Balance is LeirosLiving Abundantly amidst Our Many Vocations

What we Hope for …

Understand the problematics of balance in pursuit of a theological vocation

that claims life is abundant.

Recognize our own implicit and explicit assumptions, values, and

expectations for living an abundant life? Ask, “what kinds of choices are we

already making to support or contradict our assumptions, values, and

expectations? How do we practice full human agency and make our values

about life explicit to our colleagues, students, and deans/administrators (and

ourselves)?”

Recognize that abundant life invites celebration amidst the multiplicity of

vocations, amidst the vulnerability, and even amidst the suffering.

Enter a reflective time to understand one’s own failures and frustrations in

balance (lay them down) and begin to enter an understanding and

engagement of life toward its abundance.

Oh mind you carry on your back

Your actions like a heavy sack.

No wonder that your shoulders ache

Another strain's enough to break

Your neck

So drop this stupid load.

This is the last stop on the road

where you can find rest

Stay, be Loves guest.

~Kabir

Balance

equally distributing separate entities

against each other as to allow all to

remain upright and steady.

Balance assumes conflict

#against

assumes isolated entities (work-

life)

assumes YOU are the primary

and only agent (loneliness)

assumes we have the control to

keep all things upright and

steady.

Balance

David WhyteThe Three Marriages:

Reimagining Work, Self, and

Relationship

“People find it hard to balance work with

family, family with self, because it might

not be a question of balance. Some other

dynamic is at play… something that does

not quantify different parts of life and

then set them against one another. We

are collectively exhausted because of

our inability to hold competing parts of

ourselves together….”

Balance

Balancing Life

Partner/Others

Academic Institution/Work

Self

Balance

Balancing Tenure

Teaching

Publishing

Service to the

Institution/Faith

Community

Balance

“We should stop thinking in

terms of work-life balance.

Work-life balance is a concept

that has us simply lashing

ourselves on the back and

working too hard in each of our

commitments. In the ensuing

exhaustion we ultimately give up

on one or more of them to gain

an easier life.”

–David Whyte

“The antidote to exhaustion is not rest but

wholeheartedness.”

invitation to wholeheartedness in

vocation

a marriage of marriages

Could you still live your life, pursue

your loves, in the midst of life’s

onslaught?

marriage of marriages

assumes mutual and multiple

agents - ask for help and be

one for whom others ask

assumes making the implicit

explicit - a conversation

assumes entry through “a

doorway of vulnerability”

assumes desire for abundant

life which is peace, joy,

happiness, and reconciliation

abundance

a marriage of marriages

“Marriage is where all of these difficult

revelations can consign us to

imprisonment or help us become

larger, more generous, more amusing,

more animated participants in the

human drama.”

letting go/being present

“It is a difficult discipline in all three marriages to let a

person go, continually, to see if that person comes

back, to let a work go so that it can be reimagined or

to let a fixed idea about ourselves evaporate and be

replaced by something more flexible.”