Discern Part 1

 

For the last few weeks, we have been exploring the spaces within us, around us, and between us.  We have prayerfully sought to pay attention to what is happening in our own skin, asking the question, What is it like to be you?  We can also ask, how do other people experience you?  That last question can be difficult to ask and even more difficult to hear the answer to!  This week, we will turn to how do we know what to do?  What is the next right step?  The fancy theological term for this is discernment.  Discernment is different than making a decision.  Our culture teaches and tells us that when we make a decision, we weigh the pros and cons, if the balance of the scale tips/tilts toward pros, do it!  Of course, sometimes our linear logic fails us, and we can end up doing something because it feels good or because we want to…and no one is the boss of us!  Emotions can present themselves as reasons and rationale that make complete sense to us.  How do you discern what to do, when to do it, and how to do it?  First and foremost, we start with a question. 

 

What is a question that you’ve been living with for a while now?  The poet Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote:

 

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

 

The succinct summary of this quote is to “live the questions”.  We reside in a results-oriented culture.  What did you accomplish and achieve, and cross off your to-do list?  Sometimes we hide behind busyness because our questions are restless and even unanswerable!  Today, write down the questions that have been living in your soul, patiently waiting for you to turn on the single lightbulb that hangs by a string in your soul, illuminating all the cobwebs and clutter we can keep there. 

 

What are the questions that are lingering in your soul?  Write those down…add to them later today when you are in the car going somewhere, and suddenly a question comes to you that you didn’t realize was in the luggage of your life!  You can continue to add to your list throughout the week, months, and days to come.  May you sense the sacred as you go down the steps slowly into your soul this week.  Amen.