I’m working these days on understanding and, more importantly, practicing discernment. I’m attempting to weave together squares of faith-fabric, threads of theology, pieces of poetry, and scraps of my own experience into something useful. Here are some of the materials I’m pondering and arranging:
Decades ago, in a course on selected devotional classics in the history of western Christian spirituality, Glenn Hinson offered this translation of Philippians 1:9-10: “This is my prayer for you, that your love may overflow abundantly with knowledge and full insight to give you a sense of things that matter.” From that day to now, when facing decisions for which I lack wisdom, Glenn’s rendering of Paul, prompts me to pray: “God, give me a sense of things that matter most.”
When I was in my late-twenties, full of energy and of insufficiently-understood ambition, an older friend asked me: “When you get to where you’re headed in such a hurry, will you be glad you got there?” Questions almost always help my discernment more than direct advice because, I think, the questions serve to create inner space and silence in which I am more likely to hear the Spirit, while advice adds to and amplifies the constantly chattering cacophony of voices within. “What would help you remember more steadily that you are beloved child of God?” “Will what you do sound like, feel like, and be like Jesus? What would help you become more like him?”
Words from Mary Oliver’s poem, which I’ve known for so long that I sometimes that they don’t startle me into attentiveness the way they first did, can still, thank God, surprise me when I most need them: “Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?/Tell me, what is it you plan to do/with your wild and precious life?”
So can these words from “Ask Me,” by the poet William Stafford: “Some time when the river is ice ask me/mistakes I have made. Ask me whether/what I have done is my life.”
In the aftermath of a near-death experience at the nadir of a stem-cell transplant more that a decade ago, I began a process of finding new depths and joy in words Jesus spoke to his followers on the night before his death: “I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing, but I have called you friends . . . ” (John 15:13-14). I’m discovering that there are times, more than I once imagined, when Jesus responds to my questions about what I “should” do with phrases like, “Well, friend, what would you like to do? What would make you more loving and more joyful?” “What would make you more fully and abundantly alive?” (see John10:10).
I hold intuitions of that kind of guidance in paradoxical tension with Jesus’ own prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane that same night, wrestling with looming crucifixion: “Father if you are willing, remove this cup from me, yet not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). The tension teaches me that there is a convergence, not always clear at first, and not always comfortable or east, between “God’s will” and our most significant desires and hopes: what makes us most loving and joyful is, finally, what God most passionately wants for us. As Augustine said: “In God’s will is our peace.”
There’s much more to consider, more connections between ideas, intuitions, and experiences to make, and more conversations to have as I seek to discern discernment. I’d welcome any insights you’d be willing to share with me.
Recent posts from my website:
The Wisdom and Mercy of Limits
We Don't All Follow the Same Jesus
Heard Beneath the Roar of Traffic
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive” (Howard Thurman).
“The glory of God is a human being fully alive” (Irenaeus of Lyons)
“If your first principle is win at any cost, then you don’t have a second principle” (Seth Godin)
I’m available to speak for your congregation or organization or to join you in conversation though spiritual guidance/direction. Let’s explore the possibilities: guysayles@gmail.com
Thanks, Guy, for your insightful reflections. These help me, too, as has your courageous scholarship and preaching through the years. So glad to hear from you. I pray you stay well and strong. Your light continues to shine brightly. Bill Henderson, Post Helene and a little wiser and hopeful, Black Mountain