We often come across people who seem unbalanced
…they are sometimes too heavenly minded to be of any earthly use or
…too earthly minded to be of any heavenly use
Anyone who has watched the movie, or seen actual footage, of Philippe Petit walking on a tight rope between the twin towers in New York, has seen extreme balance
On August 7th, 1974 at 6:00 am in the morning, using a 25-foot long balancing pole, Petit stepped off the south tower onto a wire 110 stories above the streets of New York City. With “extreme fear, and great joy and pride,” he crossed to the north tower and sat down on the corner of the building. Dream accomplished. Then the south tower beckoned to him. In a 45-minute period, while a huge crowd gathered below, Petit made eight crossings on the 134-foot long wire. He sat, lay down, and danced on the wire before exiting into the arms of policemen – I, for one, breathed a sigh of relief when he did.
This walk demonstrated extreme courage, extreme balance and the benefit of mass moment of inertia
This Blog is more about balance and mass moment of inertia than courage – however you will need courage to be balanced
Mass moment of inertia is a measure of an object’s (Petit’s and the pole’s) resistance to rotating (falling off the wire)
In equation form, the poles mass moment of inertia is:
Pole mass moment of inertia = 1/12 x pole mass x (pole length)2
If you have a balancing pole, you will be more stable the greater its mass and the greater its length but increasing the length of the pole (pole length2) has the biggest effect.
If you have ever tried to balance yourself on a beam you will have instinctively thrown out your arms to increase your mass moment of inertia
A few clues from Petit about extreme balance
Hold the pole in the middle
(This is obvious – but you need to make sure you have equal weight and length on each side)
Make the pole as long as you can handle
(this maximises your mass moment of inertia and hence stability)
I propose that balance in life doesn’t come from constraining the truth and trying to reign everything in to the bland middle
it comes from understanding and equally applying truths, that seem poles apart and in opposition to each other, to the extreme – the longer the pole the better – as long as you are holding it in the middle.
I think this is the key to an ‘abundant life’
Here is a list of some seemingly opposing truths:
Faith and Works
Justice and Mercy
Law and Grace
Life and Death
Servant Leadership
Predestination and Free Will
Christ’s divinity and His humanity
If you embrace each opposing element to the extreme, not diminishing one at the expense of the other, you will lead an extremely balanced (abundant) life
‘The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly’
The next few Blogs will look at what extreme balance looks like in practice