Equilibrium: Balancing the Umeres of Living

See Saw Margery Daw,
Johnny shall have a new master;
H shall earn but a penny a day,
Because he can't work any faster,

For reasons way beyond my understanding see saws have been on my mind for some time. It’s an ancient playground game, no doubt we’ve all played on them. It’s a game that you can’t play alone. You need someone else to play the game. It’s a game that is about moving constantly from one side to another. It’s a game in which equilibrium, perfect balance, is never reached. It’s a game of energy, weight and motion. When was the last time you played on one?

It is thought that the rhyme has its origins as a sawyer’s work song, as they would work in pairs and would therefore encourage the other to work faster, thus mimicking the see-saw. It is thought that “daw” in England at least was a lazy person, think of the “Daw Mouse”, always sleeping in Alice in Wonderland.

There seems to be a link between balance and movement. An engineer friend attempted to explain the importance of “dynamic stability” the other day. I am told that the instability enables more efficient response in jet engines. It is apparently the instability that allows the self correcting elements in the engine to self correct very quickly. Or at least this is how I remember the conversation.

I wonder if there is ever perfect balance, equilibrium in life? It seems to me that everything is always moving,perfect balance is never achieved. Perhaps it is better that way.

We have just passed the spring Equinox, the day when light and dark are in balance. This happens twice a year both in Autumn and Spring. Equinox means “equal night”

The March Equinox is known as the Vernal Equinox, meaning new, as it marks the beginning of spring. In the northern hemisphere as we tilt towards the sun the days grow longer and sunnier. The September Equinox is called the Autumn Equinox, marking the beginning of this season. In the southern hemisphere these seasons are at opposites ends of the year.

The next two Equinox’s will be deeply significant for myself and my family. Next September one of my sisters, our Liz, is going to marry her partner Howard Hughes, they have been together for twenty odd years and at Christmas she finally agreed to marry him. I will be conducting a blessing for them after their marriage ceremony back home in Yorkshire. Also on the next Vernal Equinix I will be marrying Sue. I kind if like the symmetry of the two events. Something beautifully balanced in it all.

Now it is said that there are magical properties to the Equinox. Many stories, in a variety cultures, speak of this. One such comes from China. Can you guess what it might be?

Well according to Chinese legend, for an hour before and after the Equinox on Li Chun (the day when Spring Begins), it becomes possible to balance things that otherwise we would not be able to do. On this day it is said that for a short time you can even balance an egg, due to gravity balancing itself. Now apparently this mythos received a great deal of publicity in the 1940’s, even Einstein commented on it. It is said that in the city of Chongqing many such egg standings took place around this time. Now it seems that this wasn’t just a trick, an illusion. The truth is with the right egg on the right surface you can stand an egg on its end on any day of the year.

I was thinking of this story as I woke up on Tuesday morning. Later that day I was talking with friends when one of them began to talk about the danger of catastrophic thinking. Then Sue began to tell the story of “Chicken Lickin”. Anyhow people began to look it up on their phones and recite different versions, there are many. It is sometimes called “Chicken Little” and also “Henny Penny”. As I heard and remembered the story I thought about how ideas and thoughts can spread quickly, particularly fear based ones. I reflected on recent news events. We live in ever more troubling times. Negativity does seem to spread so quickly. We seem to be living in ever more extreme times. I hear so many cries of "The sky is falling"  I thought about how so much of our public discourse is running at the extremes and how there is so little balance in our living these days. Where is the balance?

Maybe we need to find a new kind of equinox, perhaps this is what needs to be given birth to this Spring time. That would be the perfect Easter egg when the day of re-birth, of new beginnings comes.

Of course balance in life is something that is hard to achieve. I suspect it isn’t a constant, static, state of being. We live more like a seesaw constantly moving from one end to the other.

It seems to me that this time of celestial and seasonal balance is a perfect one to check out the balance in our own lives. Where are the extremes in our lives that need balancing out? How are our “umeres”, as the ancient physicians use to call them, are all four in balance? How is your health, your physical, your emotional, your mental and your spiritual health? These four could well be our present day “umeres”, as opposed to those four types of fluids that the ancients use to believe were our bodily "umeres".

A balanced life is considered a good life. We are told that we need to balance the books, in the home and in the community. The treasurer at at chapel has to ensure that they are balanced too. A balanced diet is vital to healthy living. Power needs to be balanced in the public sphere, too much power in any individual or even groups hand is dangerous. Balance is vital to performing physical activities. Most athletes are admired for their balance as much as for their strength and speed.

Balance is seen as vital by virtually all spiritual and philosophical traditions, extremes in any sense lead to danger and destruction. Aristotle proposed that the key to authentic happiness and not mere momentary satisfaction or pleasure arose from living a life of “Virtue” and that this could be achieved by the “Doctrine of the Golden Mean”, by living a life centred on a sort of dampened equilibrium. That virtue lays in avoiding excess. He saw courage as lying somewhere between cowardice and recklessness.

One of the great Greek myths illustrates this perfectly. Icarus was advised by Daedalus to fly somewhere between the sun and the sea, but he flew too close to the sun. Centuries later didn’t Goldilocks reject the porridge that was too hot and too cold for the one that was just right, she chose the middle way, thus following the virtuous life.

Now please don’t get me wrong I am not suggesting that we never rock the boat and must always live in the middle of everything. Remember balance is not a static thing. It is important to keep on stirring the porridge and to act out whatever our faith in life is. The key is to serve life and the harmony of all life in my view. The importance is to live humbly and to avoid the dangers of hubris that caused Icarus to burn and fall. We are here to fly, of course we are, just not too close to the sun.

The key to living in balance and harmony is about relationship with life, with each other, with ourselves and with God, another four modern day “Umeres” if you like.

Isn’t this what life is built upon, our relationships. I suspect above everything that this is the key. To ensure that our lives are in balance in these four aspects of our lives. That our relationship “Umeres” are inbalance. So how are your relationship “Umeres”? Are they imbalanced?

Perhaps that is something to check, in this season of balance. How are you in relation to your inner self, the people you share your life with, life itself and your God, however you understand God?

Maybe that is something you could reflect on in the coming weeks.

I’m going to end this little "blogspot" with a blessing “For Equilibrium” by John O’Donohue

“For Equilibrium”, a Blessing by John O’Donohue:

Like the joy of the sea coming home to shore,
May the relief of laughter rinse through your soul.

As the wind loves to call things to dance,
May your gravity be lightened by grace.

Like the dignity of moonlight restoring the earth,
May your thoughts incline with reverence and respect.

As water takes whatever shape it is in,
So free may you be about who you become.

As silence smiles on the other side of what's said,
May your sense of irony bring perspective.

As time remains free of all that it frames,
May your mind stay clear of all it names.

May your prayer of listening deepen enough
to hear in the depths the laughter of god.”