InnerBliss: Knowing your Balance

A church near the Columbus Arts Festival.

Listening to: Pop influenced medieval chant -- the structure of chant is soothing.

Today's Bliss Formula: Where are my sparkling red shoes? Cause there's no place like home.

Let me seek, then, the gift of silence, and poverty,
and solitude, where everything I touch
is turned into a prayer: where the sky is my prayer,
the birds are my prayer, the wind in the trees is my prayer,
for God is all in all.

Thomas Merton. Thoughts in Solitude

For three days now, we've had a car so that we could go visit my niece in Columbus. She's almost eight and she's funny and sweet and wonderful and beautiful -- of course.

But we barely know each other. Thanks to this culture that separates families -- for things like jobs and possessions. There simply is no making up for not living within a mile or two of one another. That day to day contact in small, frequent doses cannot be made up for in intense, all-at-once sorts of visits. Even if you visit often, it's not the same as being close enough for an impromptu picnic or dinner or just time at the lake.

It's not the same because it's completely out of balance. It starts and ends with drives on dangerous roads that are boring and overstimulating at the same time. (I will write more tomorrow about driving and how, yes, it's horrible for this planet but it is so horrible for our bodies and minds -- something we don't even think about.)

It's out of balance because it throws people out of their normal routines -- and people need these routines. And we should be part of each other's routines -- not outside of them. By the time I get to my niece's house, I'm already tired, so she'll never know what I'm really like because she gets this worn out version.

My niece will never live near me. That is a fact. So she will grow up to know strangers better than any family. She will grow up yet another generation of humans disconnected, always on the run to the next better place, the next better job, never thinking that what she has is enough.

No real roots. And roots matter. As I have mentioned here before, if you have a tap root, as a tree, you can withstand any storms. If you have shallow roots, a small storm can blow you over.

I am thinking about all of this, because I do every time we go for a visit, and because on our way there and back, a Great Blue Heron kept flying over us. We felt he was our traveling companion, and as a totem animal, he has much to say about these very same issues.

Herons are of water and land, earth and sky. They stand on one leg. They are all about balance and inner knowing.

So I felt this heron was reminding me that I know what my balance is and I must live it. That I cannot deny or ignore my need for balance out of some desire to do what people expect.

Herons are independent in this way. They are not afraid to be different, so why are we, why am I? We are so concerned about not judging, about being politically correct, about not offending.

But guess what? There are choices being made in this world that stink -- they stink for the individual and the community at large. And I think it's time that those of us who can see this, stop hiding it from those who can't.

We are wasteful and greedy and we make choices based on some false need for security rather than making choices out of love.

We claim Christianity or Hinduism and we claim to be followers of Christ or Buddha or whomever, and yet none of those people would live like us. None of those people would make the choices so many of us are making every single day. Like working for money instead of joy; like being so busy that our spiritual lives get a couple of hours a month.

Our culture is sick and in need of some serious care.

So, we will return that car in a couple of hours. And we've decided no more ten times a year rentals but instead a maximum of three.

And this evening, I'm going to go sit in my neighbors' backyard. I'll walk over in my bare feet so I can feel my roots sinking back into this earth. And this weekend, this little family that we have right around us will perhaps gather around a fire and share stories and bask in the love that is the routine of each other.

How are you helping to cure this sickness? Are you suffering from any symptoms that you could work on yourself?