I received an email from my friend in Texas, "Okay... how do I keep balance? I am feeling overwhelmed by the book and a year or more of travel, signing, speaking engagements, 2 houses, 4 dogs, 3 B&B's, and a partridge in a pear tree, and not being 20 any more, and on and on. I know you will know the answer..."
I'm glad for the email, and I want to be helpful. More than that, I want to rise to the occasion. But I'm not legally allowed to prescribe medication, so I'm racking my brain for something profound to tell her. I take a break, and am sitting on the bench in front of Bob's Bakery with Zach (Bob's is our Island morning gathering spot). We're having Cinnamon Twists. They are decadently yummy, and make me forget my need to be useful. The bench is made from a trunk of an old downed log, it's seat now worn from years of time and use. Zach and I watch the Vashon traffic--"traffic" in a poetic license sort of way--go by. And Zach, his mouth full of half a Twist, says, "Dad, this is the life."
With every question about managing life, or finding balance, there is a knee jerk temptation to offer solutions--which always means adding something else to the to-do-list. In the end, it's like the book 99 ways to simplify my life... because, apparently, one way is not enough. So it's relentless. I found another book about the "Balance Diet," (you know, getting my life in order) but after one week on the Balance diet, I start to wonder how I'm doing, as if there's a test. And if I fail, am I required to attend a workshop on Remedial Balanced Living? And I start to wonder about the benefit of the "balanced life" if I'm always looking over my shoulder to see who's impressed.
As if that isn't enough, we have a tendency to exacerbate the problem with our solutions, a superfluity of well-meaning activities to make our life worth living. In the words of TS Elliot, we are "Distracted from distractions by distractions." Like a pastor's conference I attended, on Personal Renewal. An agenda crammed to the gills (6 am to 10 pm, I do not exaggerate), and at the end of the week we sat glassy eyed and lifeless, hoping for some reprieve from this weight of good intentions.
I've been inculcated with the assumption that any inability to balance my life is an indictment. All of this coming from our celebrity and vicarious-living oriented culture, where we are encouraged or forced to compare ourselves to others who are "successful". All of this white noise from Madison Avenue makes me susceptible to watching TV at 3 am, engrossed with some guy flashing gleaming teeth and imploring me to live my life by owning real estate in every continent. "With no money down!" To have, he tells me, "the life I always wanted."
The holy trinity of our culture: bigger, faster and more beautiful. All implying that we should be living a different life, and not the one we are living now. In the end, we live divided. And a divided life is a wounded life, and the soul keeps calling us to heal the wound. If we ignore that call, we find ourselves trying to numb our pain with an anesthetic of choice, be it overwork, consumerism, mindless media noise, or a pastor's conference on renewal.
An organization recently asked me for my bio, which is a good a hook as any, to hang our hat of value. I'll admit to you that it gave me pause. I had a bad week. Was in a bookstore and saw my friend's book which outsells mine 100 to 1. Which takes me back to standing in front of the "success library" in that same bookstore, asking, "what is missing?" This is all a very toxic and dangerous sort of stew, and can only be dispelled by looking at the way dusk settles on the rose Winchester Cathedral, outside my study window. As the petals absorb the light of dusk, all the other stuff that clutters my mind, recedes. And I wonder, how do I put Zach's delight with a Cinnamon Twist on a resume?
If I can stop the noise... then the fragrance of the rose, the joy of my son, and the quickening of the morning air in the garden all tell me that I am living this life, or this moment, or this conversation, or this event, and no longer need to focus on what is down the road, with its potential for some greater payoff.
Which brings me back to my friend's question, How do I keep balance?
The answer? My grandmother's porch swing.
This may not be the best answer in Texas (where my friend lives) right at the moment, since it's close to 150 degrees in the shade, but you get the idea... let's spend the afternoon on the porch. Let's crank up Van Morrison or Roy Orbison, and let the afternoon heat recede into the trees. As the sun reaches the horizon, we watch and feel the earth itself breathe in relief and the perfume from the rose Penelope suffuses the air around the patio. We are absorbed in moments of grace. We find ourselves lost in (the words of Rabbi Abraham Heschel) "radical amazement." We allow the dust to settle. We allow the murky water to clear.
Here's the deal:
Intelligence happens when you quit trying to be smart.
A sense of self appears when you no longer have a need to be somebody.
Transcendence arrives when you embrace the life that is given.
Holiness happens when you give up frenetic striving.
Jesus didn't wait for the barking dogs of deluged living to reach a tipping point. He was proactive. Which meant that he got up, and left the crowds. The accolades. He departed... to my grandmother's porch swing.
Here's my assignment. Rent the movie Il Postino. Pablo Neruda, the famous Chilean poet, is exiled to a small island for political reasons. On the island, the unemployed son of a poor fisherman (Mario Ruoppolo) is hired as an extra postman due to the huge increase that Neruda receives. Ruoppolo, on his bicycle, hand-delivers Neruda's mail to him. Though poorly educated, the postman learns to love poetry and eventually befriends Neruda. Struggling to grow and express himself more fully, he suddenly falls in love and needs Neruda's help and guidance more than ever.
Mario: I'd like to be a poet.
Neruda: It's more original being a postman. You get to walk a lot and don't get fat. We poets are all fat.
Mario: Yes, but with poetry I could make women fall for me. How do you become a poet?
Neruda: Try and walk slowly along the shore as far as the bay and look around you.
Mario: And will they come to me, metaphors?
Neruda: Certainly.
Writing about balance makes me wonder. What is it I am asking for when I seek balance? Do I want some reprieve? This I know from experience: If I do "wake up to this life," I may not like what I see. There is something oddly satisfying in the rush, the hurry, the stress. Maybe I'm afraid that if I stop, if I slow down and rest, I'll never amount to anything. What if someone told me (and this is indeed the scandal of Grace) that everything I am ever going to amount to, I am right now?
So let's go try the porch swing--our Sabbath space--for a spell. As Richard Rohr says, "Don't push the river." In India, wise people tell us that in climbing any sacred mountain, if you think of it as a race, the mountain will beat you. However, if you climb one step at a time, the mountain will pull you up like a friend.
Today, if you have a porch swing, use it.
If you don't have one, today's a good day to find one.
