Balance or Rhythm by Lorilee Guenter

"By The Book" photo by Bruce Guenter

Balance is a myth created to keep me from embracing the rhythms of life . Ecclesiastes 3:1 opens with "there is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens." The list of opposites brings to mind the old playground teeter-totter. If the opposing individuals were similar weight, it was possible to get the teeter-totter to balance as a straight beam. More often the partners couldn't hold the balance due to weight differences. One partner would be pushed up while the other dropped down. The goal of a teeter-totter is to keep it in motion. The achievement of balance halted motion.

Instead of chasing balance, I'm working to create movement, and rhythm. Sometimes the movement is rapid, other times it is a languid motion that takes attention to recognize, like the slow movement through winter. We mark time through seasons, through months, weeks, and days. In some places it may seem like the entire range of weather happens at once. We hear the saying: All four seasons in one week, or one day," yet even during these times we're not experiencing January and July simultaneously. It is either January or it is July.

There's a time and a season for every activity. We are tearing down or we are building up (v.3); we are silent or we are speaking (v.7). If we talk strictly about balance, it lends itself to an absurd reference to ratios. If we speak 50% of the time we should be silent 50% of the time, just like January and July each have 31 days. They hold equal weight within the year. What happens when God calls us to speak up, or write, and we've already used up our 50% of speech for the week? What if a friend, neighbour, or acquaintance needs us to just listen instead of us interjecting our own thoughts. I recognize I've taken these on these to an extreme. No one expects us to count the minutes we speak versus those we are silent. No one tries to live January and July in alternating days. Instead I am learning to lean into a rhythm of seasons. With a rhythm I progress through alternating activity, emotion, responsibility, hopes, and dreams, each in their own time. I learn to give them the space they need. Sometimes I walk through them in a straight line. Sometimes, like with the weather, it seems like they all happen in a day. There is no prescribed timeline. There's movement. If the season of grief is heavy, like the larger teeter-totter partner, it may take extra time to get to the dancing (v.4). The encouragement in these verses is that the dancing will come. Seasons change, in life as with the weather.

As I walk through this life I have been given, I'm learning to recognize my rhythms. They may not be the same rhythm as what God has given you, but he is walking with both of us. Ecclesiastes 3:11a "he has made everything beautiful in its time." Everything is known by God. Everything has a season, even when I can't see it. In the middle of the tears I want laughter because I don't like to cry. I can take courage from the fact the tears won't last. They have their season. I'm thankful that God knows what we need each season, each activity, and each day.

My writing seasons, my organizing seasons, my gardening seasons, and my life seasons all have a rhythm. Sometimes I notice them and sometimes I don't. My life season is in transition. The girls are adults and now need a different type of energy and presence from me than they did while growing up. My writing, my hobbies, and my studies no longer need to occupy the margins of life. Whether in the margins or not, my writing has times of reflection and times of action. Sometimes I want to linger in reflection even when God is calling me to the action of putting words on the page. Sometimes I want to rush ahead. I continue to learn that whether I'm laughing or crying, reflecting or writing, God is in the season with me. He is leading me from shadow to light. No matter the season, I can be confident of His presence and His leading.

Lorilee Guenter enjoys gardening, reading and more. During the summer, her and her husband Bruce often hit the nearby trails. He carries a camera. She carries a sketchbook.

The Rhythm Came First by Joylene M. Bailey

 

  Image by Frauke Riether from Pixabay

~~~~~

Music is never far away from my mind. I usually wake up with a tune in my head. Sometimes it's a worship song we sang in church three Sundays ago. More often than not, it's a melody I've listened to in the past few days. Instrumental, of course, because that's what I listen to most.

Even when there's no music in my head, there's rhythm. Always rhythm. When I'm walking, when I'm sewing, when I'm baking, when I'm listening to the birds or the trees, even when I'm just breathing, I'm hearing rhythms.

So, that busy Christmas season six years ago, it wasn't unusual to have a rhythm bouncing around in my brain. But there was something special about this one.

Something tingly.

In light of the fact that I was extra busy preparing for the arrival of nine people, including two active toddlers, who would be staying for ten days, you'd think I wouldn't have time to take note of this particular rhythm. But, as I said, there was something special about this one. So, I paid attention.

Ideas started snowballing and my Christmas preparation time intensified. I'd be in the middle of making a bed or adding icing sugar to a recipe when an idea - a word or phrase - would hit, so I'd leave what I was doing to run up to my little study and write it down.

Something about this writing felt important, felt like it wasn't just me writing. It was a collaboration between Father and me, and it was so fun! Him giving ideas, me rushing up to my study to write them down before I forgot.

I wrote lists of words ending in ING, lists of familiar Christmas song phrases that met the DUM de DUM DUM DUM rhythm, all the while consulting with Father - is this the phrase, or is it that one? 

Over the course of three or four days the creativity flowed, and it truly felt like a collaboration. Like He and I were sharing ideas, and I was doing the work. I felt Him watching over my shoulder, MmmHmmm that sounds good. No, try something else there.

A week before Christmas, the poem was finished. I shared it that year as my December InScribe Writers Online post. (You can find it here)

Since then, I've often wondered what it was that made that particular time of writing special. Why did it feel so significantly collaborative?

I like to think that Father knew me well enough to understand that a rhythm would capture my attention. But then it was up to me to stop in my tracks and really listen. And I did. I listened while I worked; while I baked and cleaned and wrapped gifts. And I was willing to interrupt the task at hand (so unlike me) to do the writing work.

I also like to think that the work of the collaboration, and the result, delighted us both.

I don't know how Father God likes to capture your attention, but I've learned that it could be through something that's very every-day. It's then up to us to stop and really listen. 

For me, the rhythm came first. 

~~~~~

Joy is delighting in her new country home where she listens to music, rhythms, and her Father's voice, not necessarily in that order. Find more of her Joy-infused view of the world at her blog, Scraps of Joy.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

The Penny, The Pause, The Purpose by Marnie Pohlmann

The Penny

I like to reconcile my bank accounts. To the penny. Every month. I also like to keep lists. A list of deadlines. A list of articles I have submitted for publication. A list of what was accepted for publication. A list of published pieces.

I realize this talent for counting, checking, and balancing may be unusual for a creative soul, but I believe I am a better writer because I enjoy reports and math almost as much as words.
Balancing to the penny causes me to pay attention to detail, which helps in editing. Lists keep me on track toward a goal. Math itself provides the rhythm and flow of my words. Like music, poetry is based on the counting cadence of smooth transitions. Prose, too, needs tempo to move a story forward.

The base notes of putting words on paper are developing a rhythm in my life. Perhaps it holds a little reggae, or country, or even a soulful tune, which gathers volume as I hum along. While I count the cost of writing, I also list the rewards. Rewards like networking with other writer-souls, and communing with God in special writing times.

I am a writer. I don’t know at what point I need to say writing is my business. My financial balance sheet still shows I spend more on ink, conferences, and contests than I generate as income with my words. But I am making progress.

God has been training me for a long time – perhaps I am a slow learner, or perhaps it has all been for such a time as this. Over the years I have learned to run a home business, do my own taxes, speak in public, and now I am learning to share my writing. Through it all, I write. Because after all, there is no business of writing if there is no writing.

The Pause

Much like in writing, my penchant for math is helpful in my spiritual walk.

Today is the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. We remember how the body of Christ is enclosed in the tomb. The cross is empty. Yet the stone has not yet rolled away. So we pause. Today is the day of waiting.

For such a time as this, Jesus had counted the cost, and his life balanced the need for a perfect sacrifice so we could be set free of the consequences of sin. Today, in the waiting and the contemplation, I can count the cost of my belief. I can check the sin in my life to keep short accounts. I can balance my doing and my worship to become Christ-like in my walk.  I pause. Selah.

Christ died so I could be fully reconciled to God. To the penny. Always and forever.

The Purpose

“I’m Evelyn the Goat Lady,” she introduced herself when we came to pastor the small town church she attended. She wore a jaunty fedora-type hat and a big smile. She was a tough old bird, who had lived an adventurous life.

Evelyn showed us pictures of a beautiful younger self in a bathing suit, on a champion jumper horse, and by a bush plane. She had been striking, like a young Katherine Hepburn. In later years, she had unofficially taken in foster kids, teaching them to trust God for their needs. She was an independent, strong-willed, pioneering woman.

When we met her, she was raising goats, living off the land, and dying of cancer.  As we visited her at the farm, we found she was also writing a book, and was working with Trafford Publishing to have it printed. It was important to her to leave a message about how much God loved us, so she wrote a fiction tale, “A Glimpse Into Heaven: creation to the cross from Heaven’s point of view”. I had the privilege of reading her first draft, and perhaps buying the first print-on-demand copy after her death. I checked, and it can be found on Amazon.ca or the Trafford Publishing site.

Why do I tell you of Evelyn Yocum? Because even though she knew her time was limited, she wrote and published a book. Her goal was not to make money or build a business, but to share a message. Evelyn’s life and death reminds me the message is more important than the business. She inspires me to do the math, to remember my purpose.

The penny, the pause, the purpose – do the math.


Photos - teddy bear coins & cross - CCO Licence courtesy of Pixabay.com

Marnie blogs at Phosphorescent