Sacred Compass 7: leadings and individualism

I enjoyed J. Brent Bill's Sacred Compass: The Way of Spiritual Discernment, which is an accessible and readable introduction to the Quaker concept of leadings. Leadings are the persistent pushings, nudgings and guidance of God in our lives, bringing us to places where we can do his work in the world in ways we might not have imagined.

As Brent pointed out in an e-mail, the book is aimed at non-Quaker Christians, since for most Quakers, the book's concepts will be familiar. However, probably even most Quaker readers will find new insights or ideas in the book to ponder. For instance, as I think about either employment, going back to do graduate work, and the overarching question of "what to do with the rest of my life," I find myself, as a result of the book, paying much more attention to how my body physically feels when I contemplate one course or another.

Fundamentally, however, I wonder if the way we understand the concept of leadings in contemporary society is too focused on the self. In a graduate course I took once, the professor, an Episcopal priest, believed that Quakers spend too much time on self-examination and on hair-splitting matters of faith and belief. He contrasted Quakerism with the Anglican tradition, in which people corporately affirm their faith through liturgy and then essentially go about their business, not having to scrutinize every action. Anglicans, he said, believe the liturgy and communion put them right with God. He recommended a book called The Doubting Disease, which he believed spoke to a neurosis of overanalysis and second guessing inherent in Quaker theology.

Clearly, as a Quaker, I come down on the side of self scrutiny. However, I also understand that a corporate liturgy can act as antidote to obsessive concern over individual conscience. I also believe that endless parsing of one's thoughts and beliefs can create paralysis. I have seen this in some Quakers. My theory is that overanalysis, coupled with the empiricist ideology of the educated classes has led to some of the "non-theism" in liberal Quakerism. I believe some Quakers get so caught up in parsing whether or not they "believe" in God with unshakeable certainty every second of every day, that they fall into nontheism. Or they are so consumed in knowing exactly what God is (which we can't know) that they back into nontheism.

That being said, I believe it's also a mistake to see weekly recitation of a liturgy and drinking and eating a bit of wine and wafer alone as the key to putting ourselves right with God. By themselves, these are empty rituals that can create in us an illusion of safety-- or a "pass" not to examine our lives-- unless they are the outward signs of an inward transformation. In other words, like a good Quaker, I believe outward change follows from inward change. Actually, it works both ways, that inward transformation leads to a life that is outwardly changed and also that willingly adopting new outward habits and behaviors can cause inward change. However, I would put the preponderance of weight on the power of inward transformation to effect change. Thus I would put more of my effort into self examination and changing my heart before changing my behavior, knowing the changed behavior would follow a transformed heart.


A good companion piece to Sacred Compass is Blackaby's Experiencing God: Knowing and Doing the Will of God. While acknowledging that we are all individuals who can't follow someone else's "success with God formula," Blackaby emphasizes that following God is not primarily about "me." Following where God is leading is seeing where God is at work around me and joining God in that work. This shifts the emphasis way from "me" as at the center of the universe to me as a worker in God's universe. I move toward the center of that universe as I join with God's work. I don't have to have a particular plan for me (which is what Brent also says) but I do have a responsibility to discern where God is and to work there.

So what do you think? What is the relationship of the inward self to the outward self? Do Quakers (and others) suffer from "the doubting disease?"

Sacred Compass: Getting Lost and Getting Surprised

(I started to title this post "Losses and surprises," then realized that losses can be quite different from getting lost.)

Near the end of Sacred Compass, Brent has two chapters on what we might call the darker side of leadings. In the chapter "The Dark Path," he discusses what happens when we feel lost and alone, with no idea where our spiritual compass wants us to head.

This is not necessarily bad, Brent says, and certainly not unsual. A period of seeming "lostness" can be part of the journey. It can grab our attention and cause us to scrutinize our lives more closely. It also can be the result of living in a fallen world, where many terrible things happen that are outside of our control. A sense of being lost also can lead us back to God and hope in his provision.

We can also be surprised when our leadings take us into unexpected places, as Brent describes the chapter "West of Eden." These surprises, Brent says, can tranform us and help us learn to trust more fully in God. Mary, for example, was surprised when an angel told her she was to bear God's child. That was not her expectation at all. But she trusted and was transformed.

All of this underscores that when we follow leadings, we are ceding control of our lives to God. We are not leading. God is leading. That means we open ourselves to hardships we might have avoided but also to blessings we might not have imagined. I know that in my life, there have been moments when, although I heard an inner voice saying, be patient, wait, hold steady, don't act, I've felt that no, I can't wait, I need help now, I have to take matters into my own hands, now is the moment to panick. That's always been a mistake, and I now more faithfully heed the inner guide.

Sacred Compass 4: From Brent Bill

Yesterday, I e-mailed J. Brent Bill about his book, Sacred Compass, because I feared being too critical and wanted to hear his point of view. If he were a superstar author or someone whose work I had profound problems with, I would simply state my issues. However, as Bill is a fellow Quaker, and I am more or less on the same page with him when it comes to leadings, I thought I would hear would he had to stay.

Here's part of what he wrote:

"I worried about that some folks might read it [Sacred Compass] as a "step-by-step" book and that was certainly not my intention. As I say in the beginning, this is no 1-2-3 steps to finding God's will. What I was trying to offer were the various ways we can use to uncover our leadings (journaling, walking, cleaning house, etc) which is why I invited so many friends to participate in sharing their ways of getting close to God and listening to the Spirit. Such as my friend Marcella's dancing. A way that would not have occured to me -- nor probably speak much to me. But it does to this delightful Quaker woman and helps her greatly.

I worried a lot about outlining the steps of sensing, waiting, and acting -- but then tried to stress it was not truly linear. That these are all stages that often intwine and weave into a pattern of discernment -- while we act, we sense and wait. And so on. My intention was to show that there are things we can all do in the various stages/movements of discernment and some will speak to us differently than they would other people. Writing works much better for me than dancing like Marcella would. And I suspect that the reverse is true -- though I know she journals as well."

There is a fundamental rhetorical problem in writing about leadings. They tend to be non-linear, not logical and unpredictable. In fact, they jar us into labeling them leadings BECAUSE of their seeming oddness. If God is telling us to eat breakfast in the morning (which he probably is), we won't see that as a leading, because it's normal, it's what we would do anyway. However, if we had an overwhelming feeling that instead of eating breakfast, we should go stand in the middle of the road and hold up a sign saying "Love God," we would probably identify that as a leading because it is such a bizarre and uncomfortable thought.

Yet books, especially explanatory books, are by their nature linear and logical. Their goal is to impart clarity and order, not confusion and chaos.

So how to capture the essence of a leading? Spiritual biography is one way. You can follow a narrative and watch one person's story unfold, thus seeing how a leading works itself out. The problem with that form is its particularity. You're left to yourself to draw conclusions. One person's experience of a leading may be so particular that you can't draw general principles from it. Or it may miss a piece of the overall leading puzzle.

Another way is for the writer to strain to create a language to convey difficult concepts (for example, when Thomas Kelly refers to Jesus as the "hound from heaven" in Testament of Devotion, he's using unconventional terminology to convey his experience), but that can lose people in the process, especially people at the beginning of a journey.

Of course, the answer is that we need to read in multiple genres to get a full sense of what a leading is. Brent's book, he said, is aimed at non-Quakers, and is a good introduction to a way of understanding God's work in the world that may not be familar to people from other faith traditions.

I want to go a little bit afield and ask what spiritual writings have most moved you or what type of writing works best for you?

Sacred Compass 3: Testing our leadings

Many years ago I saw a newsmagazine program about a young tent revival preacher. During the interview, he stated that God was telling him to raise donations so he could go the Bahamas in February.

It's hard not to laugh at such a "leading." (A leading is a Quaker term for what we believe God is telling us to do.) "God wanting me to go to the Bahamas in February" sounds just a tad like using God to justify our own self-indulgence.

In chapter 3 of Sacred Compass, J. Brent Bill discusses this all-important question: how do we know if our leadings are the voice of God or own desires masquerading as God's will? How do we tell the difference?

In what he calls "sensing lab experiments," Bill offers a series of questions to test our leadings: is the leading clear (can you put it into words)?, is it compelling (can you not not do it?), does it fit your life, will it change you, and does it come from God's love? As you ask these questions, you sift through your thoughts to try to get rid of what comes from ego or self-will. Part of sifting is waiting.

Interestingly, Bill writes that we can sift with our bodies as well as our minds. If what God leads us to do will be holy, then what does holiness look like, smell like, sound like, taste like? Is our leading congruent with that?

A fundamental problem with Bill's book is that while he's doing the good work of trying to draw a rational box around leadings and lead us through a step-by-step process of discernment, leadings have a wild, unpredictable quality that defies logic. Sometimes leadings don't "fit our lives." Sometimes they will seem, on the surface, to hurt people in our lives. Often I know a leading is a leading simply because it's not comfortable for me, but is a persistent thought that won't go away even though I keep trying to dismiss it because it doesn't "make sense." Thus, I found the best of Bill's queries on leadings to be "does it come from God's love?" Anything that arises from love of God or love of others is probably pretty close to a leading.

Unsaid, but so important in discerning if leadings are from God is the spiritual preparation work --prayer, listening for God in the silence, participating in and building spiritual community--that allows us to "hear" more clearly if a voice in our heads is from God. I have been with people who insist that what is clearly self-will is God's will. (I am sure I have been that person too.) Usually, in my experience, people who insist that self-will is a leading haven't done the spiritual work to discern the difference. This gets us back to waiting ... often what we call waiting is simply building up our spiritual muscles.

Finally, as Bill points out, we test a leading by acting on it. We live in a confused, messed-up world. In the end, we step out on faith.

I have followed leadings in my life, sometimes without knowing I was doing so, and marvelous things have happened that I could never have predicted. My life has been changed and enriched in ways that have left me amazed. In my darkest moments of doubt, I can lean into the real, lived experiences I have had of God's presence in my life (I suppose there is the off chance that is all "coincidence," but it's my rational mind that rejects that) and invariably my faith floods back. Do you have similar experiences of following God's leadings?