Finding our balance

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
March 25, 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

We are trying to do challenging and long-term soul work, and it can be overwhelming. How do we find our balance again? (Intergenerational service)

Stand on one leg and see how long you can balance. Some people can do it for a long time, but you have to practice. When I was taking karate they used to make us practice kicking 100 kicks on each side. I used to be able to do it. I could do it again if I practice long enough. You have to pick one point on a wall to look at that. It helps a lot just look at one thing. Don’t Close Your Eyes. Another thing my teacher they said was that your thoughts have to be balanced if your body is going to balance. You look at one point and you try to make your mind quiet. One of the main things that makes our mind agitated is fear. Frank Herbert, in the famous book Dune said “fear is the mind-killer.”

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

– Frank Herbert, Dune

We’re afraid so many things. I put one of my fears up in FaceBook, an unfounded and unreasonable one. Others added theirs.

Afraid of looking dumb. Afraid ceiling fans would fall. Afraid of falling through the subway grates on city sidewalks. Afraid of going blind from the little light that flashes when you go through the toll booth. Spiders, bees. Getting hurt at school. Having an accident at school.

A lot of people, kids and grownups too are afraid of making mistakes. When we make mistakes, Miss a meeting or answer a question wrong or do something that loses you a friend, we lose our balance. We worry about it as we’re going to sleep at night. We think about it when we wake up in the morning. It makes your stomach hurt.

Some of the grownups and I want to tell you about a mistake we made.

Story of the Water Protectors video.

All of us have blind spots. We have good will, and we think we’re doing the right thing, but it’s easy to forget something. Even when you have four or five people working on the same thing it’s easy to forget something. Here’s what we have decided to do when we make a mistake. We are sorry. We grieve. We feel pain. We sit with that pain. We are sorry for the pain we’ve caused other people. We try to make it right if we can. We ask for forgiveness. We ask ourselves what we can learn from this. We ask the people we’ve hurt what we should learn from this. This is not to say we won’t make more mistakes.

I had a friend I was hanging out with some years ago who used a wheelchair to get around. She was fierce about being seen correctly and being treated well. She would not hesitate to tell people who made a mistake in the way they talked to her with, encouraging them to have more respect, to honor her as a whole person her and her chair. I told her I am being quiet with fear because I’m so scared of saying something wrong to you.

She said oh you will, and I will let you know, and then we’ll keep working together.

If we are too scared to make a mistake, we are scared to move in any way that we can. We are scared to roll ahead when you’re scared to walk ahead, we’re scared to stand up, we’re scared to try new things. We learn and we try to do challenging work. We have to balance care and courage. They are not opposites.

We must develop infrastructure in our souls to survive mistakes and not go into a spiral of shame. We cannot be fragile about making mistakes. We have to find a way to be open hearted and strong-hearted at the same time. This doesn’t mean we will not care when we make a mistake, it doesn’t mean we will not care about the pain; quite the opposite. It means we will take care of ourselves and each other so that we can mend after making a mistake, and we can do what we can to mend those hurt by our mistakes. And then keep working the struggle is always going to be with us. Because we struggle it doesn’t mean we’re doing something wrong. It means we’re doing hard work together.

Trauma is tricky, though. We get too intense about our work, we don’t take deep breaths, we lose our curiosity and start lecturing, we ride roughshod over people. We use our powers unwisely for a goal that seems good to us. There is an old wisdom story that addresses this.

“It was said in the old days that every year Thor made a circle around Middle-earth, beating back the enemies of order. Thor got older every year, and the circle occupied by gods and men grew smaller. The wisdom god, Woden, went out to the king of the trolls, got him in an armlock, and demanded to know of him how order might triumph over chaos.

“Give me your left eye,” said the king of the trolls, “and I’ll tell you.”

Without hesitation, Woden gave up his left eye. “Now tell me.”

The troll said, “The secret is, Watch with both eyes!”

How do you take care of yourself? How do you keep both your eyes? You stay present to the present moment. You understand that perfect order is not a possibility, that life is hard. You rest when you’re tired, you understand that the struggle continues, and if you see someone who is sinking down, you say – Are you okay? What can I do for you?

Song: All will be well.

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