I craved it, so I watched safely, but with some envy, from the ground.

Moving into retirement I found that, as many people have noted, I am at least as busy as I was when I was working full time, and I find myself still seeking to balance work and rest. Here again my family offers an apt illustration. The driven folks cannot sit still (this is also the ADHD wing of the family) and seem unable to sit still. Having been raised with a strong work ethic, the rest of us are not lazy, but we value leisure as well as industry. Even so, a good balance is difficult to achieve.

We generally think of religion as requiring us to be all in, and not something to be done in a balanced or measured way. But Christian nationalists and religious sects that become cult-like illustrate how easily religion can be carried to extremes. When yoked to politics, extremism threatens democracy as well as religious communities.

Far right regimes around the world are imposing nationalist agendas. Extremists on the left are likewise opposed to centrist policies or candidates, leading to government that is so polarized it is largely ineffective. The U.S. Congress has become a winner-take-all exercise in which the party in power rams through as much legislation as possible before they lose control and the other side takes over and does the same. Few are willing to seek middle ground on which to govern, and many centrists have left or been voted out of office.

We live in a world that is out of balance. Climate change has thrown the natural order of earth systems out of whack. Species are going extinct at an alarming rate. Economic inequality continues to increase, as an ever smaller number of people holds an ever greater percentage of wealth.

The Israeli attack on Gaza is so troubling because it is so out of proportion. Few people would condone Hamas’s attack on Israel, but the death toll is now 30 Palestinians to every one Israeli killed in that attack, with many more in Gaza suffering starvation, disease, and the terror of more strikes. Israel has a “right to defend itself,” but that bar has long since been passed, and ongoing action is way out of balance.

In the midst of such extremes, finding balance is a challenge. I am also working on balance in physical therapy with exercises such as standing on one foot at a time. Due in part to an inner ear issue, I struggle to find the equilibrium that allows others to stand serenely in one-legged yoga poses like the tree. My legs and ankles tremble, and even a few moments of steadiness can be swept away by a sudden wave of tipsiness.

To improve my balance, I am learning to ground my energy, keeping my feet and ankles as steady as possible, and to strengthen my core muscles. Those tactics can be applied to other areas of life, as we remain connected to the things that ground us and and focus on our core beliefs and commitments.

As tempting as it is to block out the news altogether, we can follow it enough to be informed but not so much that we become paralyzed by despair. We can balance mainstream media, which understandably covers the worst news, by looking for good news, through such sources as Yes Magazine and the work of groups like Third Act that can cultivate hope.

We can attend to our own spirits, recognizing that for most of us, both the highest highs and the lowest lows are temporary. Various religious traditions counsel awareness that the human condition is impermanent, advising us in both good times and bad to remember, “this too shall pass.”

As stressful as many of us find this particular moment in time, taking a long view reveals that much of the world enjoys a better standard of living than at any time in history. As NATO celebrated its 75th anniversary recently, it has grown from 12 to 32 nations, with other countries eager to join. Across the globe, an enormous grassroots movement is working toward positive social change. Such achievements support the idea of a long moral arc that inclines toward justice.¹

There will always be resistance to progressive movements, as extending social benefits to some may prompt others to resist change or their own perceived loss of power. We are in such a cycle now, and most of us fear some version of what the next decades might bring. As history teaches us, the world has felt topsy-turvy at many other points, and things eventually even out. Some human institutions may not survive, but that can be a good thing.

As we move through these challenging days, it is important to strive for balance in our own lives and remember that no matter how bad things get, “this too shall pass.”

1. Most famously utterly by Martin Luther King Jr., this idea originated with Theodore Parker, a Unitarian minister and abolitionist. ↩︎