In yesterday’s entry I coined a term that I want to play with a bit more… At least I think I coined a term; who knows maybe the word is used in neurology or something.
Orthobalance = the “right balance” of apparent opposites. It might include aspects of concepts like: tension, both/and, paradox, faith, contradiction and simultaneity.
Orthobalance would have to be constantly moving. Balance as it is often (though not exclusively to be sure) as the “scale” in Chemistry class or pictured as a kid in a playground standing on a teeter-totter keeping both ends off the ground and trying to keep it perfectly still. The point of standing on the teeter-totter is that the kid cannot keep it perfectly still. Walking is controlled falling; walking is orthobalance. Right-balance is relational interplay between alleged contradictions; is it endangered equilibrium.
Dancing – say a Waltz – is a working metaphor of orthobalance. Waltzing is two people moving as one; reading the subtle cues from one another; in concert with other dancers on the floor; in time with music; in an historic tradition of Waltz which is coming alive in very the process of Waltzing.
Robert Webber’s “ancient-future”, Leonard Sweet’s “swing”, Martin Luther’s “two kingdoms”, Soren Kierkegaard’s use of paradox, “Rahner’s rule”, David Tracy’s “Plurality and Ambiguity”, Catherine Mowry LaCugna’s “LaCugna Corollary”, John Damascene’s “perichoresis”, Georg Hegel’s “dialectic”, Pascal’s “Wager”, Plato’s “dualistic metaphysics” and so many others have given expression to apparent opposites in relationship. We cannot forget the inescapable concepts of good and evil, Yin and Yang, God and human, us and them, night and day, right and wrong, in and out, etc.
Even as I type this I see that Orthobalance is one of the primary categories of thought already. The “point” is not to craft the “right” form of balance, that would be absurd, rather the point would be to aid us in the ongoing process of balancing and living ever more fully into centrality of relationality. Though we often long to remove tension, relationality bids us to love it.
Does anyone know of a source that has explored the development or history of the idea of balance or deconstructed it?
Do you prefer “Orthopondera”? (pondera is Latin for balance or equilibrium).
Peace, dwight
