From “Sacred Compass: The Way of Spiritual Discernment” by J. Brent Bill
The Inner Teacher uses our life experiences to show the way opening before us. Look at the life map you drew earlier. As you look at the highs and lows and in-betweens, how did particular experiences open a way for you? Do you, upon reflection, see God using them to move you in a certain direction, or away from a certain direction?
That’s how spiritual direction works in John Irving’s novel A Prayer for Owen Meany. Owen was a tiny, bizarre person with weirdly luminescent skin and the strangest, eeriest voice God ever gave anybody. Which is what Owen believed – that God gave him his stature, his voice, and all his other characteristics for a reason. Owen believed he was God’s instrument.
His best friend, John Wheelwright, was a much more normal kid (if there really is any such creature). Wheelwright doubted God, life, and Owen’s obsession with being God’s instrument – until Owen’s death – when he saw God’s purpose clearly. The difference between the two boys was that for Owen, the idea that God called him led him to a place where he could see the way opening, but John needed almost his entire childhood and young adulthood to find the thread of grace weaving its way through his life.
John and Owen’s different experiences of the way opening were not based on their suitability for sainthood. Neither would qualify – especially Owen, who seemed to flaunt every rule of holiness. He was impure, indecent, and unfit by most standards for any sort of holy adoration. Yet Owen Meany was a saint because he lived as if he believed that God was real and knowable and had a direction for everybody – even a tiny boy/man with a wrecked voice.