Finding A Sense of Balance

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"Finding A Sense of Balance"

The Spirituality of Imperfection – Week
March 20, 2011

Ecclesiastes 3:1-15

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck
up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down,
and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to
mourn, and a time to dance; a time to throw away stones, and a time to
gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from
embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time
to throw away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence,
and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and
a time for peace. What gain have the workers from their toil? I have seen
the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with.

He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover he has put a sense of
past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has
done from the beginning to the end. I know that there is nothing better for
them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover,
it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil. I
know that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it,
nor anything taken from it; God has done this, so that all should stand in
awe before him. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already
is; and God seeks out what has gone by.

Last week, I began our sermon series on a spirituality of imperfection, about
trying to glean what we could out of a small book of the same name, which
does its own gleaning from the experience of recovering alcoholics, and their
journey with the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Perfectionism,
that trait that bedevils so many of us, has cut a wide path of destruction in
our culture, in one way or another: if we can’t be the perfect son or
daughter, we’ll drown out my feelings of failure and inadequacies at the bottle
or at the buffet table, or with drugs or sex or gambling, whatever numbs to
the seeming fact that we have failed ourself or failed those that we love, or
even failed nameless and faceless strangers, that we didn’t live up to the
ideals that society say we must live up to, even if those ideals will be the
ones that kill us, literally or figuratively. As people of Christian faith, we are
not immune to this disease, and, perhaps, we do more than our fair share of
perpetuating the illness by misinterpreting some of Jesus’ sayings about
being perfect, and then using those misinterpretations as the nails we use to
crucify others onto their crosses, or even the nails we use to try to crucify
ourselves. This week, I’m going to be trying to explore what it means to
strike some balance in our lives—to honor the imperfection that is within,
perhaps even the shadow within us, and use that knowledge, that heart
truth as a way of allowing God to increase the light within us so that, at the
very least, the darkness will not overcome us, as the Gospel of John speaks
of Jesus in the first chapter of that book.

And so, if we are to explore balance in our lives, if we are to figure out a way
to make sure that we both acknowledge that we are imperfect people and
yet, we are still called by Christ to be perfect people--whole people, not
sinless people, but well-rounded, aware people, as we learned last week—if
we are to do as Jesus has asked in Matthew 5, there is probably no better
text than the text we have from Ecclesiastes, that all too familiar text that
says that for everything there is a season. This text finds its home in one of
the most remarkable books ever written, much less one of the most
remarkable in our own Bible. In its pages, we find a man struggling with the
seeming meaninglessness of life, and doing so with so much unvarnished
honesty as to sometimes be disturbing to those who cannot handle the
acknowledgment of such shadow in their own lives and in the world.
Furthermore, he struggles with what this meaninglessness might mean in the
light of who he believes God to be—just, and good, and purposeful. It is
what is sometimes called a “yes, but…” book, where one thing is affirmed, to
only be contradicted a paragraph later, which is perhaps testimony to the
truth that sometimes two seemingly contradictory things that can be true,
depending on the moment one utters such a thing.

It is as real a book within our sacred canon as you’re going to get, which
makes it attractive to those of us value authenticity, realness, and all that.
Look at the rhythm the author notes in the first part of the text, the way he
juxtaposes opposites against each other, reminding us that wisdom is
knowing when to do what—when to plant or pluck, a time to weep, or laugh,
to build or destroy, to sue for peace or declare war. Each of these realities
exist—war and peace, laughter and tears, demolition and construction—they
are the stuff of life, but the issue is always about when to do what: to laugh
at the right time, to weep when it is called for, to wage war when war must
be waged, and to seek peace when it is time to end the bloodshed. So many
of us live our lives in the extremes, don’t we? Some people only seem to
laugh, everything is a joke to them, and all sorrow is a chance to make a
joke. And then there are others, others who can’t and won’t laugh at
anything—their personal sorrow drags even joy down into the depths. Both
traits found in these extremes in Ecclesiastes are real, both exist, and both
need to be acknowledged and balanced in this life, as noted in a word of
wisdom that Rabbi Bunam told his disciples. He said: “Everyone must have
two pockets, so that he can reach into one or the other, according to his
needs. In his right pocket are to be the words: “For my sake was the world
created,” and in his left: “I am earth and ashes.” (Kurtz and Ketcham 60)

You know, so much of life is finding that balance in the way one lives, to do
what is needed in any given moment, and not to go into extremes. I think
those of us who deal with addictions of any kind know of that struggle,
because we know, inherently that few things are wrong and in of
themselves. I mean, Jesus turned water into wine, and despite what the
Baptists may say, it was real, potent wine—and thus it’s clear that wine,
spirits, are not wrong in and of themselves, especially when Christ himself
makes some wine just so that the party can go on. But when we can’t stop
at two glasses, or three, and we find ourselves drinking the 5th and 6th
glass, that is when balance, moderation, temperance, gets thrown out the
window, and we start to have a problem of imbalance. Another example:
anger in and of itself is not wrong—even Jesus himself gets angry, as
exemplified in that moment when he turns out the moneychangers in the
temple, but when all that we are is angry, that is a person who is becoming
imbalance by something that is a natural, and can even be good, if that anger
helps change the world for the good.

And yet, even those who are attempting to correct that imbalance, those
who have found a proper balance in their lives, don’t demand that we correct
our imbalances exactly as they do. When an alcoholic gives up alcohol
completely as a way of rebalancing their life, the wisest of them know that
their cure is not meant for everyone, especially those who don’t struggle with
alcohol addition—in another words, not everyone needs to give up alcohol for
good. The wisest of addicts knows that just because we can’t keep away
from the buffet table doesn’t mean all people should avoid buffet tables, or
they should be outlawed, period. But some, those who have not quite
become balanced, do demand that others make the same choices they do,
and so they continue their life of extremes, one way or another, living at the
polar ends of life, and so often they continue to be imbalanced—they go from
being a rabid atheist to a rabid Christian fundamentalist, for example. Some
in recovery have labeled this continued pattern in the life of someone now
sober as the dry alcoholic phenomenon, the dry drunk, a person who can’t
live in the middle, and who can’t find the center point, and so they continue
to live at the edges, being extreme and demanding the same from others.

But, still, what does this life lived in balance, actually produce? Well,
according to Kurtz and Ketcham book, it leads to a fundamental honesty
about oneself, and about how the world really works. One of the things that
wisdom brings in this life, balance brings you, is the realization the world out
there is not so simply divided into good and evil, but, rather that division is
found right inside of us, right through us, the left and the right pocket of the
human experience. To know that truth, to know that all of us are capable of
great good and great evil, and that too much of life is pretending otherwise,
to know that truth is to know the fundamental truth of existence. Knowing
that truth makes is possible to love our enemies, because we know that even
within them is light and not only darkness, and within us is not only light, but
darkness as well. It is to move away from a “yes, but…” posture to a “yes,
and…,”posture, moving away from defensive posture to one that
acknowledges that all of us are in need of God’s great mercy.    Not a “yes,
but I’m not like that person and will never be like that person,” but a “yes,
and I am more like that person than I really care to admit.” When you hit
rock bottom in life, it becomes a lot harder to judge another person’s
journey in this life, assuming that I would do differently if I had walked in
their same shoes. That is what real honesty brings about in this life.

And yet, where are we to share that truth, where are we to be honest about
the world as we understand it, or even the difficult truth about ourselves, the
shadow and light within us? Well, in our best moments, we do it here, in
church, in this place that supposedly allows for imperfection, this place that
acknowledges that we are all sinners in need of great mercy. But you know
and I know that the church has rarely been that kind of place—in fact, for
many, it has been a place of judgment, rather than mercy and
understanding. Part of the reason the Bill Wilson, the co-founder of AA, left
behind organized religion was that it seemed to be more interested in
excluding than including, something you often find in religion, that willingness
to throw others under the bus, to judge and delineate who is in and who is
out. And yet, even though he walked away from the church, Bill Wilson came
to find out that he couldn’t find balance, couldn’t become sober by himself.
That discovery is told this way:

Bill got sober in early December 1934. For several months he tried to help
other alcoholics by sharing his newfound sobriety with them. Those he
approached showed no interest.   Then, in early May of 1935, Wilson went to
Akron, Ohio, on a business deal, which promptly fell through. On the day
before Mother’s Day, Bill paced the lobby of the Mayflower Hotel in Akron,
getting more and more depressed. Sounds of laughter and of ice tinkling in
glasses wafted from the bar, and he caught himself thinking a thought he
had not had in over five months: “I need a drink!” It was hardly a new
concept. But then that impulse was pushed out of his mind by an idea that
was completely new: “No, I don’t need a drink—I need another alcoholic!”
And striding purposefully away from the bar and toward the lobby telephone
booths, Bill Wilson began a series of calls that led him the next day to meet
Robert Holbrook Smith, who would become AA’s co-founder. Twenty years
later, retelling this story at AA’s “Coming of Age” convention, Wilson
explained why his meeting with Dr. Bob had been different—why, after all
his earlier failures, this meeting had worked. “You see, our talk was a
completely mutual thing...I knew that I needed this alcoholic as much as he
needed me. This was it. And this mutual give-and-take is at the very heart
of AA’s Twelfth Step work today. The final missing link was located right
there in my first talk with Dr. Bob. (Kurtz and Ketchum 83-84)

There is something special about having a person, a friend, even sometimes
a stranger, in whom you confide the whole the truth, whom you can say
what is true for you, and where you can show some of your deepest
shadows to—and you know that it won’t scare them. In ancient times, this
special place of being real with another was sometimes found in the
confession booths—in modern times, it’s found in the therapist’s office, but
you know what? You know what is sad? What is sad that it is rarely ever
found within these doors, within the doors of the church. There is a reason
why alcoholics have sponsors, wiser mentors, who can guide them through
the process of finding balance again their lives, and who have done it or are
in the midst of doing it themselves. Bill Wilson knew that to find balance in
this life, we need a listening ear, and someone to go with on the journey to
wholeness, to perfection. In my better moments, in the church, I’ve found
those fellow travelers, but we remain challenged by the perfectionism, by the
façade we put on, in this place, and in all churches, certainly, but in all the
places we live in this world, this façade that we have it together, even when
we don’t. People who find a way home usually have someone they’ve been
walking with, whose being showing them the way home, and hopefully, in our
better moments, the church can and does that.

To find balance, of course, is the challenge, of course. The Shakers, whose
famous hymn we find on the front of our bulletin today, the bottom half of
type-written graphic, are ironically enough a people not known for balance.
They were extremists—Mother Ann Lee was the second coming of Christ,
they believed, and there was to be no sex ever, and women and men were
equal, an idea quite radical for its time. And yet, so often even extremists
find their way back to the middle, to a wholeness that is at the heart of all
things, the God who finds us in the middle of mess we often make of our
lives.   The top part of the graphic on your bulletin cover is the actual dance
they did when singing this song, and there is something beautifully
elemental, beautifully centering about it—the patting of the earth, the fingers
on the heart, the hands flayed outwards, the turning clock and then
counterclockwise. Even when we live in extremes, even when the drink
becomes too much, the food becomes too much, the debt becomes too
much, the religion becomes too much, even then, something draws us back
to the Holy Center, one way or another, and we get turned and turned until
we come back right, until we find our center again, until we find our feet
again, until we find our balance once again. Thanks be to the God who never
lets us go.   Amen.