How do you balance daily tasks, the demands of other people, work, leisure, and looking after yourself?  This post draws on ancient wisdom to explore a way of answering this tricky question: how do you balance your being for a Lif4Gd?

“Mindfulness” is a popular word today but its roots go back hundreds and thousands of years. I am reminded of this whenever I go past Shrewsbury Abbey, local to me, founded nearly a thousand years ago.  There is a beautiful window portraying St. Benedict over the entrance, and Benedictine monks knew a lot about mindfulness.

Maintain

Equilibrium

.

As you balance

Your being

.

Though juggling

Balls of fire

.

Grateful

For those moments

.

Of tranquil

Transition

.

Gliding through

Blue skies of peace.

For me, life sometimes feels like “juggling balls of fire”; Lif4Gd requires though “blue skies of peace”. But how do we find them?

Benedictine monks balanced manual labour with times of meditation and prayer.  There were set times of “doing” and “being”.  There was a regular rhythm to each day, a deliberate intent to maintain equilibrium.  And of course they understood their life from a cosmic perspective.

I start every day with a time of silence.  It helps put life in perspective.  It creates a space for reading, thinking, prayer. 

How do you maintain equilibrium and balance in your life?

Some Questions to Ponder

1. Have you consciously created balance and equilibrium in your life somehow?  What did you do?  What could you do?
2. When you focus on “being” and not just “doing”, how do you understand that “being”?  What framework do you use to think about life?

Do leave a comment if this post has made you think. Lif4Gd was set up to be interactive, and enjoy hearing readers’ thoughts.

Best wishes,

Michael