Keeping a Spiritual Balance in a Busy Life

by The Rev. Canon Dena Harrison

(Excerpts from the keynote address at Women's Spirituality Day on January 19, 2002, at Christ Church Cathedral)

The first thing I need to give you is the disclaimer that I'm a spiritually balanced person. I am here before you as a person who aspires to spiritual balance. I suspect that all of us are here because we have aspirations, not that we have arrived. All the same, I am grateful to have the opportunity to reflect about these matters and to share those reflections with you.

The text for my preparation is Ephesians 3 and 4. It is a description of the joy of living in harmony with God and with others. The writer has a wonderful, lyrical style that ministers to me and I hope will to you. So I commend it to you for your private meditation on this theme.

The appeal from the writer is that we are to live a life worthy of the calling to which we have been called -- and I believe that is what we all desire, whatever our calling may be. We want to live a life worthy of the God who calls us into patterns of life and health for the service of the kingdom and for our own growth and satisfaction. That is the overarching goal of working on spiritual balance -- to be worthy of the calling to which we are called, because God has a claim upon us. Whether we accept that joyfully or grudgingly or kicking and screaming, we all know it is true, and we have a desire to develop toward that goal.

To acknowledge that you have a calling, a claim of God upon your life, means that you are called to focus in some particular direction. You are no longer free to choose anything. You will still be faced with choices, which means being called away from some others. This is nowhere clearer than in our baptismal promises. We renounce the forces of wickedness, the evil powers of the world, the sinful desires that separate us from God. We turn toward Jesus Christ as Savior, we put our whole trust in his grace and love, and we promise to follow and obey. We've made some pretty serious choices when we stand and affirm that covenant. We have decided what our directionıs going to be.

Somewhere between the affirmations and the renunciations is the dicey part. How do we live, having made those choices? How do we balance between what we refuse and what we accept in a way that keeps us upright? This whole posture of uprightness is very scriptural; itıs both metaphorical and literal to be upright, in harmony, in balance, able to love and live fully.

One of the first images that comes to my mind about balance and imbalance is those inflatable figures that have a weighted bottom and roll around. They wobble back and forth and around -- there is something within us that mirrors that kind of motion, and this is the very kind of imbalance we are called to address. Ephesians talks about our being like children, which speaks of our immaturity, "tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine." Well, that's me -- on my weaker days and my in worse moments. We're all blown about; we get a little battered. But the wonderful thing about that inflatable is that you can't knock it over. It may go back and forth, but it always ends up upright -- an image of Godıs intention for us. So balance is about being on center, being grounded, having some kind of stability.

The road to that stability is spiritual maturity. Scott Peck says, "The road to sainthood is through adulthood." Growing up is painful, and we donıt usually do it until the pain of living in our immaturity gets to be greater than the pain of going through the fire of maturity. One of the things I know about the pain of maturation is that it is the only choice if you are looking for spiritual balance. We do not have an option. Now, I'm not into unnecessary suffering, but I try to be, on my better days, into redemptive suffering, into finding courage for that suffering when it is clearly the way of life.

The Cross reveals that redemptive suffering can be a thread running through life, which, if you will accept the challenge of it, will weave for you a wonderful garment, the garment of love and grace and glory, the garment of peace. But choosing redemptive suffering is always frightening. It's scary to face hard choices and big challenges, but it isnıt fatal. It is, in most cases, the way of life.

Here are, in no particular order, a series of reflections about our topic. I did bring some show and tell. When I was about midway through seminary, my husband gave me a little gift, which had come out of my father's toolbox. It's a level. I keep it on my desk as a reminder to strive for balance, to be balanced. I'll let it face you today.

It brings to mind the image from scripture of Amos and his plumb line, an image of judgment. Images of judgment always call us to a decision. If you want to seek balance in your spiritual life, then from time to time you need to check out your level. Sometime after my husband gave this to me, I heard somebody refer to another person as "about a half bubble off plumb." What a great expression! It provides a checkpoint: Am I off a quarter bubble? A half bubble? Has the bubble disappeared? This is good language and a good image.

Seeking balance always starts with prayer, which is the bedrock of the faithful life, of the calling to which we are called. Everybody does it differently. The same person does it differently at different times. What's important is that you find a way to do it, because it is the way that you steep yourself in the love of God, in the adoration of God, in the desire for God. Don't leave it out. The object of life is to live as a prayer in the world, to live in prayerful attention to the world around you, and to live with Godıs intention for the world always on your heart. Prayer is the only way to do that.

You need to realize that "getting it right" comes and goes, whatever you're doing. Being balanced means that you're always going to be stretched between balance and imbalance and youıre going to sway like that inflatable, and sometimes you will feel more peaceful with where you are than other times. But you must have an appreciation for your own efforts. You must be kind to yourself (as God is kind), and understanding and patient. We all grow at different rates, at different times, and in different ways, and your way is just fine.

It is important to find companions on the way. You must have soul friends, people who are trustworthy, people who know you and love you anyway. They have to love you enough, and you have to love them enough, to allow yourself to be accountable to them, to allow them to call you to that accountability, to risk with them, to be honest with them. Realize that you need more than one, because no one person can offer you all the companionship you need.

We often have very unrealistic expectations of our family and our friends. But those few trustworthy friends are essential for helping you grow in spirit and certainly in balance. They're not going to be perfect, they're going to disappoint you in some way, just as you're going to disappoint them, but let them carry you when you can't carry yourself -- and never let go of them.

It is very important to have perspective. Pilots have to stay oriented to the horizon. The life of the spirit requires that very long distance perspective. It is eternal. You will do your best, and in all of eternity you will come to fullness, by the grace of God. Sometimes you are going to have to fly with instruments, and that's where your companions are so important. Sometimes you are going to have to call "Mayday," and let the tower talk you in. But keep the horizon in view, whatever it takes.

Community is part of the package. For most of us that is a faith community, a broader community than those few trusted friends. Now, other people are real inconvenient. They occasionally give us flashes of glory, but mostly push and pull on us in odd ways. You canıt afford to do without that community because you have to stay spiritually fit.

I had a professor who said, "You know, you get who you get, not who you think you want or who you think you deserve -- you get who you get." To come into a community, get who you get, and learn to see that assembly as gift is very important to a sense of stability in the spiritual life.

Worship is at the center of stability. We are so blessed to be part of a sacramental church. The sacraments help us remember where the plumb line is. They call us back to the center. They instruct, they nurture, they keep us on course. They serve as course corrections and keep revealing that eternal horizon. Not only is it a duty, it is a sacred privilege to worship together, to receive the sacraments and be bound as a community.

A sign on the bulletin board in the Liturgics classroom used to say "Know your Rites!" I would paraphrase that a little: "Know your faith!" What is its wisdom, what is its capacity to direct you, what is its understanding about evil, what is its framework? The framework of your faith will give you a plumb line.

For Christians, the Incarnation is central. It means so many things, but it certainly means that the struggle toward wholeness and balance is a holy struggle, that what is real in the flesh is holy, and that what is most real is most holy. Know your faith. Study it, appreciate it, explore it, argue with it, fight with it, come to some kind of terms with most of it most of the time. Thatıs about the best most of us can do, because it challenges us so much.

Sense of humor -- can't do without it! We are funny creatures, let's face it. We take ourselves pretty seriously; remember that play is good, and jokes are better. Remember that we have the gift of joy and wonder from God. Remember the good old Presbyterian Westminster Catechism: "What is the purpose of human life? The purpose is to love and enjoy God forever."

I am a big believer in rest, in Sabbath time, in holy days. The tradition names "holy days of obligation." I prefer to say "holy days of privilege," the privilege to rest in God, have Sabbath time. A friend takes "hotel days," and she taught me to take them. You pretend you're in a hotel and you don't have anywhere to go. Because you're not at home you can't work, and because nobody knows where you are, the phone doesn't ring. Nobody's going to see you so you don't have to get dressed. You just hang out. Hotel days. They help me stay balanced.

A companion to that idea is solitude. We are such busy people, living in such a busy world, and particularly as women we have so many caretaking roles, it seems. Those are roles that we enjoy and give ourselves to gladly, but we must carve out time for ourselves for retreat, spiritual reading and study, or simply being at peace in centering prayer.

Another task you have is to get comfortable with discomfort. The life of the spirit is risky, although the risks are not crazy ones, but holy ones. Choose your risks -- and if you're not uncomfortable somewhere, you're not growing. "Deal with it." (My children taught me that term, and I love it: Deal with it.)

You have to take on your own particular personal demons. Otherwise they will always keep you unbalanced. Find a safe place to do that, but do it. It is not an option if you are to find that balance.

Give things away -- your money, your time, your talents, whatever it is that weighs you down. What you can't let go of is killing you. We are meant to live lives of abundance, and trust that God is going to fill us with whatever it is we need. We have an abundance, not a scarcity, and we are meant to share that in a way that blesses others.

Learn to release things, which is different than giving things away. Learn to release possessions (with which we build fortresses), people whom we think we canıt live without, grudges (which allow us to hold onto our anger, which is so delicious and so deadly), regrets, which lead us only into neurosis. Release them -- all the things that have to fall away if we are going to be balanced.

We once had a puppy who had a little blanket that he dragged around. We had a doggie door installed, and one day he tried to take his blanket through, and it wouldnıt fit. He could either go through or not, but if he went through, he had to go without that blanket. I watched him worrying over that problem, and I realized that I am just like that. What is it that you are trying to drag with you, thatıs never going to fit, thatıs only going to keep you on this side of the door? Release it.

It is central to have an appreciation for the complexity of life and the mystery of God. We're not going to figure everything out, folks. Life is complex and God is mysterious. And life has rhythms and seasons. Balance will include them all.

Ephesians says: "Speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body's growth in building itself up in love." It is love which balances the spirit -- the love of God and self and others. Anglicans love three-legged stools. Go for that one because they balance -- love for God, love for self, and love for others.

The Rev. Dena Harrison is Canon to the Ordinary in the Diocese of Texas.