In Search of a Definition of Balance…(part two)

I gave my own definition of ‘balance’ in part one, but I’ll repeat it here:

Balance is the maintenance of two or more elements in a system within an acceptable range of normal which keeps every element in correct proportion, so that the functions of the system as a whole can be performed optimally.

I already looked at how this definition is supported by the chemical functioning inside our bodies.  Let’s look at a more subjective system:  how we use our time.  (I was interested to see that this was the only context in which my friends commented on my Facebook quote.)  Now there are always 24 hours in a day.  Nobody gets any more than that.  We can divide those hours into minutes or seconds, but everyone gets the same number.  The simplest division we can make is into waking and sleeping.  How many of us would insist on 12 hours of sleep per night?  For most of us, most of the time, that much sleep would be excessive.  If we agree on a healthy range as 6.5 to 8 hours of sleep, we could say that we maintain a healthy balance of waking and sleeping if we are out of bed for about 2/3 of every 24-hour period.  But that alone isn’t enough to determine balance in a meaningful way.  How are we spending those waking hours?

We can simply split our waking hours into work and relaxation.  Should there be eight hours of each?  Is it possible? Yes.  Is it desirable?  That’s open to debate.   Beyond that, into which column does one put hygiene, eating, travel time, home/car/yard maintenance, shopping, cooking?  For some, these things might fall on the work side, but for others on the recreation end of the spectrum.    We will spend differing amounts of time on each item–and even in the course of several days or weeks will probably not be utterly consistent in the time we spend in each category.  Some weeks, shopping may take up a large amount of time–perhaps because a new home is being sought.  The week of a party, perhaps cooking and cleaning take precedence.  Not spending the same amount in each category of activity–nor even a consistent amount of time on one activity from week to week–doesn’t imply a lack of balance.  Is my life functioning optimally?  That’s the question.  And it requires further definition.

It’s easy enough to define “optimal” in purely physical terms:  the health of my body, the performance of my car, or the yield in my garden (because of the right balance of sun, moisture and fertilizer, soil, time and lack of predators/pests). These are fairly objective systems.  But what about the quality of my life, the way I spend my time over a span of months or years?  How do I define balance here? This is the ultimate context of Dr. Swenson’s book, and the one for which we are in most need of a definition.

One of the most valuable concepts he introduces in order to determine whether we are “in balance,” is the concept of “core priorities.”  He uses the picture of orbit, and suggests that everything in our lives should be placed in orbit around our core priorities.   Is my priority making money?  Then working 12 hours a day is perhaps not out of balance for me.  Is my stated priority family and relationships? A 12-hour work day isn’t going to help balance my life in favor of that priority, is it?

I want to go back to my working definition:  When I say “optimal function of the system as a whole”, to what system am I referring?   In this context, perhaps it is that my core priorities are being preserved or honored, and the implied goals of those priorities are being met.  But I need more than an ambiguous “priority” and an implied goal, in order to really establish equilibrium.

If my priority is family, what I really need is an active verb to describe that priority, much the way an actor needs verbs to describe his character’s motivation.   Perhaps it’s clearer to say, “My core priority is to maintain solid relationships with my family members, so that we communicate often, understand each other, spend regular quality time together and build common positive memories.”   A specific and goal-oriented definition of each of  my core priorities will make it much easier to determine whether the components of my life are in a range which will serve those priorities well.

One friend said, “Jesus did not live a balanced life.”  But I say, Oh really?  Jesus stated clearly that He had come to do His Father’s will.  Every aspect of His earthly life served that purpose.  Who are we to say it was out of balance?  True, what we know of His life mainly falls into the last three years, the years of His public ministry. But that makes it relatively easy to evaluate them for balance, as we’ve defined it.  So…did Jesus ignore His mission for days on end, playing video games instead?  Did He neglect His prayer life?  Did He take a sabbatical from teaching and never get back to it?  Did He try to cram too many speaking engagements into His schedule and end up in bed with the flu for a week? Did He give Himself a nervous breakdown by trying to heal everyone who came to Him?

Jesus accomplished His stated purpose.  And thus He is the example of a perfectly balanced life.  But His is the only example.

In Search of a Definition of Balance… (part one)

I mentioned this book in my Facebook status yesterday.  I’ve been reading it for a book discussion panel I’ll be part of next week, and growing frustrated with the author.  In my status update, I asked this question:  “Is balance something we can’t define, but we know it when we don’t see it?”

To my surprise, this question provoked a brief but intense shower of comments–quite a good dialogue, in fact.  But the stand-out thread was the assumed definition of “balance” by nearly everyone who wrote: their comments indicated that they thought of balance as equality, as in spending “equal time” doing various things.  “Balance is overrated,” said one person.  “Jesus’ life wasn’t balanced,” pointed out another.  “Nor the apostle Paul’s life.”

I repeatedly pointed out the necessity of a definition we could all agree on, and stated that the biggest problem I have with this book is that Dr. Swenson’s first job was to define his term…and he never got around to it.  He used many illustrations, but since he’s looking at what he thinks of as “balance” in every facet of life, it’s a slippery commodity he’s trying to pin down, and his success is partial at best.

The implied understanding of “balance” as equality is easy to grasp.  We at once picture an old-fashioned set of scales in a shop, where a one-pound weight tells us whether we’re buying a pound of potatoes.   Elementary math sometimes uses the graphic of a scale to picture an equation–by definition, both sides have to be equal, so a pair of scales is a good illustration to teach that concept.

But there are other, more subtle, variations on the idea of balance.  We want to balance our budgets–home, business, government.  But it isn’t as simple as “this is our income and this is our expense.”  We scrutinize how much we’re spending in each category.   Experts tell us that we should try to keep our housing cost to about 25% of our total month expense:  If I make $2,000 a month, I shouldn’t pay more than $500 for my rent or mortgage.  If  I am routinely spending over $1,000 for housing, that spending may be rightly said to be out of balance with my income and other expenses.

“Balance” has many synonyms, and Dr. Swenson uses all of them, at times interchangeably.  We have equilibrium, homeostasis, constancy, stability, consistency, sustained harmony, etc.   The many statistics and anecdotes he employs lead me to this definition:  Balance is the maintenance of all the elements in a system within an acceptable range of normal, which keeps every element in correct proportion so that the functions of the system as a whole can be performed optimally.

I know this definition is unwieldy, but it’s what I’m working with at the moment.  The example I used in my Facebook conversation was the electrolytes in our bodies.  Sodium is a critical component in cell functioning.  Its optimal range should be 135 to 145 millimoles per liter.  Both excess sodium and inadequate sodium levels will create serious or even fatal problems in our bodies.  Potassium, another major player, should be present in the optimal range of 3.6 to 5.1 millimoles per liter.  The fact that we need only a fraction as much potassium as we do sodium doesn’t imply anything about its importance to our health and well-being.  The critical fact is that there is a specific level which much be maintained.

Of course there are myriad elements in our bodies which must be kept in balance.  We speak of  “chemical imbalances” in the brain, of hormone imbalances, or of vitamin deficiencies.   Most of us are not so naive that we think every part must be equal.  And not every part is “equally” important…our bodies can adjust to varying levels of almost any component, compensating for excess or deficit in remarkable ways.   But if our goal is optimal health and performance, we ignore these balances at our peril.

“The nature of language…”

I’m reading Eugene Peterson’s Eat This Book, in preparation for WBCL’s Digging Deeper on MidMorning this coming Thursday, September 10th, at 9:05 am.  This is one of the more challenging small books I’ve read recently.  For instance, what to make of this statement?

It is the very nature of language to form rather than inform.  When language is personal, which it is at its best, it reveals: and revelation is always formative–we don’t know more, we become more.  Our best users of language, poets and lovers and children and saints, use words to make–make intimacies, make character, make beauty, make goodness, make truth.  (page 24)

I’ve certainly experienced enough of the worst of language…the dryness of a text book, reciting facts in a way no one could ever read for pleasure or interest;  the convoluted prose of an instruction manual for assembling a bookshelf which only frustrates and confuses.  But what does it mean that language at its best is “personal”?    The dictionary definitions helps a bit. Personal can mean  “pertaining to or coming from a (particular) person, a self-conscious being.”   Good communication has an element of the personal–or perhaps conversational?– about it.

So far, so good.  But how does language make beauty or goodness or truth?  Making is different from revealing, isn’t it?  When something is revealed to me, I recognize its truth or beauty, perhaps for the first time.  Do the words make it true or beautiful, or only reveal something inherent?  I believe God is the source of beauty and truth, and I think Peterson does, too.  My biggest problem with the early chapters of this book is that he makes statements which are deep with implications, and then he does nothing to unpack them with illustration.

The rich metaphors of a good poem cause us to see in a new way.  For instance,

Earth’s crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God;

But only he who sees, takes off his shoes -

The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

–Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh, Book vii

This snippet of verse is a powerful picture of our God-saturated world, and the necessity of looking at creation with awareness of God’s presence.  The idea of being so oblivious we’d sit and pluck berries when we should be worshiping carries a sense of shame.  So few words, so much depth.  But does the poet create the beauty or the truth?  Or does she reveal it by her fresh metaphor and strong verbs (crammed, afire, pluck)? The comparison of Moses at the burning bush to simpletons feeding their faces with fruit carries conviction which cuts to the heart.  It reveals not only a truth of nature, but a truth about our own perceptions (or lack).

If this revelation creates a desire in us for change, if we are formed (or perhaps re-formed is more apt…formed anew) by it, then I suppose we can say that the poet “made” more goodness, character, beauty.

Of course Peterson’s contention is that the Bible is the all-important text for our spiritual formation. We are not to “use” Scripture for our own goals, plans, information or agenda. Rather, we are to ingest it so that it permeates us, becomes part of us, nurturing us as the best food does.

“Eating a book,” he writes, “takes it all in, assimilating it into the tissues of our lives  Readers become what they read.”   I do believe that “it is the very nature of” Scripture to form rather than inform. I’m just not convinced that the same is true of language in general.

Loving a “Wild Thing”

The oddest things make me cry these days.

Reading to cuddly two-year-old Luke before naptime:

The night Max wore the wolf suit and made mischief of one kind…

and another…

his mother called him, “Wild Thing!”

And Max said, “I’ll eat you up!”

and was sent to bed without eating anything.

–from Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

And I wished, oh how I wished, that it were only a wolf suit and some idle words, instead of mischief and misdemeanor that the wide world frowns on.  I wished he were only in his room instead of in a concrete block.  I wished I could fix him supper after sending him to bed without it, and serve it to him “still hot”.  Instead I know that he never gets enough to satisfy him, the tall young man with the high metabolism.

As long as he chooses to be the King of all Wild Things, and go on wild rumpuses any chance he gets…then he’s better off staying where he is.  But someday, please God, he’ll decide that he’s lonely.  He’ll really want to be “where someone loves him best of all”.  Then perhaps he’ll step into his private boat and sail back over a year and in and out of weeks…

and he’ll not only find his supper waiting for him, but he’ll see his parents sailing out to meet him as he approaches the harbor.  And they’ll be smiling.   And so will his Father.

Another “new” idea that proves to be old…

I commented to a book-loving friend that I felt as if I’d read the same book over and over again throughout 2008.  The theme of why the Christian Church (in general, but the American church in particular) has such limited impact on society, and the importance of getting back to obedient discipleship (or apprenticeship) and spreading the message of the Kingdom, are treated over and over, a modern theme and variations.  Rob Bell, Shane Claiborne, Brian McLaren and Dallas Willard–among others–are all preaching this message in compelling ways to Christians, seekers and many who are disenchanted with organized religion.

I decided to begin a new year by trying (again) to read a classic text which has been gathering dust on my shelf while I read all these newcomers:  The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  After just a few pages I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.  Sixty years ago, in the midst of a world war, in a different country, in a different language, and there’s the theme yet again.   Is it the most important message anyone can deliver, or am I personally being hounded by heaven?  And if the latter, what am I to do about it?

Bonhoeffer makes an intriguing case for the paradox that both the following statements are equally true at the same time:

Only he who believes is obedient.

Only he who is obedient believes.

In other words, obedience is impossible for an unbeliever…and it is nonnegotiable for a believer.  Bonhoeffer seems to see obedience rather than faith as the “first” step.  Jesus calls, we obey the call which leads to belief which compels us to further obedience and deeper faith.

And so this got me to thinking:  I know two young men who once professed belief.  Now they deny any spiritual convictions whatsoever.  They want to do their own thing.  I certainly don’t expect them to “obey” like believers when they don’t believe.  But I wonder:  is it a measure of integrity that they have jettisoned belief because they see the necessary connection between faith and action?  Or are they simply trading one sin (disobedience) for another (dishonesty)–talking themselves out of legitimate faith in order to avoid the guilt of disobedience?  Or does it even matter?  If they are not obedient, then in Bonhoeffer’s view, they are not believers, period.

And what will make them want to believe? Surely it will be a call from Christ, though who knows how or when it will come.  Meanwhile, do they see any Christians being obedient to their faith?  That seems to be the recurring question: what has God ever done for you? How is your life different/better because you believe?

And I am chagrined to find that I stumble over the answer to that.  One of my resolutions this week is to take seriously Peter’s charge:  Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. (I Peter 3:15) I’m pretty sure that’s a charge to which I need to be obedient.

Acedia as the sin against myself–“How is it that we choose to sin and wither?”

The quote above is Dante again, to which Kathleen Norris responds: “The question presumes the freedom to choose; if I am truthful with myself, I recognize that in midlife, there are many days in which I indeed choose to sin and wither. Even if I can think of ways in which I might rouse myself from lethargy, I resist acting on them.” (Acedia & Me, page 201)

The picture of sinning as withering makes it clear that the choice of passivity, non-caring, is a self-destructive one. Isn’t it ironic that we sometimes get to this place of lead-limbed inaction through a misguided sense of ‘taking care of myself for a change’?

Perhaps I become weary with doing good—and as Ruth pointed out in a comment recently, it may be that I was doing too much, or taking on burdens not rightly mine. In any event, I am not seeking God’s face and asking for my proper work (Ephesians 2:10). It may begin to feel as if God is requiring too much of me. So I deaden myself to agape and replace it with a languid narcissism, acedia. I reject discipline as being tedious or repetitive. I embrace the new, the sensational.

But though I may think I’m seeking an exciting life, I’m really only looking for new ways to be passively entertained. My senses become dulled to what is productive, life-affirming and God-honoring. In any “activity” I should ask: who am I serving with this? If the answer is too often “me” then acedia rules our hearts.

Now listen: we’re not talking about the healthy care for one’s physical, mental and emotional health. And an occasional self-indulgence as a “treat” is a vastly different thing from wallowing in amusement—a word which literally means to not think. But like the naughty boys in Pinocchio who are enslaved because of a surfeit of sweets, sin “so easily entangles” us…once we awaken to truth, it can seem like a hole too deep to climb out of.

I wonder if perhaps acedia is sometimes a defense mechanism we use when we think we’re too far gone. We choose to deceive ourselves into thinking that “it doesn’t matter” what we do or don’t do. The demon’s lies seem plausible at times when we feel that either God doesn’t care what we do, or we can never live a life that pleases Him enough, so why try? As Norris says, “When we are convinced that we are beyond the reach of grace, acedia has done its work.”

More thoughts on Anger and Acedia

I think my previous post may have been unclear.  I was following my own train of thought about anger and acedia, based on just a few sentences in Norris’ book.  She takes a passage from Dante’s inferno, describing the fourth circle of hell, where “the angry are denied the mercy of forgetting” and stand naked in the mire striking at one another. Nearby, sunk in the bog and barely visible are the slothful who ignored beauty while they were alive.  “Inside us, we bore acedia’s dismal smoke…”

The juxtaposition of anger and acedia strikes Norris as meaningful, and so she explores it. “When unexpressed anger builds up inside, people perform even legitimate duties carelessly and resentfully, often focusing on others as the source of their troubles.”  Notice that Norris doesn’t specify that the anger is caused by someone else, or that one’s resentment is expressed necessarily against the person with whom you are angry.  I imagine this could as easily be a case of “kicking the dog”–taking out one’s frustration on an innocent third party.  The passage isn’t definitively about one or the other…her point is only that acedia is sometimes linked to anger.

It seems to me that the morose mood of acedia is more likely to be the cause of unjust anger than vice versa.  Perhaps it is a vicious cycle, where the numbness of uncaring provokes an irrational anger which results in more careless action or inaction…And this passage in her book is by no means implying that ALL anger is caring too much about the wrong things.  I think I may have made Dante seem to say that, and I apologize for the confusion.

On the other hand, “be angry and don’t sin” is a useful commandment here…even righteous anger can lead to careless words and acts, or a stewing silence in which the offense grows like cancer until it’s unrecognizable. When I choose to let the sun set on my unresolved anger, am I not choosing to embrace acedia?

Anger and Acedia

“Dante ties anger, which entails caring too much about the wrong things, to acedia, which is caring too little about the right ones.” Acedia and Me, page 202

This sentence from Kathleen Norris’ book made me pause and reflect: Does anger really mean that I care overmuch for unimportant things? Is my interrupted quiet time more important than my son’s need to talk? Is that broken cup worth spewing out words that I can’t take back? The questions may be rhetorical, but they can still sting.

Norris suggests that when we are angry–especially when the anger isn’t verbalized–it comes out in action: a duty is done with resentment, carelessly. And so acedia, non-care, rears its head.

When I sweep away my concern for the right things, the best things, and cease to focus my heart, mind and actions on them, that vacuum is easily filled with more trivial desires. My thwarted will, in the midst of an otherwise empty room, seems hugely important. Any real or imagined slight by my family festers there; perhaps the laundry piles up or a requested item on the grocery list is ‘forgotten’…

Jonah couldn’t bring himself to care about the Ninevites, even after he had preached repentance to them. His resentment of God’s mercy emerged when he became unreasonably angry over the withered gourd whose shade he had enjoyed. His energies were turned inward to his own gratification, and he resented what spoiled his comfort.

What Jonah needed to realize was that God was NOT asking him to minister out of his own superior strength and holiness. Norris points out in an earlier chapter that “we engender compassion not through our strengths but through our common weaknesses.” Jonah was supposed to offer the same mercy that he and all Israel had received.

Prayer (no surprise) is the antidote here. My devotional last week gave me a good quotation to round out this relating of anger and acedia:

“I can no longer condemn or hate a brother for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble he causes me…There is no dislike, no personal tension, no estrangement that cannot be overcome by intercession as far as our side of it is concerned…To make intercession means to grant our brother the same right that we have received, namely, to stand before Christ and share in His mercy”  (from Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer).

Word for the Week: “Acedia”

I would love to know whether anyone who reads this has heard of this word before…especially if you have not read the book by Kathleen Norris which includes acedia in the title.  Having read all her previous prose works, I happened upon Acedia & Me:  A marriage, monks and a writer’s life on the new book shelf of our branch library and took it home on the strength of the author’s name.  I didn’t really ask myself what the title was (or how to pronounce it) until a week or two later when I picked it up to begin reading.

Norris’ books are all at least partially memoir, and this one is no different, focusing on her marriage to poet David Dwyer, who died in 2003. The author has been for many years an oblate of the Benedictine order, although she claims Presbyterian as her official denomination. The seeming contradiction in that will require the curious to read The Cloister Walk, an earlier book, because it would be too cumbersome to explain here.

Her reading of the early Church fathers led, many years ago now, to a desert monk named Evagrius (4th C.), whose writings introduced her to the concept of acedia…a slippery word which she spends the entire book defining.   Here’s a first stab at it from page 3:

At its Greek root, the word acedia means the absence of care.  The person afflicted refuses to care or is incapable of doing so.  When life becomes too challenging and engagement with others too demanding, acedia offers a kind of spiritual morphine:  you know the pain is there, yet can’t rouse yourself to give a damn.

Norris is very careful to distinguish the spiritual problem of acedia from the physiological and/or psychological one of depression.  A paraphrase of Thomas Aquinas from page 24 says:

For despair, participation in the divine nature through grace is perceived as appealing, but impossible; for acedia, the prospect is possible, but unappealing.

In case you’re still with me, and still curious, acedia is pronounced uh-SEE-dee-uh, and it is variously defined by sloth, apathy and indifference, especially to spiritual things.  Before there were seven deadly sins, the early writers identified “eight bad thoughts”–the motivating cause behind the sinful effect, I suppose.  What does this have to do with us, you ask?  Well…

The torpor of acedia can be felt every time you sit down to read your Bible but remember something else that you “need” to do first…

Every time you question whether there’s any point in praying for so-and-so any longer…

Every time you wonder if God is really interested in having a relationship with you and instead of asking Him you turn on the TV or pick up a magazine (because perhaps the answer would be painful or require action).

And if you can’t relate to any of those scenarios, brother or sister in Christ, then you have much indeed for which to be thankful.

Asking for Direction(s)

Some of us just want to read the directions ourselves. It’s the way we’re wired.

We speak with clenched teeth to the well-meaning:
“Don’t read me the the package insert, and please don’t show me how to do it …just (grunt, sound of ripping) give me the paper and let me read it myself.”  Sigh of relief; panic subsides. I can do this. Leave me alone.

But once in a while, almost in spite of myself, a prayer/groan rises and the Spirit hears it.  So after months of floundering around trying to revamp my devotional time, I stumbled on a book that saved me: Disciplines for the Inner Life, a week by week compilation of thematic Scripture and excerpts from a vast range of Christian writers. Bob Benson, St. and his son, Michael W. Benson prepared this book for Thomas Nelson.  My edition, discovered in Hyde Brothers where I wasn’t looking for it, was published in 1989.  I’d never heard of it, and have no idea whether it’s still in print.

Another groan, occasional and desultory, goes something like this:  “Once upon a time, You gave me a verse for the year, a theme to focus on.  Of course I generally forgot about it before December, and I can’t say I’ve made a lot of progress in those areas…Maybe that’s why You stopped?  Or is it because I stopped asking?”

On the last morning of the old year, I picked up Disciplines and read the passage for the day.  It resonated.  I walked away.  And then, by God’s grace,  as I sat on New Year’s Day pondering the year ahead, that Word came back to me as if engraved in gold on marble.  It’s been some years since I was blinded by the obvious that way, assaulted by a passage which proclaims to me that this is my directive for this time.

I’m sure I’ll be writing about that passage at some point, as I live with it from day to day.  It won’t mean to you what it does to me, but that’s all right.  My thankful heart today sits satisfied because God still answers the prayers we hesitate, forget or are ashamed to pray.  Asking for direction is difficult for some of us.  But not paying attention when directions are given is hazardous in a life which is already hard enough.