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Rector's Letter November 2007 Dear Friends, How well balanced are you? Balance is one of those things we take for granted until we lose it. Falling over is all very well when you’re a child, but a promise ‘to kiss it better’ is not so helpful in adult life. It’s often the fear of having made a fool of oneself that is upsetting as much as the actual harm done. I’ve always thought of myself as having a reasonable sense of balance. I’m not quite sure why I have this thought. I’ve done a fair bit of cycling but when I think about it, a fair bit of falling off as well. I misjudged a kerb in Germany and collided with a motorbike; I tried to go down a hill and round a corner without applying the brakes, not once, but twice – different hills, different corners. On the first occasion I skidded off on gravel the road repairers had inconsiderately spread over the road, and on the second hit a large hole, with a similar outcome. I was not a child on either of these occasions. I will not go into any details of my horse riding, but needless to say I hit the ground reasonably regularly, and again, I was old enough to have more sense. Enough of physical balance; what about mental balance? As with physical balance, it can be a case of we have it or we don’t. But there are steps we can take to help maintain our balance. I find I get unbalanced when I’m tired. I’m not so even- tempered when I’m hungry, either, but tiredness is the thing that really pushes me over the edge. My boys still tease me with the fact that whenever something was wrong, emotionally or physically, my stock response was always, ‘You’re tired, go to bed. It’ll be better in the morning’. Often it was, though, as they’re quick to point out, it doesn’t do much for a broken leg or a broken heart. There again, tiredness is really incapacitating – neither one’s body nor one’s brain works properly when we’re tired. It always surprises me that firms that seem to expect employees to work long hours don’t understand that the more exhausted their workers are, the less efficient they are. Sleep deprivation is after all used as a very effective and unpleasant form of torture. Another way to keep one’s life in balance is to laugh – long and often. When we can stop taking ourselves too seriously and laugh at ourselves, we are much more able to keep things in perspective. It always surprises me how cheery and quick to laugh most undertakers are. With my job I share so many joyful occasions with people, but they’re always there in the sad ones. Perhaps it is the case that when folk find themselves in impossible situations they often cope with laughter. Soldiers can miss warfare when they leave the army because they miss the camaraderie they enjoyed. Perhaps the Church would be better if it learnt not to be so pompous. The fuss over sexuality seems out of all proportion to the really serious issues confronting the world. Other sexual issues are far more serious than the one issue focused on – ignorance, promiscuity, exploitation, degradation, lack of respect, spread of disease, the list goes on. We need to consider issues around the current jargon ‘work/life balance’. It is vital in our fast-moving world that we don’t wear ourselves out, that we give ourselves permission to rest and to laugh. But we also need to keep our spiritual lives in balance. Time for God will make us much more ‘whole’, much more in balance. When I get ‘unbalanced’ I contemplate Jesus and how he coped with all the pressures and demands upon him. Somehow he managed to move from one event to another, from one person to another, teaching, praying, travelling, yet somehow always in control, or rather in God’s control. The somewhat clichéd expression ‘let go and let God’ is as good a piece of advice on how to live a balanced life as you’ll find. Janice
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