ISBC 32 - The Practice of Finding What’s Stable
Chapter 32 of Hope A User's Manual
Even amid the wobbliness, I believe in ha-makom, a great trustworthy stability undergirding all things, or what Paul Tillich called the Ground of All Being…An early name for God is “the Place.” React to this image. What does it open up for you? If your belief system doesn’t include a supreme being, where do you find your grounding when you’re at your best?1
Let’s just get this out of the way. I am really uncomfortable posting this photo.
I have shared with my family many times that I like my own private exercise times in our basement and that I will probably say no every time anyone asks if I want to join them for a group yoga class. No thank you. I’m happy to just put in my earbuds and disappear into my own happy little exercise world. But when MaryAnn was writing and sharing about wobbliness, I kept thinking of how I have come to learn that I generally have very good balance and am pretty stable (I think) most of the time. Hence, the willingness to share this photo.. I actually did most of a sermon a few years ago in this yoga pose, called Standing Tree. I didn’t have my hands upraised like in this but I was standing on one leg.
That was around the same time I shared a post about my yoga practice and three bits of wisdom that one of the yoga instructors I follow shares. Whenever we come to a balance post, Jessica often shares these three things:
Ground yourself with your standing big toe
Fix your gaze on a point that’s not moving
The little wobbles keep you there
In my sermon, each of these had a corollary for those who seek to follow the way of Jesus and I’ll include them as a footnote here.2
Probably the biggest of these three things that I found myself growing into was the last one - the little wobbles keep you there. When I would see people with amazing balance (gymnasts, etc), it sure didn’t look like there were any wobbles and if there were, there would be point deductions or they’d start to fall over. Similarly in my early years of faith, the focus was on finding certainty and being able to have an answer for everything (Evidence that Demands a Verdict Volumes 1 and 2, I’m looking at you). I didn’t remember there being space for wobbles, only finding more and more certainty.
But like MaryAnn shares, moving with the waves on the paddle board or allowing some flexibility in a yoga pose or letting the questions in when challenges come, these are what allow us to stay above the waves. I find such great hope today in giving space for mystery and unknown to enter in. To go back to MaryAnn’s sharing about the paddleboard, I am visualizing God, the ground of all being (Tillich’s words), the ha-makom, moving with the waves and not against them. God isn’t plowing through the waves but instead moving with them as they rise and fall and so if we can allow those wobbles, we ride along as well.
That feels like hope to me. How do the wobbles keep you there?
Grace, Peace, Love, and Joy,
Ed
McKibben Dana, MaryAnn. Hope: A User's Manual (p. 142). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.
Ground ourselves in the things of God that stay strong no matter what (Isaiah 40:8)
Fix our eyes on Jesus (Mark 1 and Hebrews 12:2)
Allow the little wobbles to be there as we wrestle with the questions of faith. (Psalm 22 for example)
Yes!
I remember you talking about the "little wobblies" in that post and it made much sense to me, although my body is incapable of doing yoga in any form. This makes me think about elderly spirituality. Who guides those of us whose bodies are betraying us? Maybe just dealing with the insults of old age is enough to meditate about.