Non-Anxious Discernment: Holy Patience Amidst Ambiguity

May 2, 2010 - retreat meditation for the Daughters of The King in Reno

Today’s Gospel is about discernment and love. The Gospel says that the way we imitate Jesus’ love is through discipleship. Jesus leaves me wanting to have a set of directions about how to be a disciple who loves. Jesus leaves the disciples with very little in the way of directions. I bet the disciples are anxious just as we are when we don’t know exactly the way to proceed. We learn the specifics of our unique calls to discipleship through non-anxious discernment. Discernment is not easy and requires our patience amidst ambiguity.

Discernment often anticipates long periods of meaningless waiting until we hear the voice of God manifested through the movements of the Spirit. Meaningless waiting is a challenge for all of us as we are purposeful people who want solutions to our real problems. Our sense of urgency for quick solutions judges meaningless waiting and we resist discernment.

If you are like me I am sure you can remember times in your life where it is very difficult to wait and listen. If we are honest then we remember the way we rushed into major decisions. I can vividly remember making important life decisions out of a sense of urgency. The time I went into seminary a second time in NYC was one such time. All my family and friends told me that it would not work. I ignored them. I did not pray about it. My decision was not a spiritual decision. It was a pragmatic decision. My parents had Alzheimers and Parkinsons and I wanted to stay near them. The Jesuits would have sent me to the Caroline and Marshall Islands in the South Pacific. By going to the NY seminary I was able to get on with it. I knew the day I entered that I made a terrible decision and 18 months later I left. I made my own decision, but not one in the Spirit and so no surprise that it was not sustainable.

Discernment is the process of choosing between two loves. Loves are often manifested through multiple calls. We are called in a number of ways, but can only follow one or two of these calls. When there are many calls, desires and gifts there tends to be lots of inner noise in us. That is when we pray we cannot seem to escape the clutter in our minds and hearts.

A multiplicity of calls, desires and gifts is a blessing, but it is also fertile ground for anxiety. Anxiety impedes fruitful discernment. All of us experience different degrees of anxiety and it is not judged to be good or bad. However, when our anxiety holds us back from making responsible and mature decisions than we lose opportunities to live in the Spirit’s time.

There is a huge difference between the Spirit’s time and our time. The government moves very slowly. Like the Post Office they are slow! Yet when we want the Spirit to move us it is can also be even more painfully slow. And at other times the Spirit is ready and we are not. Both times can be ones of great anxiety. Due to the way anxiety is uncomfortable discernment is often avoided. We need to discern often when we are least ready to discern.

A multiplicity of choices is often a sign of the need for discernment.

An anxious resistance to listening is a sign of the need for discernment.

When we have much to choose we are least likely to be inclined towards discernment.

Each of us has learned responses to the ways we encounter a multiplicity of choices.

Do you feel blessed with many choices?

Are you patiently non-anxious with many choices?

Are you peaceful amidst sustained ambiguity and uncertainty?

Be honest now!

There is a wonderful model to which we can all turn to in Mary, the mother of Jesus. When the angel Gabriel visited Mary in her sixth month, he said, The Lord is with you. Do not be afraid Mary, God has found favor with you. When Gabriel said Mary would give birth to a child, Mary said, how can this be for she was without child?

Discernment always takes place in God’s time. It is necessary to be patient, to maintain trust that all is blessing and that in time you will know the way to proceed. Before we can even begin discernment we have to be willing to give up our control over the outcome. Otherwise we might just as well get on with it, make some decisions and not call it discernment. Sometimes there is little fallout from making routine decisions in this way. When we are at Cotsco picking between two brands of pasta discernment really is not necessary. At the same time I can attest to you from my life experience that the biggest decisions in our lives truly benefit from discernment. Discernment means we are inviting God into our decision-making process.

To engage in the practice of discernment means letting go of our need to singularly make the decision. Mary did not decide, she was open to the angel Gabriel’s message and consented. Consent is very different than decision and can only be recognized when we are in touch with the Spirit working in and through us. Discernment means we are willing to listen to God and the Spirit working through our lives. Listening means we are willing to be still and simply to listen with open hearts, without judgment and holding things very lightly. Play can be a form of holding things lightly as long as we are paying attention and listen.

We introduce play by looking at our lives as they are as pieces of clay that can be molded and formed in this way or that way. Playful listening is a posture towards our discernment and listening. Listening means we first begin trying to slow down the inner noise so that we can hear God rather than just our own minds talking. We listen in many different ways. Listening to God means spending time alone with God in prayer. Yet listening typically requires more than just listening to God in the solitude of our own chosen and tightly controlled spaces. Listening needs to be more than just what happens between God and us.

Discernment is often strengthened in community. We listen and hear differently in community. We particularly listen differently when we participate in communities of deep trust. Trust is not the same as loyalty. Sometimes loyal friends will not tell us what we need to hear, as they are loyal to us. You often hear people say, he is my friend meaning he would never say anything against me. Against me typically means agreeing with me and supporting me. You hear people say, he is my friend I can rely on him or her. However, true friends who know us through our hearts in community can help us see beyond our blinds spots. True Christian community has a quality of being open to the Spirit leading you.

Communities of the Spirit draw a diversity of people who do not easily get along. I have found in communities that it is in the uneven edges of community life, the asymmetries in the uneven spaces between us that is where the Holy Spirit most often resides. If we can listen at the edges of the community from those on the periphery as well as at the center we are more likely to make Spirit inspired decisions. The mature community is not anxious to make quick decisions. The mature community is willing to patiently wait and remain content in community holding ambiguity lightly.

Be honest how many of you love ambiguity in this way in your lives?

Now the good news is that you need not love ambiguity, but on the other hand if you loathe ambiguity, you make yourself vulnerable to making poorly discerned decisions. Poorly discerned decisions are decisions we make without listening to the Spirit of God. When we are less anxious then we make the inner space to listen to and hear multiple perspectives.

These multiple perspectives are not merely other peoples’ opinions, but if expressed through holy listening in communal prayer, may be inspired words that God would like us to hear. This means that we understand and respect each other as vehicles of grace and of the Spirit too. Each of you are vehicles of grace and a means by which the Spirit speaks and lets us know what we ought to do and what we are called to do. Discernment is our willingness to patiently wait to be inspired by the Spirit of God in multiple ways before we choose to act.

Spirit inspired decisions do not change from day to day, but benefit from felt continuity. It is this memory of continuity that strengthens us when challenges inevitably come later. When challenges do come we are less inclined to think that we made a bad decision. Rather than running away from a decision we made, we stay the course remaining faithful because we remember that the Spirit led us here. We are more likely to suffer with the choices we have made for we have the confidence that the Spirit directed us to this place and in time whatever challenges we experience will work for the glory of God. I don’t offer use the word “suffer” often in my sermons because I grew up over associating suffering with faith in God. Yet we are willing to suffer with life choices we have made when we made that decision convinced that the Holy Spirit called us to that place. When I decided as in when I went to seminary the second time in NYC it was easy to leave.

In discernment we pray as a community to discover that which will give glory to God. The quick decisions typically give glory to us but the Spirit inspired decisions give glory to God.

I have personally come to learn that the decisions I have made in haste have been the least sustainable and prone to my frequent change in whims. Yet when I have waited sometimes even for years before making certain decisions, then these decisions were grounded in God’s time with the grace of the Holy Spirit. It is these latter decisions in my life that have not wavered, but have remained constant amidst the challenges of life. The difference is making decisions that are based on calls from God not merely our anxious solutions to problems. Anxious solutions are rarely sustainable ones.

So, let us pray that we will be blessed with non-anxious hearts so that our spirit may be attentive to the way we are being uniquely called. Let us pray that when an angel visits us with a Spirit inspired message, we might be able to say, let it be done to me according to your loving desires God not according to my desires.


God Bless You!