The Elusive Search for Balance

As a pastoral counselor, I've spent a lot of time talking to younger couples and individuals about "balance" in life. Many of us have three balls we're trying to keep up in the air, it seems to me. Marriage. Parenting. Career. The trick in keeping these three balls in the air is that we only have two hands.The ball that usually gets dropped, particularly when the kids are still around, is "marriage." So we talk a lot about attentiveness to our spouse or partner, making room for intimacy, setting boundaries,etc.; all this in service of the quest for "balance" in life. It's a clever analogy (and not one I created), but I've begun to realize it's ultimately not very helpful.
The pursuit of balance in some ways pits different parts of ourselves against one another, places them in competition without integrating them. We need integration of these various parts of our lives rather than "balance." These various parts of ourselves should be invited into conversation with one another rather than into competition. How can my vocation enrich my marriage which enriches my parenting which makes me a more whole and satisfied professional, etc. Another analogy is to the members of the Trinity, Creator Redeemer, Sustainer, who are always in conversation with and in relation to one another. The Trinity isn't about "balance". It's about the integrity of individual roles within a relational flow.

I recently ran across a fine book that speaks to the want for integration of the different parts of ourselves and our lives. The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self, and Relationship by David Whyte. His thesis is that we are not just involved in a primary relationship with a significant other. We have each made secret vows to our work and unspoken vows to our continually evolving inner selves. How these three "marriages " interact with and inform each other will be key to our fierce want to live into our true selves. Deepening and enriching the conversation, the interplay, the dance among these three marriages is the work of a lifetime.

Whyte is a poet, retreat leader and corporate consultant who lives and works on Whidbey Island.
He has a profound Celtic spirituality that radiates from all his work. I've been reading this book with a young couple with whom I've been doing pre-marital counseling and it has been as illuminating for them as it has for them.

Here's a sample of Whyte's poetry:

Everything is Waiting for You

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

-- David Whyte
from Everything is Waiting for You
©2003 Many Rivers Press

I'd be interested in your thoughts about the integration of the various parts of ourselves and the role faith might play in that. also, if you would like to know more about David Whyte and his work, and I hope you will, here's a link to his website.

http://www.davidwhyte.com/home.html

Faithfully,

Lex