by Margery Post Abbott
[Jesus said] “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you will get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.”
-Matthew 7:1-5
One Sunday during worship, a young woman spoke how that same morning she woke to a wing brushing her cheek. A small bird was thrashing about, banging against the glass near her head as it sought to exit her window. She took a towel to guide it out, but the bird slipped between the two sections of the window in its panic. Watching its frightened actions, she broke the window so it might find release. Still it did not fly free. She reached in yet again with a towel to gently set it free, and it took off into the open air.
I carry with me a similar image of a caged bird resisting release. How often do we panic when the Inward Guide offers us freedom? How often do we fight back when the hand of God seeks to move us from the place where we are stuck and damaged? Why do we so fear that which will save us? Impatience and fear are tangled. The holy delight too often is masked.
This same fear colors my relationships. Childhood patterns of finding ways to be invisible lasted long into adulthood. I was slow to sense how stiff my body gets when someone questions me or to be open even to myself when I am angry. Self-knowledge and honesty are central to the spiritual life. Psychologists tell us a lot about “projection.” Jesus tells us to look first to the “log” in our own eye before we attempt to remove the mote in our neighbor’s. Unless we know the byways of our own inner landscape, how can we recognize the path marked by the Spirit?
The recognition of our own motes and logs is not sufficient in itself. Awareness of the Inward Guide is a first step. The sifting – the discernment – is part of the ongoing mechanism of transformation. Yes, there is a day I can mark on the calendar and say that on this day my life changed. But it would have been nothing but a memory without the years of learning to discern which aspects of my life were permeated by bark beetles and where healthy new shoots might grow.
Sifting
When I experienced the leading to take up a ministry of speaking and writing, I was nearly paralyzed by fear, and fear is the central component of what Isaac Penington calls “the enemy” who “kindles great distress.” Fear does not easily let go its hold. Thus, one crucial step is to recognize fear and taste its character. I’ve come to recognize many flavors of fear. Fear can be sharp and alive, a basic reflex which tells us that danger is at hand. Knowing real danger and responding to it with calm action are crucial. Confidence in God, clear awareness of strengths and weaknesses, and practice in ways of dealing with danger, can allow us to react without panic and take leadership when appropriate.
In contrast, some fear is old, so old I can almost smell the dust and mold. Fears of ugly words and of an angry older brother, which were real in childhood, have no weight when examined in the light of adult experience. Yet for too long I treated these fears as if they were still protecting me from some immediate threat. To lay these aside took attention and awareness, but was not particularly hard once I got the knack of it.
So often I imagine how others see me, magnifying my own insecurities and negative opinions. Or I put thoughts in someone’s head which have no basis in reality. I judge them even as I assume they are judging me. I give them power over me.
As I shift my focus to the Giver of Life and away from my imagination, my smile is easier and my words firmer. I step out of a self-imposed invisibility. As a result, I have had to work to rebuild relationships – asking what was meant rather than assuming a desire to harm then fuming quietly; suspending judgment, and offering more of myself rather than expecting the other to be the only one vulnerable. Once more I need to attend to the person in front of me. Relationships cannot be forced or based on one person having power over another. Respect, caring and mutual empowerment thrive in the movement of the Spirit.
Still other fears live and are exaggerated only in my own mind. There might be reason to be nervous, but I am skilled at imagining disastrous scenarios. I either make myself so nervous and upset that I generate the scene I most feared, or I freeze and refuse to participate at all. To set these fears in proper proportion requires trust. This occurs each time I must speak from my heart. It is frightening at various levels, but not truly dangerous. I risk having others disagree with me, or that they will dismiss me as irrelevant or foolish. This has been the hardest set of fears for me to deal with.
More and more often I recognize and laugh at the tapes which replay in my head. But speaking of my faith in public requires I let go, speak what the Spirit requires of me, and trust that I have not run ahead of the Guide. When I can focus on what is needed, then my fears take their rightful place and drop away.
One day, while feeling quite discouraged, I began to doodle the word: AWFUL! That was how I was experiencing the world – things were awful. Yet writing the word over and over, it became a form of prayer. My being shifted and suddenly I saw the AWE which was embedded in my heart. Here I began to glimpse why the Psalmists sing of fear of the Lord: a rightful fear before the mystery and power of the Eternal.
Each one of us must find where our fears lie and seek to discern when they are valid and when they should be set aside. At times the indicators of the path are like marks in the dirt defining the mountain trail. I have a tendency, however, to kick some dust over those small arrows in the dirt when I don’t like the look of the path to which they point. Much wisdom in many traditions besides our own indicates that each time we do this – resist the leading – the harder it is to find the path in the future. And that, ultimately, the habit of kicking up dust will become so thoroughly ingrained that we no longer even see the arrows. Despite my ambivalence, I keep encountering further markers for the journey.
Examples of following the path are plentiful in my life: picking up the phone to call a friend when I am feeling an intense desire to hide; responding to Carl’s suggestion that maybe work I had done for a class should become a book; opening a book apparently at random and finding just the words I need; acting on the sense that I was to travel among Friends – actions large and small.
Fear is by no means the only block to healing or obstacle to attending to the voice of the Spirit. For some it may be anger, or a need to control, or desire for wealth, but the underlying tests for discerning the leadings of the Light are the same. The variations are substantial and, as in my case, professional help as well as community support can be invaluable.
Holding one’s life up to the Light of hope and using of discernment can change everyday actions and make space for radical reorientation, as happened to a man I met when giving a talk. During the Vietnam War, his family and the pastor at a Protestant church he attended all expected him to enlist. Yet he found this action to be at odds with all his pastor had preached over the years. The refusal to enlist or cooperate with the draft changed the course of his entire life, he told us gratefully.
For me, this reorientation was from virtual silence (my report cards from school always complained, “Marge never says anything”) to becoming a public speaker. The fears which kept me from speaking were not simple to name, much less break. I had to develop a regular practice of reading devotional books, praying and keeping a journal. Three f/Friends met with me faithfully and were patient with my faltering attempts to articulate even basic ideas. As I attempted to give talks to my Meeting about what I was learning, I found it essential to write out every word and had to be constantly told to “speak up.” Through all this, I had to learn, then keep asking myself the various questions Friends have traditionally used for discernment.
Being attuned to the Spirit also allows a different response to the wounds we inflict and receive throughout our lives. I have never been able to avoid periodically hurting the people most close to me, not to mention strangers, whether through inattentiveness, preoccupation with other things, or any of a million other reasons. When I am paying attention to the Inward Monitor I am less apt to do such harm. When I am focused on my own needs, and do harm, attention to the Light makes me more aware and prompts me to make amends. I don’t always respond, but the potential to do less damage is there.
Similarly, when I am listening to the Inward Guide, I am less apt to take offense when others inadvertently hurt me. This entire process seems akin to what the Buddhists call “non-attachment” – not holding on to my own sense of being the center of the universe so I might be more present to others in a less self-interested way. Being changed and healed in the process is ongoing and I expect it to take the rest of my life or longer. Being actively engaged in this transformation is knowing Life.
We can become practiced at recognizing the quirks of our own inner life and learn to sort what is destructive from the movement of grace in the soul, although Penington warned us how “the enemy kindles a great distress in the mind, by stirring up an earnest desire, and a sense of seeming necessity to know.” I know this habit of over-reliance on the rational and its accompanying desire to control everything I possibly can. But oh, how this can lead me off base when not tempered. Penington’s advice after warning about letting rationality run rampant was to suggest “But what if it be better for thee at present to be darkened about these things, than as yet to know?”
The thought of remaining in limbo and not satisfying my mind’s urge to know is disconcerting. Years of practice at discernment better allow my mind to rest uneasily in the place of unknowing. I find I must often attempt to stand in a place of not knowing what comes next when only the next small action is visible. And I know that my heart has a deep desire to know the contours of the universe, a desire which led me to God. In such ways following the motion of the Spirit may cause us to stand in a place of paradox.
Queries for readers
What triggers distress within you? Are you someone, like Isaac Penington, who worries when your heart is at odds with what your rational mind tells you and thus constantly prone to doubts, or is there something else which causes you to ignore the promptings of the Spirit?
When have you ignored the sense that you have acted in a hurtful way and tried to blame it on someone else? What made you do this? What was the result? What steps did you take to right the situation?
Margery Abbott is a member of Multnomah Friends Meeting in Portland, Oregon. To Be Broken and Tender is now available in under the “books” section of this website.