The nearly even duration of light and darkness also reminds us to live in balance, bearing in mind that balance is always a dynamic quality. You experience this when you stand on a balance beam: Your muscles constantly make micro-adjustments to keep you standing although you may appear to be still. 

Mary Luke Tobin, in Apostle of Peace (edited by John Dear), puts it this way: "The life of the believing human being is a sort of high wire act in which one goes forward unsteadily, but goes forward, trying out a balance which can only be sustained if life is in movement; a balance between life within and life without; a balance between looking within and measuring the danger and the height from the ground; a balance between the distance to be covered and the distance covered, and going on."

The Equinox gives us one more interesting reminder. A few natural phenomena keep the periods of light and dark from being exactly equal all over the world. The sun's rays curve over the horizon, for instance, and this bending of light allows you to see the sun before it actually emerges and after it has actually bowed beneath the horizon. Why not let these slight discrepancies remind us not to make our formulas about life too rigid? There's too much wonder, mystery, and nuance for that, as a single russet maple leaf whimsically streaked with gold could tell you.