Category: Balance

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Retreat

So, Lord, I have just spent the equivalent of two days—an evening, a day, a long morning—in a mini retreat, with eight other folks similarly engaged. There was such good material, most of which bubbled up inside each one of us as we individually and collectively responded to each other’s insights, questions, griefs, fears, longings. We were in “it”—this business of a daily life, spiritually centered—together, and in a way we don’t, or I should say, I don’t, despite my longing, often practice in the daily all by myself.

So my question, or one of my questions, is this: given a sense of calling, given experiences that feel to me like being invited into a deeper sense of Your Presence, why would I, why would anyone turn away from that invitation? Here is a follow-on question: despite what might be my fears around that invitation (what will others think? How will those I love react?), how can I live more fully aware and engaged? Our director said, over and over, Just Breathe. How do you feel right now in your body?

God, I think I know why I keep being drawn to bicycles. It’s the balancing act motif. Live connected to You, live connected to others—but not in a way that diminishes either Your Voice or my own—and live connected to myself. That is the challenge, to keep present, God, with all that is, and still hold to, or allow myself to be held by, and in, Your Love. That’s it, isn’t it! It feels like an aha. To allow myself to simultaneously be present to what is happening around me and at the same instant, to allow myself to be held by and in Your Love. Bingo. And I don’t. I mean, I do, but then I slip. I fall. I tumble into trying to fix everything around me (as if I even could, or as if it would be wise if I could), or I stumble over what is happening around me because I have closed my eyes and ears if it seems too painful or hard to bear, and neither one of those is the Third Way, of being present in a way that still allows Your Love to flow and center me in that Love.

All this is really heady, heavy stuff. But I love it. I love taking time to acknowledge it, and talk about it, and practice Your Presence, and write about it, and go out with my camera in hand, into a world I view as one You made initially, and look for evidence that You are still present here.

You said a lot this weekend, and some of it was beyond words. But is there anything You would say now, that I can share here?

Why don’t you write about what you saw and experienced when you went outside at sunset by yourself.

Ok, well, I think I saw the Green Flash. I had seen an afterflash of white light, once, just after the sun went down, and that was a couple years ago. But last evening as the sun disappeared, and there was a thin haze layer right at the horizon so the last glimpse was ever so slightly above it,I clearly experienced a shift of color in my perception from yellow to green and then gone. It doesn’t exactly show on the photograph; it looks more yellow, but if I desaturate all the yellow there is still a tonality present in the flash than in the streaks of color in the clouds above. And then, when I sensed it was time to go, and I got in my car, there were three deer that came out of the trees on the other side of the road and walked out into the marsh. One of those was a buck in velvet, with just-growing antler. Whether they would have come if I had stayed, I doubt. But it was a special treat to see them.

And what did you ask for at the beginning of your retreat?

Well, I asked for an experience of You. Not just words. Something beyond words, something sensory. I asked for clarity. I asked for Vision, as in Vision Quest. I wanted insight.

How do you feel right now?

Very calm. Relaxed. As if I could take a nap! Really, I feel drained in the best possible sense.

So why don’t you?

Why don’t I what?

Why don’t you nap? I cleared your calendar for the weekend, and that included today. That includes this afternoon. Do you remember the scripture, He gives to His Beloved even in sleep? Well, that goes for you too. All the while you were there to receive for yourself, you were also holding sacred space for those around you. You deliberately set about to do that work, to be a silent assisting partner. Now it is time for Eve to rest, and simply, merely, only receive. Not receive AND give. Just receive. You rarely do that fully awake, but in this semi-drowsy state, I can impart much to you—much healing, much insight, much strength. Everything you need, I can impart. Are you willing to lay down your need to appear strong and just receive? If you can answer yes, then go take a nap. And trust that everything in your world will be okay, while you rest and receive.

 

 

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Solitude and Service

God, I had an aha moment today. A friend halfway around the world and I were texting–have I thanked You lately for the technology that, first, allowed us to find each other after 40 years, and second, allows us to so easily keep in touch–anyway, we were texting and she asked me if I am an introvert. And I replied that yes, I am. Here is, basically, what I said to her, what led up to my eureka. 

I love people, I said. I love talking to people, getting to know folks, sharing with them, and I think I am a born storyteller. HOWEVER, all that being true, it is also true that I recharge in solitude. That is, in solitude deliberately spent one-on-one with You, and preferably, outside. I need time and space, I said. I need alone time precisely to fill up again so that I can go back into the world and give out, give-away. And then, depleted, I need to go back into solitude to recharge, and be able to go back to my public life. Finally, I noted that I always feel as if I need to apologize for wanting alone time, for feeling that I need it, and I don’t know how to really ask for what I want, what it seems I need.

Then I said how this whole conundrum reminded me of something Richard Rohr wrote about Jesus, how Jesus needed His time alone in communion with the Father in order to go out into the world and minister. That was my aha moment. If Jesus needed time “alone” — meaning, not with the crowds but not even with His disciples either — then surely it is okay if I do. No wonder I feel out of balance, or unrested. I am not honoring the process at all! It was exciting, actually, to have a door of understanding swing so easily open. What is not so easy is trying to explain it to all the people in my life who rely on me for so many different things–or whose life experience or personality is different enough from mine that they genuinely have no frame of reference to understand what I need, or why I need it.  So what would You say about that?

Richard Rohr goes on to write about creativity, about the need for solitude and recharge time as well as time immersed in the world for creativity to flourish. That is certainly true of you, and it explains why you feel stymied creatively much of the time. What I told you recently about healing and restoring the part of you that is a writer is tied directly to this need you have to both go within and without. This is the Way to find your path within prayerful solitude, the path that leads directly to the making a difference you so passionately want to do, in your world. It is a circular sort of path, not unlike a labyrinth, in that you will constantly be circling back through solitude and out into the world, as long as you remain committed both to Me and to the calling you sense so strongly, to share. You have thought these were opposites instead of two essential halves making up a whole, a whole life. Instead of either/or, this is another both/and, and the combination makes The Third Way. It is not selfish of you to need time alone; it is essential. I made you for this. Let that sink in. I made you, as you are. I made you to need, to crave, time apart, and I made you to long to give to others. Let the war within you cease now. Embrace the totality of who you are, who I have made you to be, and be. Be fully, deeply both/and.

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Playtime

Lord, a friend of mine who is visiting the beach posted something extraordinary today, extraordinary in its simplicity, its innocence, and its honesty. She said she asked You to play with her today, at the beach. Now why didn’t I think of that?!? Why hasn’t the whole world thought of that? What parent doesn’t play with his or her kids? Even animals teach their young by playing! And yet I never, not once, thought of asking You to play with me. I’m sorry, God — it never occurred to me, and it never occurred to me that You would want to.

Remember just yesterday I said My challenge is to approach each of you on your own terms, in ways that you can receive from Me best? For all you have grown, and all your stretching into new realms of experience of My Love and My Presence, still you tend to be very serious, extremely so at times. You take life seriously! Life is serious business! You love to laugh, you love to make others laugh in an easy, gentle way…but your over-arching view of life is serious, even somber, not playful. You take responsibility seriously, you take your relationships seriously, you take your work seriously, and you take your time with Me seriously. This is part of why recess was hard for you as a child. This is why you struggle with all those creative exercises in your favorite books that ask you to dream a little, play a little, exercise some frivolous imagination. It is why, despite loving it, you abandoned most good fiction as somehow unfit for the limited reading time you have. Instead, you try to read books that are scholarly in some sense, designed to teach you something, increase your knowledge or skill or performance. Little One, you do very little for the pure fun of it. Your quest to find and make meaning has led you to profound insight at times, yet you have forgotten what little you once knew about playtime.

Here is a proposal for you. Why don’t you think about what playing with Me would be like for you? Why don’t you try to imagine a scenario in which pure, holy play was not only allowed, but encouraged? Why don’t you imagine, just for a minute, opening a serious-looking engraved invitation, in which I, the God of the Universe, invite you, the Serious Scholarly Sage, to come out and play? Can you do that? Will you do that? I tell you the truth: your best imagery thus far happened when you were closest to My playful heart. My heart that delights to delight you. So let Me ask you one more time: can Eve come out and play?

Gosh, God, honestly, I don’t know. But I am willing to try. If it is okay with You, I think I would like to try Easter Sunday.

It’s a play-date, then. And there is no better day–you’ll see!

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Balancing Act

God, these times with You, they are like parentheses around my day, only what happens in between isn’t parenthetical, it’s integral. It’s the whole point! But You anchor me, before the day starts and near its closing. These times with You are like breathing for me, I take in, I release; I release, I take in. I can’t do one without the other. I can’t say Please without Thank You. Is this why people talk about Yin/Yang, about balance?

There are many ways to think about balance. You often think about balancing work and rest, or time alone with time spent with others. You think of a seesaw and wonder where the center point is, trying to measure your hours to find the middle. But what if one side is more heavily weighted than the other? What is the balance point then? I have told you before, one reason I gave Sabbath to humans was that rest was needed to balance work. You have taken that concept to mean, a lot of work, a little rest. Soon, little became even smaller, and then shrunk to almost none. This is not at all what I meant!

What centers you? What energizes you? What pulls and tugs at you in a way that weighs you down? What frees you so that you feel weightless and timeless? You have to answer all these questions for yourself, and your answers will change depending on circumstances. There is no single right answer, not for humanity, not even for you and your life. The answer is always moving just as the balance point is always moving, depending on the load of the day and the need of the moment. There are times when six days of rest are needed to counterbalance the weight of one day of work, of effort! This is why it is so important that you stay closely connected. You keep trying to fit into a cookie cutter life, a set schedule, a “now-I-have-it-figured-out” routine. None of those will work. For one, you would quickly get bored. Humanity in general, and you in particular are not cut out for a cookie cutter life. Same/same doesn’t serve your best, or others’. Instead, growth and freshness, and surprises, and opportunities, and change, and challenge—all those words you love sometimes and loathe sometimes—they are what make life interesting and worth getting up every morning to enter.

Every day at the start of the day, I want you to ask yourself these questions:

What is my best hope for this day? Not “every day” in general, but this day? What would bring me joy, today? How can I show love today and inspire peace, today?

Then at the end of each day, I want you to ask, what is my greatest gratitude today? What was the day’s best gift? If I had one do-over, what would that be, and why?

Then I want you to receive and release – receive the day, and release the day. Receive the next day, and release all prior days. Receive whatever you need from Me, in each today – strength, or hope, or grace, or wisdom, or guidance, or peace, or patience, or perseverance, or love, or joy, or peace, or faith…and then release to Me whatever you need to let go of or celebrate at the end of every day, whether fatigue or joy of accomplishment, whether regret or satisfaction, whether sorrow or deep gladness. Receive from Me and release to Me, like your breathing. And for each point of release, receive again. For regret receive grace and wisdom; for fatigue receive rest and replenishment, for sorrow receive comfort and mercy. For joy of accomplishment hear My echo of Well Done! For satisfaction or deep gladness, receive the capacity to hold even more. For the deep desire within you to serve, to be of use, receive direction to carry into each tomorrow.

This is the secret to balance. Receive and release; release and receive. If you can learn to feel your balance point and find it in the moment, you will be much less tired overall, and you will both enter and end each day more in tune with yourself, with Me, and with all that your life demands of you.

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Making Moments

Lord, some days I feel like a yo-yo–work, rest. Family, solitude. Creative, I can’t think of the right word for what I want to say. Creative…all the words I can come up with are negative words and that is not exactly what I mean. I think I mean, there are days I feel innovative, alert to possibility and to the light itself, and there are other days I feel very close-focused and the focus is detail-oriented, task-driven, necessary but not necessarily what I would call creative. There is an energy input, I will say, when I am being creative, and there is an energy output, let’s say, when I am occupied with all the background tasks of making a business life successful. Hence the yo-yo. Maybe that is not such a bad thing. Balance, right?

Balance, yes. Your challenge is that you tend to view your life in larger increments of time, and you plan to balance work now, and details now, and tasks now, with rest and refreshing and creative expressions later. And “later” doesn’t always balance out. Your challenge is to build your later into your now. Find ways to incorporate refreshment and relaxation, creative flow and time with family and friends, in the middle of the days that demand an immediate, detailed, task-oriented focus.

Ok, so, how in the world do I do that? I manage to find moments with You. Thankfully, You are Yourself, meaning, always Present. So I can talk to You at midnight, say, or while in the middle of doing something else, say, or driving, say, really anywhere, anytime–but I can’t necessarily relax anywhere anytime, and I sure can’t take creative time (which does take time and attention) and I sure can’t simultaneously get the shop ready to open and spend unstructured time, say, walking the beach or enjoying a long, lazy talk with a friend. I’m missing something, aren’t I? There is a third way I am not seeing, isn’t there?

You are living either/or again instead of both/and. The key is something you have done before, and that is to allow yourself moments in every day, as I told you before, to connect–you are faithfully connecting with Me, but you need moments to connect with yourself, and to connect with family, and to connect with friends.

Ok, here is the problem I see with that idea. Moments are just that, they are brief and elusive, and they don’t seem to have much value, all by themselves unless you string them together into hours or days or weeks or…

Stop. Take a breath. How long did that take?

I dunno. A moment? Oh. Clever.

That momentary breath, your inhale, your exhale, sustains you, literally keeps you alive. So do your little glances back and forth with Pete, your little hugs, your little kisses, your daily I-love-you’s. You haven’t had a vacation together away in more than three years. Yet your love continues to grow and be sustained by the daily moments of intention you both give to that love and to each other.

OK, point taken. And that absolutely works here, with Pete.

It would work with you, too–with yourself. Just give yourself a few minutes of attention. Check in with your body, are you warm, cold, thirsty, hungry? Check in with your emotions, and don’t brush them off, whatever they are. If you are feeling joyful and excited, then enjoy that! Really feel the feeling of the accomplishments you are making now, in your working days. If you are feeling worried or stressed, you don’t have to obsess on that in order to honor the feeling–but be willing to bring that feeling to the forefront so that you can take action based on its prompting. When you rush past joy, you diminish it. When you try to push past worry or stress, you magnify it. You already pay momentary mindful attention to nature, so you know how to do this.

What about friends, Lord? I have friendships I sustain in a series of moments. I’m thinking of friends who are long-distance, some extremely long-distance. But You help us stay connected, even if we are physically apart. It’s really something, how that works. Are You saying I can rely on that type of connection even in the busier times?

You already do. As you just said, you have friendships you have sustained in just this way, where distance separates you physically but your hearts are joined and every moment of contact just strengthens and reinforces the bond. Don’t neglect the moment just because you cannot spend hours. Don’t neglect the contact just because it will be brief. Don’t be all-or-nothing, either/or, in your thinking.  Living in the Moment means living in the Moment with Me, with yourself, with nature, with family, with friends. Make Moments. They in turn will make your life.

 

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Positive Choices

Lord, I decided years ago, I have a finite amount of concentrated prayer time. Rather than spend it rebuking evil, I decided to spend it talking to You. I am trying so hard to turn away from malevolence, not give it more power by my attention to it.

Your every choice for good, for love, or for peace helps tip the balance in favor of good in your world. You keep making positive choices and so you keep having an increasingly positive life. Those who keep making negative choices keep having an increasingly negative life—until they switch. Until they begin to choose differently. Those who give themselves over deliberately to what you call evil, to choices intended to hurt or harm another, increasingly become the choices they make. They—and you—take on the persona and lifestyle and character of the choices made.

You are not safe because there is no evil, no malice. You are safe precisely because, despite the reality of evil and malice, you continually choose Me and My ways, and so you are surrounded by that which you have chosen to embody. It is My Spirit that protects you even when you don’t realize you are being protected.

But Lord, what about children? What about animals? Who protects them, the vulnerable?

You do. By your every choice for Love, you—and everyone like you—tip the balance in your world. That’s why I said, “The kingdom of God is within you.” You create and extend My Kingdom with every choice for good. You co-create with Me. If every single person on the planet did this at the same instant, the Kingdom would be fully realized.

Oh! As it is in heaven—right?

Exactly. You see?

 

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Centering

Lord, I’m restless.

You feel like you are the clay on the wheel, spinning around and around. You need to let Me center you. Then I can shape you, shape your life, into the perfect form and the perfect size. But all begins with centering.

I’m seeing this wide bowl and Your Hands shaping it from inside. Expanding it from within. Increasing capacity.

Today is like the disciples fishing all night and rowing home, tired and discouraged. That is where you are—that is how you feel. You are doing all you know how to do, and you are giving it your best effort. And yet you still are coming up short. So I told them to go out, at the wrong time of day and put out their nets one more time. Let out your nets for a catch. And you know the result. 153 fish. So many fish that the nets broke. So many fish the two of them couldn’t haul them in; they needed help, they needed two more helpers.

So what do I do now, today?

Relax. Unwind. Go with the flow.

 

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More on Rhythm

I feel a little blinky yet. Need to make my smoothie, shower, make to do lists. What I really need–always–is to hear from You. 

The thoughts of future upset, of attacks, do not serve either you or Me. They assume you will be alone, unguided, unprotected. They confuse your earthly and heavenly sources, and they forget Who I Am—Who I Am in your daily life.

I am asking you to live out your daily life—all of it—from a position of trust in Me and connection to Me. I am asking you to listen for My Heartbeat in each day, and to match your rhythm of thought and action to Mine. In this way, compassion will balance joy. Action will balance rest. Outflow will be balanced by inflow. In fact, inflow has to be at least double the outflow: inflow to sustain you, and inflow to share with others.

So again, the keyword is Receive. And for right now, what I want you to receive is rhythm. Let’s slow the tempo now. Let’s have some soaring symphonic experience and expression.

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Salt and Pepper

Ok, so. So now what?

What do you do when you skim the fat off the top of a pot of soup?

I discard it and then I can add seasonings. Then I stir.

So these random musings, which are almost diary-like, serve the same purpose. They get you ready to distil the essence of what is important, what you can discard, and they help you taste your life to see what’s missing, what it needs.

Lord, what does my life need today? What does it need right now?

You can over-season, over-salt, put in too much pepper, and ruin what would have been a great recipe. You need balance.

Lord, I’ve had soup like that–so much salt or pepper I couldn’t eat it! When I think of salt now, I think of tears. And when I think of pepper, I think of anger.

So this is very important. Not only can you over-season, you can under-season. Soup–and life–is very bland if it is too watered down with no seasoning at all. So don’t be afraid of your seasons of tears or anger; just bring the whole of your life to Me. Tell Me here what makes you sad or makes you mad. Then we can more easily focus on what makes you glad still.

You see how cathartic that was? It is okay to acknowledge situations you think are unfair or hurtful. How can I help you right a wrong if you are not honest with Me or with yourself?

You can help me right a wrong I didn’t cause? One I don’t deserve?

But of course. Forgiveness is part of the process which you know very well. But that is not all. Sometimes restoration is needed. Sometimes a new situation needs to fill the gaps left in the aftermath of an older one. There is always a way to move forward. There is always a way to find or generate peace and joy. But you have to begin by stopping. Stop and acknowledge where you are. Then you can go on with more clarity.