Discernment: Listen
Article from the Vision Vocation Network, by Sister Rosann Ocken, O.S.B.
LISTEN to the Spirit
The second aspect in the discernment process is to listen to the movements of God’s Spirit. I find this process of listening much like an unfolding flower. One cannot actually watch it open, yet, day-by-day, night-by-night, the interplay of growth, rest, light, and dark unfold the beauty. Listening to God does not happen all at once; yet, when one is attentive, one can discern the movements of the unfolding.
The Spirit speaks to us in both the outer and inner movements of our lives. External factors—our life experiences, nature, people—all become instruments of God’s song in our hearts. The internal factors—awareness, reflection and prayer—decode the meaning and purpose of each. It is never a question of whether God is speaking, rather it is a question of our freedom to listen and respond.
The Spirit lives in us and guides us in this process. The Gospel of John reminds us that we are in God, “I am in the Father and you are in me and I in you” (John 14:20). The 13th-century Sufi mystic and poet Jalaluddin Rumi wrote: “I have lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door. It opens. I’ve been knocking from the inside.” We are already in the grace of God, yet we can be like the fish in the ocean who asks his mother to teach him about the ocean. The mother says, “Everything around you is the ocean.” We, like that little fish, find God’s presence around us hard to grasp. Sometimes we seek answers separate from ourselves not trusting the voice of God within our experiences and within our own hearts.
Discernment is about listening to movements of the heart. In retrospect, I see now that my discernment centered around three aspects of my life: prayer, service, and joy. I knew I wanted my future to include prayer; my relationship with God was drawing me to enter into a deeper union, love, and commitment. It was calm and gentle. I didn’t know much about the Bible at the time, and my spiritual life was certainly undeveloped. What drew me was the desire to be closer to God. This was the stirring of God’s call within me.
I found my heart being drawn to service. Already as a youth I found joy in helping others; I knew that whatever happiness I would find in life would surely include outreach to others. This, too, was the stirring of God.
I was also drawn to my vocation because I liked the simple joy I saw in religious life. This joy seemed more authentic to me than other pleasures. I like laughter, playfulness, and peace. God drew my heart through the desires within me.
Yet, in my discernment there were also conflicting “voices” or movements. Some people brushed me off as “naive” (well, I was that too), and others voiced that I was surely wasting the gifts that God gave me. To add to my confusion, I thought I met the man of my dreams just months before entering the community. How were these experiences to fit in? To discern their meaning, I felt like I had to go into the quiet inner mountain within myself. I cried there. I wrestled with God and with myself. I came to find that, in essence, even the contrasting voices were part of the truth and part of the journey I had to make. Ever so slowly through this desiring, questioning, and sorting out, I came to sense the yearnings that were most deeply within my heart.
It helped me to know that even after I made the first decision to enter religious life, I would have time to test that choice during the initial stages of formation. This is exactly what happened. Four of us entered that day in late summer. We began a deeper level of listening to the movements of God within our hearts. Not all of us stayed. Discernment happens slowly; it is ongoing. Rather than receiving the answer all at once, one senses little steps. By responding to those small movements the larger picture unfolds.