by Rev. Eric Folkerth

“Do you remember, the 21st night of September?”

Well, yes… Yes, I do remember it!

Because in addition to the great Earth Wind and Fire song, it’s my birthday, it’s North Texas Giving Day, and on more years than not, part of the Fall Equinox. This day has always felt like a busy inflection point for the Fall.

Whatever the day means to you, I’ve been meditating today on the Equinox portion of today and on the spiritual principle of “Equanimity.”

The Equinox, of course, means that today is a day where day and night are roughly equivalent. There is as much light as there is darkness. Which leads me to meditate on the spiritual practice of Equanimity.

Equanimity means to try and live life without allowing either the great “highs” of life to trick us into believing that life will always be a bed of roses while, at the same time, also not allowing the “lows” of life to trick us into believing that any one life setback will mean total catastrophe.

Equanimity means that we take all things as they come to us. We take the good and bad. Of course, we wish for for there to be ease in our lives, and we all hope for a happy path to always open up in front of us. But we all know this isn’t always the case.

Life is always bringing us both joys and concerns, hopes and despairs. No life is ever devoid of both light and darkness.

For me, I tend to forget the good stuff and ruminate on the bad. The challenges of life stay with me far longer than the joys. This makes it incumbent on me to really focus on celebrating the wins of my my life, and of our world, and not just to ruminate on bad times.

There is no light without darkness.
There is no darkness without light.

One of the deep keys to everyday happiness is to remember that each of these will come to us all. Equanimity is the ability to trust and have faith that in God’s hands each will come to us —and that each is already with us— in every moment of our lives.

In the Gospel lesson for this Sunday, Jesus tells the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. (Matthew 20).

Jesus’ story posits that those who work in the vineyard all day grumble that they should be paid more than those who just worked a few hours.

This is instructive.

If we are focused on comparing ourselves to others, or even on achieving some interior goal we have for ourselves, we can judge our lives with great harshness.

But to the extent that we can focus on Equanimity, we can come to see what Jesus teaches about God’s nature in this parable: That God is generous to all God’s children with great equanimity.

Our challenge then is to embrace both the good and the bad of every given day, trust in the daily bread that God sends to us, and neither become overconfident when life seems to be going well or fearful when challenges arise.

On this Equinox day, I wish for you the Equanimity to embrace life as it comes to you.