As far as I know, we don't remember, as kids, learning to walk; but anyone who has ever participated in assisting a young child in those first awkward, unstable steps, knows that having a hand to hold raises the odds of success, exponentially. 

That transition in our lives, from sitting to standing to walking, is a process. It does not happen all at once. There are many failed attempts, frustrating falls and sometimes tears. 

Of course, toddlers don't have far to fall, so their falls are not usually too painful. That is important in giving them the determination to continue to try. 

And the tears when their efforts are thwarted are due to the wanting, the desire, and the inner drive, to be upright. It's as though we know, even then, at so early an age, that if we can just master the balance required, our world will open in glorious and inexplicable ways. And we are right. In mastering being a two legged upright human with opposable digits, we enter the world of those who can manipulate environments, we can finally move things around and can much more easily go where we are drawn.

Balance, plays an important role in our lives from very early on. First, in physical ways, the way it is for the child who rolls over, then sits up, then pulls up, then steps out. 

Later, balance begins to take a manifestation of broader meaning. As we grow, and mature into people with responsibilities and obligations, as we open our hearts to others who are outside our family of origin, we can find balancing all the various parts and pieces of who we are becoming, to be challenging. We balance them, in part, to accommodate the space we want to create for others in our lives. We have discovered relationships, we find them fascinating and life sustaining; important and educational. We want them, but we have to learn to make room for them. We have to weave them into the tapestry of our life....

In the mind of the very young child the center of the universe is who they are. So when the newsflash comes, this epiphany that we are not the center of the universe, that in order to have meaningful, symbiotic and mutually satisfying relationships with other people, we must choose to give, in order to receive; and balance once again takes on new meaning. Balancing how it works; balancing how we get our most basic needs met; balancing how we negotiate asking and receiving, and balancing how we successfully participate in this incredible human dance.

Somewhere along the way, through a variety of avenues, choices, consequences and means, we sort of 'grow up'. Or, at the very least, we grow older. 

And it's in there, in our older, maybe grown up selves, that we begin to understand the concept of imbalance. It's an unfortunate reality that in my observations and experience, it isn't because we first become intimately familiar with and accustomed to our lives being IN balance, that we see right away when they are out of balance. It comes, more often, as a result of an unrelenting sense of feeling out of sorts, off our game, unhappy, overwhelmed. Most of us, at one time or another, have experienced what that feels like. What lifefeels like when we are unmoored, unanchored and untethered to all of the things in our lives that allow us to experience joy and feel peace and contentment.

We have, perhaps unsavory familiarity with the phrase 'work~life~balance', a phrase I swore to myself I would not use in this offering. But it might serve the purpose of helping us understand that our lives are not separated into, and divided by, what we do to generate income (if we do anything at all to generate income) or all the waking hours we spend doing what we might call 'work' from all the rest of the time, which I suppose is what we are being asked to see as 'life'. 

When I was living the life of someone who was paid to spend 40 hours a week with toddlers in the local Montessori school, something I might have gladly done for free, the materials we spent hours creating and caring for in our environment were always referred to with the children as 'our work'. This reference was made in reverence, respect and honor. The materials offered in Montessori infant/toddler environments are thoughtfully designed to whisper the name of any child who may be most ready to master what that particular material has to teach. If a child, engrossed in spooning a large dried bean from one small bowl to another small bowl was interrupted by a second child, and a scream or a shove ensued, (remember these are prelinguistic humans) an adult in the room would respectfully approach both children and say, “Oh, Jeffrey, this is Gregory's work right now. Gregory, you can tell Jeffrey, “This is my work”. 

This was all intentional; showing respect to the child and the classroom materials while honoring the difficult task of the very young child in the process of mastering activities of daily living and speech. 

It is hard work learning the skills necessary to succeed in life. The materials in our classrooms teach life skills, that once mastered, will always be remembered. So imagine my dismay when I would hear children a few years down the line speak of 'work' as though it were distasteful and unsavory. The word had become associated with something to be avoided or gotten out of whenever possible. Perhaps some of that comes from parents who felt that way about their own “wprk” lives, who at home spoke of their own work as though they would rather be doing anything else. I know it's true, in this country and perhaps in others, that many people find themselves in careers where they are in jeopardy of slipping off the high wire because they have abandoned or lost their ballast.

We can't get from point A (birth) to point Z (death) if we lose our ballast rod. Well, we can, but prematurely for sure if we fall into the canyon because we cannot stay walking the wire without good balance.

So to speak of a 'work~life' balance as though one is different than the other, at least in my humble opinion, is wrong. And in some ways sets people up for failure.

We are, all of who we are, all of the time we are here. If you were to take a slip of paper, and off the top of your head write down 10 ways to describe or identify who you are, what might that look like?

If I were to do that my list might look like this:

I am.... A wife. A mother. A sister. A friend. A writer. A teacher. A woman who loves animals, trees and rocks. A woman who loves to be of service. A woman who loves her life. And a woman in love with the Holy.

When I walked into this sacred space this morning, all of those women were with me. When I go to the grocery store, they are all there. When I go to the hospital to participate in Palliative consults with families, all of those women are with me. And when I sit at night and watch TV with my husband Greg, I am all of those things. I am not active in being all of those things but they are all part of who I am and I cannot separate them. I remember once, the story of a friend who was visiting someone in the hospital as a chaplain. Introducing herself as such she was promptly asked to leave. She then said, “Tell you what. I'll step back out the door and leave my chaplain hat out there in the hall. Would it be alright then, if I just came in for a visit?” And the answer was “Yes”. So she went through the motions with exaggerated detail and had a lovely interaction with the patient.

She was still a chaplain. But that word had gotten in the way of being seen as a concerned listener, someone with enough time on her hands to sit and chat with someone she had never met but who was in a situation that might be foreign for reasons that are usually medically driven and therefore, potentially, frightening.

We all have many facets of who we are. We all have a story. Everyone. It's one of the threads that connects us as a human race. Remembering that about one another, is important. And can help in us maintaining a sense of balance. 

I titled today's offering as

"Creating Balance in Times of Extended and Extreme Life Challenges” because in our lives that is our work now. 

I have talked about 9/11 kicking off, what some, have come to feel, was the beginning of challenges that have become what I call the extreme and extended life challenges we are navigating today.

It is no surprise, that so many people are struggling. We lost our innocence, as a country, the day the towers fell. We can never again pretend that we are immune to attack.

Then, less than 2 decades later, we endured an unrecognizable excuse for a President in the White House. That particular blow to our sense of safety and greatness continues to haunt our country in a variety of ways. Then in 2020 the entire planet is assaulted with a Pandemic. 

And now, we are straddling the razor edge of a possible Third World War. High centered at a tipping point. If we then take into consideration our individual traumas, losses, tragedies, community challenges, cultural and economic challenges, maintaining any sense of balance at all seems almost impossible. It's almost too much to ask that we concern ourselves with life balance. But, not concerning ourselves with it would be like throwing in the towel. And that is not who we are. 

I believe that most of us know when our lives are 'out of balance'. And if we don't know, if we fail to pay attention to those required acts of self care, our bodies will usually tell us. A wise woman once said, “Listen to the wisdom of the body”. Maybe there is a deeper reason for us to have these particular Earth suits, something that goes far beyond learning to roll and sit and walk. 

When I first moved to Colorado, over 35 years ago, I met a woman who has remained a dear friend. A massage therapist at that time, she had come to our home because I had thrown my back into such a state of spasm and pain, I was incapable of doing the things that I needed, or thought I needed, to be capable of doing. In addition to her skilled hands, her herbal wisdom and her kindness she also suggested that I pay very close attention to where my feet are when I am standing. She was suggesting, that I pay attention to being balanced in my weight distribution because it would help my back relax and heal. But I now believe, that she was actually suggesting so much more than just that. She is the same friend who, when I was having a medically driven hysterectomy 25 years later, asked me “What will you fill that space with?”

Balance is critical. We learn balance through imbalance and the sense of instability that so many feel right now. So, maybe it really is as simple as starting with asking ourselves, where are my feet? Am I standing grounded and solid and even? 

Or, where is my seat? Can I even feel my butt in the chair? Do I even know where I am?

And then, slowing down and heeding breath.....the taking in, of life giving essence and the release, in turn, of life giving essence. 

And in that slowing down, to ask ourselves where is Spirit in my life? How does what I believe, shape who I am? How does what I believe in help keep me balanced? And all I can tell you about that, is that 100 times a day, it is what I believe in that I can't see or touch that allows me to stay standing. It is the thing that gives me ballast. It is the china packed in straw in the hull of the wooden ship in the stormy sea that keeps me from drowning.

How do we constantly re-calibrate to accommodate for the storm? We find our ballast. Know where to go when the imbalance gets too far off center and you need to re-group. Because we are living in extreme and extended life challenging times and we are capable of doing it well. 

Times of challenge, whether momentary or extended, are always times of opportunity. We can learn to listen to the wisdom of these times like we learn to listen to the wisdom of our bodies. For some, it will be like learning a new language, perhaps one that sounds foreign. For others it will be like meeting an old friend. Perspective is crucial, and sometimes it is the only thing that needs to change. We can change our way of looking at the world and we can change our way of looking at challenges. It will not make them other than they are, but it could make them feel less daunting and less hopeless.