On Discernment, Loss, Love, and Longing

October 25, 2007 - Thursday

Main Entry: dis·cern·ment
Function: noun
Date: 1586
1 : the quality of being able to grasp and comprehend what is obscure : skill in discerning


In the Christian tradition, discernment is the act of attempting to determine what Gods will for you is - your vocation or your calling. It is the spiritual equivalent of deciding what you want to be when you grow up.

As a child and young adult, I always knew where I was going. I knew what my calling was, and I followed it. I have never been as successful as I wished to be, but I have, by most objective standards, succeeded in doing those things I set out to do.

I wanted to escape an unhappy and violent home - in both a physical and social strata sort of way. I did it. I wanted to be a Shakespearean actess. I did it. I wanted to go to college - to get married - to become a theatre director - to have a child. I did all of those things. And now, at this point, I have even travelled the world - or at least a small part of it.

But somehow all of us, at one time or another, fall off the path. We get lost. Our lives fall apart, and we must begin again - and when this happens, we become new people. Because we are new people, all these decisions about who we want to be must be revisited. This time, though - we are older. We have had our successes and failures, we have been beaten and had our hearts broken - we have experience.

You would think that experience makes it easier - quite to the contrary. Its harder. Its much much harder. When you are young, and just beginning, failure isn't even a concept. You dont' really know the pain and humiliation of a bad review, or the soul destroying properties of marriage and divorce. Everything is possible - and you will succed without suffering.

When you are in midlife, you know better. You know what success feels like - but you also know the incredible pain of failure - and you know it well enough to be very afaid.

This makes discernment hard. Of course you know what you really want. But you are afraid to ask. You know the price of not getting what you want. But, you also know the price of "settling" - and, to be honest, many people choose settling.

Joseph Cambell says that your life will turn out OK, if you only follow your bliss. But its hard to find the bliss again when you have fallen off the path - and your choice is to find your way back to the path you were on - or to find a brand new path. So - you stand in the middle, waiting for the voices of angels - because you don't know if you really want to choose at all.