From “Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life” by Henri Nouwen with Michael J. Christensen and Rebecca J. Laird
Henri believed that the Holy Spirit is an inner presence who is the deep center of our new life in Christ, a center from which discernment blossoms. Over time discernment becomes easier as we come to trust the knowing of the Spirit within us, but it always takes discipline to keep our focus. Like a sailor on the high seas, we need to remember our goal and intention, to put our trust in God, and to meditate on the qualities of Spirit that we want to embody. And we need to keep scanning our inner and outer lives to be sure that we are taking everything into account, scanning for signs of the Spirit’s presence, noticing its invitations, and listening for what Henri called “the voice of the beloved.”
Discernment is a discipline and practice that requires us to cultivate trust, love, faith, hope, and courage. We cannot see with perfect clarity what lies ahead. And we cannot see the Holy Spirit within us. In fact, we have no tangible evidence that the Holy Spirit has made a home in us. Accepting and daring to put our trust in this possibility is a matter of faith. We cannot control the Spirit: “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8 NRSV. To be born of the Spirit is to step into a freedom that we never imagined before. It is to trust that the Spirit knows us better than we know ourselves, and that we can therefore relinquish our smaller identities to become someone who is beyond our own understanding. We now accept that the mystery of God, which once seemed outside and beyond us, has made a home within us.
When we accept our complete belovedness, we stop judging ourselves and other people; as a result, other people begin to feel safe with us. When we open the hospitality of our hearts to the Spirit, the Spirit frees us to extend hospitality to our fellow humans and all God’s creation. The Spirit’s hospitality becomes ours, and we experience the alignment of our will with God’s will – a traditional definition of successful discernment. What we want is what God wants. Paradoxically, we feel more truly ourselves than we have ever felt before.