Coldplay on Discernment.
“Lovers keep on the road you’re on…” Coldplay’s latest album keeps getting stuck in my head; especially this line from Lovers in Japan. It’s beautiful. Maybe my spiritual director was listening to this song the day she told me that finding out God’s will is like looking at the way you’re already traveling and just continuing down that road.
The other day a friend prayed “Lord, help us to do your will.” I asked him “What did you mean by that? Do you really think we can know God’s will, and if so – how?” a question which launched the dinner party into thirty minutes on God’s will, what it is and how to know it.
I’ve always been really interested in God’s will. I was taught about God’s good, perfect, & pleasing will as three separate nouns not three adjectives of one thing. I’ve heard about predestination and election, been told of the disinterest of God who doesn’t really care what you do as long as it’s not sin, and I’ve heard lots about this mysterious ‘peace that passes all understanding.’ I like rules and logic so I feel nervous about making decisions guided by a mysterious emotion. I mean if I married every boyfriend who I felt was “the one” by way of that “peace” in my heart I’d have been married 5 times by now, at least! Still, I don’t seem to have a better way to figure it out than the way I’m feeling at a point in time. The past few years I had concluded that when it comes to how people make decisions it seems like no one really knows what the heck they’re talking about with God’s will. I feel like I sure don’t know what I’m doing!
Taking Coldplay’s advice, when I look around today I find myself on a road into the Ignatian Associates. I’ve been asked to blog about my journey through the two years of IA formation from beginning to end because I’m so new to Ignatian Spirituality. I didn’t go to a Jesuit college and while I’ve heard of St Ignatius and of the 19th Annotation I’m such a newbie in my Catholic faith that the language still sounds a bit crazy to me. I confess through my confusion that I’m still more comfortable with the idea of God’s will being something we should find out and act on than anything involving emotion or feelings of the heart, which it seems like these IA people talk about all the time.
In short, I’ve got a lot to learn and a long way to go on this road. I’m pretty excited about all the new things to learn and experience, looking forward to sharing it with you!
Photo: “If you’re on this road, you’re heading the right way” by “jigglemequick” from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)
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