I’m excited tomorrow to start a series of devotional thoughts on Advent. I’ll be sharing hymn lyrics, poetry, quotes, Scripture and possibly a random thought or two to help me focus on the coming of Christmas. I hope you’ll join me in the contemplation.
Today I’m thinking about the balance required to walk between the troubles of life and the peace that God offers.
There is a picture book that comes to mind as I write … The Man Who Walked Between the Towers by Mordicai Gerstein.
“Once there were two towers side by side. They were each a quarter of a mile high… The tallest buildings in New York City.” The author casts the French aerialist and street performer as the hero: “A young man saw them rise into the sky…. He loved to walk and dance on a rope he tied between two trees.” As the man makes his way across the rope from one tree to the other, the towers loom in the background. When Philippe gazes at the twin buildings, he looks “not at the towers but at the space between them…. What a wonderful place to stretch a rope; a wire on which to walk.”
This poem by May Sarton likens the light walk across the tight rope to our finding balance in our lives … the light walk of grace and peace in the midst of travail.
I love how she points out that we can’t know the full weight that others bear … and for that reason we need to extend grace to one another. Someone in your sphere of influence today may be feeling private burdens that weigh heavily and affect their walk across the tightrope of life!
Not to rebel against what pulls us down,
~ May Sarton
The private burden each of us could name
That weigh heavily in the blood and bone
So that we stumble, clumsy half the time
Unable to love well or love at all!
Who knows the full weight that another bears,
What obscure densities sustains alone,
To burst fearfully through what self-locked doors?
So heavy is our walk with what we feel,
And cannot tell, and cannot ever tell.
Oh, to have the lightness, the savoir faire
Of a tightrope walker, his quicksilver tread
As he runs softly over the taut steel thread;
Sharp as a knife blade cutting walls of air,
He’s pitted against weights we cannot see,
All tension balanced, though we see him only
A rapture of grace and skill, focused and lonely.
Is it a question of discipline or grace?
The steel trap of the will or some slight shift
Within an opened consciousness?
The tightrope walker juggles weights, to lift
Himself up on the stress, and, airy master
Of his own loss, he springs from heaviness.
But we, stumbling our way, how learn such poise,
The perfect balance of all griefs and joys?
Burdened by love, how learn the light release
That, out of stress, can somersault to peace?
Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
James 1:2 – 4
