When you are facing a juncture in your life, a period of transition, or an important decision, I wonder.…
Do you search for an answer by weighing out all your choices in a reasoned, rational way? Or do you try to feel your way through it, or find a gut sense of rightness? Do you imagine that the universe, or a divine presence, has guidance to offer you about your path, and that you are being called toward one direction or another because of your particular spiritual work or destiny in a larger universal unfolding? Or do you feel that we are all quite on our own in an indifferent universe, and that all things in this life unfold by some combination of human action and random chance?
In the many traditions of discernment and spiritually grounded decision-making, there are perhaps two very broad categories:
One perspective is that we make meaning as we walk along. There is no “larger plan,” there is no “God’s will for our life,” there is no “where I’m supposed to be or what I’m supposed to be doing in the universal scheme of things.” There is only choice: the choices we make, their consequences for our lives and relationships, what they say about us, and to what extent they enable us to live to the fullest of our capacity. This might be called an existentialist view, but it can be understood in spiritual language as well. In a passage from Michael Leunig’s little book of prayers called The Prayer Tree, he writes:
While we stumble in darkness
the heart makes our meaning,
And offers it into our life and creation,
That we may give meaning to life and creation;
For we only give meaning,
we do not find meaning,
The thing we can’t find is the thing we shall give
To make love complete, and to honor creation.
Another language of discernment comes from a tradition of theistic belief in which the seeker lives and moves within a divine field or ground of being. The universe is expressing and unfolding a divine intention, what some call the divine will, what others call the divine longing, and we are a part of its action, its expression and its fulfillment. In this view each person’s life has a purpose within that larger unfolding, and it is possible for the individual to experience the divine as communicative, responsive, and leading. This is a mystical understanding of the universe and our place in it.
I am personally sympathetic to both views and have experienced my path in both ways. I have enough personal experience of strange synchronicities and urgent intuitions to have led me to sense that reality is intelligent, responsive and very mysterious. At the same time, I think we build our lives by what we choose, moment to moment, day for day, and I believe that we are profoundly responsible for all that we create by our choices.
There have been passages in my own life when I longed for, prayed for, begged for guidance from God or from my own deeper wisdom, and was met by deafening silence and a deep sense of being alone with very difficult choices, a small boat with short oars in a big sea.
There have been other times when I have felt as if the wind caught my sails and moved me with great energy in a direction that felt right in every way, an undeniable leading or intuition that I am called to do a particular thing. Auspicious conditions seemed to conspire to assist me, and all that followed that choice and flowed from it over time confirmed the rightness of the decision.
Perhaps there is also an in-between ground in which we seek, through intuition and feeling and the guiding wisdom of a larger community to which we belong, a path that is both personally life affirming and good for the whole. I do not think we need to frame this as divine guidance, but it does call upon some larger sense of self, or larger sense of belonging than merely following one’s personal desires or reasoning.
It is possible to imagine that guidance comes as a kind of directive about a particular choice. What should I do? Should I do this particular thing or that particular thing? It is as if one were at a crossroads, facing four possible options, and one thinks, what is the right thing to do? What is the right step to take?
Many of us have GPS’s in our cars now—global positioning systems—that interface satellites with maps to locate where we are and how to get from where we are to where we are trying to get. In a clear, pleasant, mechanical voice it talks to you, saying things like,“Left turn approaching, 200 feet.” Or, when you take a wrong turn, it says, “Recalculating route,” and sets you right back on track. And when you get to your destination, it says, very satisfyingly, “You have arrived.”
What could be clearer? One might imagine spiritual guidance working something akin to this. One would get guidance about a particular choice or where one should go. There are right turns and wrong turns; there is a particular destination, and there is a particular route there.
While it’s true that that one can get a very strong intuition to do something or not to do something in particular, I’m coming to believe that the compass is a much more apt metaphor for the way intuition and inner guidance work. The compass needle doesn’t point southwest to indicate that you should turn southwest and then switch to due south when that’s the better way to go.
The compass simply shows you in what direction lies the earth’s North Pole. The point of the needle is drawn toward the north because it feels a magnetic attraction to north. That’s all the compass does for you. North is the only thing it reveals. What you do in relation to that knowledge is up to you. You can move directly toward it, you can turn in the opposite direction and walk south; you can keep north in the corner of your eye as you move in an easterly direction. You can hike upstream along a winding creek bed that meanders first this way and then that, but always moves generally in a northerly direction.
If we were to understand “north” as a spiritual metaphor, what does north signify? And if the compass’s needle is also a spiritual metaphor, what is it in us that is drawn to the north?
Bring to your mind a time when you felt spiritually grounded, when you felt that your actions flowed from a sense of being at home in yourself, being at one with your best self and your truest values. Can you play a scene out in your imagination, a scene in which you are spiritually centered? What happens to your breathing as you remember or imagine this? How do you feel in your body? In the scene in your imagination, what is the quality of your interaction with others? What’s the feeling in the room? What emerges from your choices or your interactions?
This might begin to give you a sense of your “true north.” The question may not be, “Should I choose A, or B or C,” but rather, “What happens when I move and speak and consider the situation from a place of my deepest spiritual centeredness?” Another good question is: “What kinds of choices enable me to stay more spiritually centered, more attuned to my true north?”
A GPS enables us to not have to think. We are simply told what to do. We do not need to be aware of where we are, or how to get where we want to go. A compass places greater responsibility for awareness and choice in our hands.
We may think of discernment as all about making the important decisions in life—changing jobs, having a child, getting married or ending a relationship, etc. But the path of discernment is more about developing an awareness of our inner sense of truth, an inner feeling of rightness or wholeness, a capacity to sense our deeper yeses and our deeper nos. This is the compass needle within us.
As we develop an awareness of what greater or lesser well-being feels like, as we learn to distinguish when we are moving toward or away from that well-being, we develop a foundation for truer choices. We find north by attuning to a sense of sacredness or wholeness—within both ourselves and others. When we lose that attunement, or feel cut off from it, when we can’t sense in which direction our wholeness lies, the choices we make may not be informed by what is best for ourselves or others.
I began this service with these words: “Let silence enter your house that you may hear, for within your heart speaks: not with deceit, but with spiritual truths to guide you upon the paths of peace.”
Let silence enter your house that you may hear. This is perhaps the most difficult aspect of discernment, this attuning to a different kind of listening, to oneself, to others, and to the dynamics of the moment.
For many spiritual traditions East and West, silence, contemplative activities, or singing or chanting are a way to still the internal activity and noise of the body mind enough to make room for a different kind of awareness, a different kind of listening, a more intuitive way to approach a decision.
In her book, Joy in Divine Wisdom, Marva Dawn looks into the tools of discernment in many cultures. She discovers that in China, for example, calligraphy is an important contemplative tool that helps create a foundation for clarity in decision-making. It slows a person down, the breathing becomes smoother, movements more fluid. The method of producing a Chinese character with brush and ink is very deliberate, step-by-step, and unhurried. The calligrapher seeks balance, beauty, and ease. These are all qualities of awareness that one would hope to bring into the process of discernment.
In some cultures, rituals of fasting or purification or of making offerings are another way to set aside both the noise and demands of the world and the noise and demands of the ego, so that an individual or a community can become available for a higher or deeper wisdom.
I mention these things because I think this kind of contemplative approach is not something that comes particularly easy to us. We’re shaped largely by a western secular culture that places a heavy emphasis on logic, debate, and persuasive argument. Fear mongering and enticements also come into play: We are led to believe that “If we choose this way, a terrible thing will happen. If we chose that way, we will get something we want.”
As individuals, we’ve all had the experience of facing a difficult situation or a life juncture and we’ve struggled to figure out what to do by way of mental machinations and projections about the outcome. Our minds succumb to a churning, grasping restlessness when we’re anxious. The arguments about which course to take may be internal and silent to any observer, but there is still a raging argument going on within. It’s very difficult to find north when one is in this state. Likewise, we’ve all experienced group decisions taking place in a stressful or pressured environment, decisions that are rushed, or bullied out of people, or that emerge from fear or fantasy.
In one of the readings we heard earlier, author Danny Swicegood wrote about how the vision of a path made of tiny moons in the frost profoundly stirred his soul. In a sense he felt it call him into the woods, call him into a sense of awe and mystery, and it gave him a metaphor for his journey toward an enlightened life. Sometimes finding north is deeply intuitive and personal. We know it when we feel it, but we can’t easily put into words.
The other reading we heard, by Shawn Copeland, tells of another, very different process—the practice of consciously, intentionally saying yes or saying no to what comes toward us. Our lives are built one choice at a time, whether we make those choices intentionally or not. Consciously saying no to one thing enables you to say yes to something else. These choices, well made, enable us to make our way toward a life more abundant.
In his book, The Power of the Positive No, William Ury provides tools for uncovering the deeper yes that empowers us to say no when we need to. Coming to an impassioned and informed yes is more likely to make everyone happier than just learning how to say no.
These kinds of discernments are deeply important for us here at Theodore Parker Church. If there’s anything we ought to be doing, it’s helping one another uncover the values and the way of life that we most deeply want to say yes to. We want to help one another identify our spiritual and ethical true north, and orient our living in relation to that—for ourselves individually, as families, and as a community.
For this community to exist, we also need everyone to support the work of the church in various ways. But that work can sometimes feels tedious or can bring a sense of burden and stress to people’s lives. Many of us have found ourselves at some point questioning: “How it is that I came to church to find spiritual wholeness and meaningful community, and ended up with a job that leaves me feeling drained and isolated?”
In the reading, Shawn Copeland says: “Some painful event or demand for decision jolts us. We look up and find ourselves on a path that mocks our deepest longing. A road to happiness has suddenly taken a treacherous curve. Then it is no longer possible to merely drift along.”
When this happens, we may find ourselves compelled to say no. And yet, when we do this, abandoning a project and our friends with the burden we’ve been carrying, that may not feel particularly good either. I’ve seen many people struggle alone with very painful decisions about saying no to others. It can lead that person to retreat from community and turn away from the promise that the church originally offered.
I wonder, when one among us has come to a place of distress because the responsibility that he or she is carrying has become too heavy or lonely and no longer brings joy or meaning, I wonder if this is a time to engage in a discernment together, rather than leave that person to struggle with a decision alone. That individual’s distress may not be his or her individual problem. It may be a symptom of a larger imbalance that a larger circle of people should feel concerned about and accountable to—perhaps even the community as a whole.
We have to ask not only the question, “Who am I?” but also, “Whose am I?” A friend once shared with me this truth: “Discernment is personal, but not private.” We are not entirely free agents, making our decisions in a vacuum. We belong to a community of others, and a community of life. At best, our capacity to attune to the sacred dimension, to the quality of wholeness, and to an experience of spiritual groundedness places us in touch not only with our inner true north, but also in touch with a shared north toward which the larger community of life is longing and evolving.
“For within your heart speaks: not with deceit, but with spiritual truths to guide you upon the paths of peace.”
May it be so.