Yesterday was the first meeting of my Circles of Light group, a 10-session, 6 or 9 month process of discernment for a small group.
We spent some time talking about what Discernment is and what Discernment is not. Our moderator wrote our words up on large post-its as we said them, forming helpful real-life word clouds. This, of course, was right in my wheelhouse, being not just a Verbal Learning but a Written Word Learner.
Several of them sparked a desire to delve deeper, to do some further explanation.
(I am writing all day today, just doing it. Perhaps this is what it is like to write all day, in which case, I like it!)
(9-5, instead of 11:30 to whenever?) (We'll continue to see what I can organize here.)(And investigate where you can actually get remunerated for this)
One component of What Discernment Is that resonated with me was the notion that when you discover a call, or choose a path, you are also choosing to let other things go. (Strange memory of walking by the Broadway building in Sydney, just now. Before its renovation and the grocery store being there, when it was known to be occupied by squatters) (Hm. Home, money, mortgage, maintenance of home, those types of themes) (You know, the whole New Testament, in some ways, is just all about money.)
I had just, just been thinking, it came back to me, the Counselling, Mental Health, Healthy Boundaries whatever phrase - You need to learn to say No.
A recognition in myself that instead of saying no, I just don't do the thing.
"Guilt" came up in our "What Discernment is Not" and plays a large part in this same theme.
"Editing" was added to the What Discernment Is board,
(There is enough blogging space for anyone, for all the words you want to say. There is more or less infinite space, for everyone.) (A song I heard on the car radio on the way home from this first meeting was a reggae sort of song with the refrain, "There is room enough at the table for every one.")
-- I reacted against Editing. I think my comment was that it felt like it was cheating, and I'm not sure if that really explains it, but it certainly goes against the "Yes, and" stance. It seems like it's cheating in the sense that your job is to put the puzzle together, the Ikea bookshelf from the flatpack box, with no pieces left over. You need to look at ALL the pieces of you, and all the possible components in the world, all the pursuits, all the talents, all the subject matter (places to live, degrees to get, whatever), leave nothing out, and then arrange it all into a whole that makes sense, that makes a picture that you can easily interpret, you know what it is at a glance, like a pointillist painting that resolves into a picture (like my splatter style painting hanging downstairs, brought to America with considerable trouble and expense). The problem is when you keep your focus too narrow. The problem is when you pick one path too hastily and ignore all the important things it leaves out.
Maybe this rule is derived from philosophical analysis, and definition of terms. Finding of counterexamples. You could easily define the word "chair" as "four-legged, wooden object on which to sit", if you forgot to expand your gaze and range and consider the other things that perfectly well qualify as chairs but aren't wood, or have three legs, or one leg or none but more of a base. I used to love that exercise. You don't just look at the dictionary, because that's just the fossil record of these activities by speakers and thinkers of language. What's in, what's out? Can we draw the lines more finely around this concept? Do we need a new word altogether? It illustrated what it is that analytical philosophers do, and I hope showed that it's doable, and worth doing, and needing doing.
Is Discernment Decision? Our moderator laughed when I asked this question, and said, "Of course, the philosopher!" But is it? They seem different. And it seems worthwhile to explore the difference. Ha - to try to discern the difference.
So, back to editing - after my reaction, the professional magazine editor in the room said that she didn't think of it as cutting things out, as going through with the red pen, she was thinking about editing the magazine, deciding what to call on, what article to commission to include. Curation. Trendy word, but powerful word. Is that what we do with our lives, is that what it is to live a life? What would it mean if it were? Why does editing or curation seem so different from existing yourself into the next moment, one at a time?
I have the same feeling as I do when people talk about how to have a job, one job in a career - you should the thinking, at that job, what do I need to learn from this job to get me to my next step? That always seemed super odd to me, and I know I've never done it.
Maybe the idea that life is a magazine feels inappropriate because it relies on your knowing how many pages you have to work with, that a back cover exists and that you can plan it, that an overview is possible while you're still at a moment in time along the compilation process.
That feels like just a lie, an illusion, too conservative, arrogant in a way. It ignores the chaos and terror but also the radical possibility of actually living forward into time. Really, EVERYTHING is possible. Lateral solutions are available. Orthogonal change.
Walk across the lines of the labyrinth. Stomp them out, what the heck. Punk rock anarchy comes to the medieval meditation walk.
Editing and saying no. Choosing for and therefore choosing to leave out or leave behind. Editing as compiling, commissioning, curating. No vs yes. Boundaries vs limitations. Fully existing as a whole self in community vs blowing off favors to people.
Confidence, was another weird word that struck me. The end result of this process is that we should be able to move forward confidently in the next steps on our path. With all the other mush about what we should expect - it won't happen in a certain time frame, you can't determine in advance what it will be, you may not have a single illumination at the end or indeed any, blah blah blah, then the idea that we can expect confidence seemed not to fit with that. Confidence and Confirm start the same, do they have similar roots? Confirmation - it's the name of a big step in a Christian/Episcopalian life, it's also the name for getting more support for what you already think.
That's sort of comforting, that the end result might be confirmation of something you already feel, supporting evidence, removal of doubt. So, you don't have to come up with a new future from whole cloth, you should be braced for dramatic reversals or orthogonal zags, but maybe you'll just know that you know. Test what you feel and find that it is strong and holds up. That possibility is exciting to me.
(Somehow I feel that I will only be driving back to my chosen career from practical necessity, that it doesn't have enough to it (enough authentic voice, right? working in a corporate context) that it could be the thing calling. This is my suspicion, and we'll let things roll and see if I'm right)
Another participant sounds like she's also struggling with pursuing gift vs selling out to practicality, and it was interesting to hear that we both use the job of Bank Teller as the symbol of the worst, most empty and meaningless way to spend ones time. No insult intended to all the wonderful bank tellers out there, who have served me throughout my life. But seriously, you're basically all being replaced by machines now, right?
I wonder, though, if her struggle is with doing what she has been told she should do, vs having ambition.
I should schedule another walk to maybe pursue these things with her further. Chica, you have permission to be/become a big deal!
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