The Balance of Imbalance
(The Gospel of Matthew)
“Let the wheat and weed grow together”
I do yoga - on my own - in my bedroom. I follow a similarish sequence of flows, stretches, and positions – with a beginning, a middle, and an end – but every time is different. I very much use The Force - sometimes spending an age in ‘child’s pose’ or ‘happy baby’, and other days drawn to slowly standing on one leg in a strange tree-like balance. This week my ‘tree poses’ have been swaying an awful lot as I stare at the walls where my wife is working on some magnificently beautiful paintings. At first, I fought this force of imbalance, but then slowly started to incorporate it into my yoga flow. Indeed, my imbalanced-balances transmuted into something closer to a piece of contemporary dance choreography (more than one of those yoga poses you see next to motivational quotes). I was swaying my arms around like wild branches in the wind, and I felt a powerful surge of energy in the trunk of my body, and the roots beneath my feet. Yes, I stumbled to the left and fell to my right – but slowly I found an evolving equilibrium – delighted by the diameter of my sphere of spinning.
Yoga is a Sanskrit word for union. It is derived from the Sanskrit root 'Yuj', meaning 'to join' or 'to yoke' or 'to unite'. For me, it is a deeply helpful way of connecting with the divine presence within and without – it’s a powerful form of communion between mind, body, and soul. I spend a lot of my day inside my head – planning, articulating, explaining, defending, deliberating, justifying, organising, negotiating, sorting, mediating, and problem-solving. My very simple slow sort of yoga invites my breath and my body to take charge for a change! The positions, poses, flows and stretches give my restless mind something to do, but not everything to do – which is its insecure instinct. And as my mind surrenders its total omnipotence, with all the anxiety, stress, and bother involved in such controlling-work, the divine breath of spirit and the sacred body of Christ can turn my oily leads of heady living into a more whole and integrated force of inner gold. For me, yoga is a form of Holy Communion. No wonder it came from India, one of the Holiest places I have ever visited, with some of the richest symbols, practices, and stories of the divine dance of being.
And in this week’s ‘yoga practice’ I have felt my breath and body teaching my controlling-mind a few lessons about the paradoxical importance of imbalance in living a more balanced life. For me, there is a temptation to constantly fix things – in both senses of the word! Firstly, there is a tendency to experience things as problems to solve, partly because I do not like the experience of sitting with uncomfortable feelings, like anxiety, sadness, and anger. Secondly, I like rules for living – tempted by strong and stable postures that save me from states of vulnerability, rejection, and humiliation.
But one thing I have learnt over the years of ripping up weeds far too early (or, rather, what I thought were weeds) and burning whole fields down to start again (again) in the hope of some pure pasture for purposeful living, is: although there is some relief in such a purge (addictively so) it’s yield is not wheat, but only the rigid lines of an overly ploughed field! And yes, there is a certain satisfaction to the symmetry, clarity, and unclutteredness of such a patch of turf – but not the harvest of the divine life we are called to manifest.
‘Life in all its fullness.’
Perhaps it’s time to re-wild our lives with the impure, imbalanced, and inconsistency of an abundant meadow. Trial and error. Excess and deficiency. Emotion and reason. Tradition and mysticism. Imagination and facts. Pleasure and pain. Risk and prudence. Faith and doubt. Overcoming and surrender. East and West.
Tempting as it is to obsess over weeding – we risk destroying the fruitful life of growth, which is always seeking flourishment and fulfilment, if we could only just resist the allure of a pure, clean, and spotless way of life. Perhaps it is through allowing everything to belong that we can discern where, and what, the wheat is – the kingdom within.
Balance involves imbalance. If something is absolutely still, it is probably just dead – rigid, fixed, and stiff with rigor mortis. Balance involves movement, sway, falls, and fails. Like Goldilocks, tasting the three bears’ porridge, we cannot work out what is ‘just right’ without first trying what is ‘too cold’, or’ too hot’. Or as William Blake puts it in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell:
“The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom...You never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough.”
Amen