Watch and
Wait
“Discernment
doesn't automatically come before action. Sometimes, it's the other
way around...Sometimes truth emerges as we talk.”
Barbara
Brown Taylor (at Awakening Soul, 2019)
Being able to discern
what is right and true for yourself can take a lifetime, or it can
happen in a flash. For example, how many of us trained for a career
early in life—usually because someone else thought it would be
perfect for us—only to find that we hate it? So, we leave the corporate
world or the bureaucracy, drift around trying to find ourselves,
doing this or that to make ends meet. Then, somewhere in the middle
of drifting and doing this or that, we discover that what we're doing
is what we love. The action itself provides the container for
discernment. Sometimes, we pray and ponder and pray some more, and
then, while chatting over coffee with a friend, an description of what we
are meant to do comes with complete clarity right out of our mouths.
We hear ourselves as though the voice does not belong to us.
Learning to hold the
tension of not knowing is one of the most difficult lessons in the
human playbook. We want to know, we want to move on, tackle the
challenge, make the decision. Just sitting with the question seems so
pointless. We don't like to “waste time.” It's like waiting for
the soup to cook; being willing to let it simmer while our belly
churns from hunger. It's painful, so most of the time, we grab the
unfinished product just to end the gnawing. Sometimes, that works
out—most of the time, it doesn't. Some things are only revealed
with time and we are not the controllers of time.
Walter Breuggemann,
theologian and scholar, wrote, “The world for which you've been
so carefully prepared is being taken away from you by the grace of
God.” Too often we make choices based on what's expedient for
us, and what keeps us in the good graces of our capitalist culture.
But our souls know that is not why we're here. When our false
narrative comes tumbling down around us, we moan and groan and raise
our fists to the heavens. But it just may be God who flicked that
first domino and started the chain reaction. God likes to disrupt the
narrative. God stretches us as far as we can go.
Today, hold the
questions. Wait, and watch, and listen. Allow discernment to bring
the answers to you—in its own good time.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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