Anne Lamott in Travelling Mercies recounts how, pregnant out of wedlock, she goes to her priest and asks if she should have yet another abortion. He says, “get quiet for a moment and then think about having an abortion; if you feel a deep and secret sense of relief, pay attention to that. But if you feel deeply grieved at the thought of it, (listen) to that.”
Ms. Lamott thought of abortion, was “stabbed with grief. And the grief did not pass,” she wrote. She had Sam, and regaled America with her expletive-ridden adventures in raising him.
Ooooh, I thought, flaky. This was the first time I had heard of this method of discernment. I then thought of God’s will as a static treasure to dig for and discern.
(Aside: Recently however, there have been times when I have felt God say, “Up to you.” For instance, when we reached a point at which we no longer needed to expand our publishing business, to pay our bills, I prayed about whether to expand. And I felt God say, “It’s your choice.” I asked Roy, and he wanted to expand it slowly. And so we did. Just as well, as later it provided enough for Roy to resign as a professor of mathematics, and run the business—and that’s one of the best things which has happened to our family!!)
* * *
But, though I initially thought it was flaky, listening to my emotions is one of the tests I began to use when I try to discern God’s will or the right course of action. I ask myself how both alternatives feel, and listen to my feelings and my body.
Sometimes I mindlessly commit to something or decide I should do the normal expected thing, and ask myself how I feel. And I realise I feel no enthusiasm, my stomach clenches. I feel dead, listless at the thought of it. I realize I have made a mistake, and if I can get out of it, I will. Proverbs 6: My son, if you have been trapped by what you said, ensnared by the words of your mouth, do this, my son, to free yourself, Go—to the point of exhaustion—and give your neighbor no rest! Allow no sleep to your eyes, no slumber to your eyelids. Free yourself, like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, like a bird from the snare of the fowler.
A blog reader, Dan from Toucanic recently in fact told me of an Ignatian principle he keeps pinned above his desk
“Regardless of what is sensible, and regardless of what you think you ought to do, which of the courses ahead makes you feel alive, makes your heart open wider, makes you feel hopeful and as if the future is opening up and not closing down? That is the route you should go.”
And Erika, a prolific and formidable blog commentator wrote
“The idea is that whenever you are at a crossroads and don’t know which way to go, you spend a week praying through each alternative. For the first week you pray seriously through following a course that presents itself to you and note how you react. Then you spend a week praying just as seriously about how your life would be and feel if you didn’t follow that course of action – and again see how you react.
You follow the course of “consolation”, not the one of “disconsolation” because that’s the one the Spirit has guided you into.
It helps to have an experienced prayer guide when doing this.
The idea is that God can speak through our intellect as well as through our emotions. Both are equally reliable and equally suspect. If you have thought around a problem and arrived at two equally intellectually credible ways forward, listening deeply to your emotions about them is precisely one way the Spirit can guide you.”
I will explore this more. I am fairly cerebral, and have used Scripture as a guide in decision making for years. However, in dealing with people, I now find that listening to my emotions and intuitions is important.
For instance, often our body and emotions and intuitions can tell us if someone is trustworthy, and truly likes us, or is attempting to deceive or “work” us, and we ignore these bodily signals and trust their words at our peril.
Read my new memoir: Rosaries, Reading, Secrets: A Catholic Childhood in India (US) or UK.
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@ Dolly, thanks, we seem to be on similar journeys.
@ Erika, wow the story of the man who found it hard to make decisions without the holistic input of his emotions too is really fascinating!!
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Anita,
I wasn't expecting that – thank you. I really like your post.
From a completely different sector of human experience, I am currently reading books by autistic animal behaviourist Dr Tempel Grandin. In “Animals in Translation” she writes about emotions and about how a man who had severe neurological damage after an accident had no emotional responses to anything while all his other mental faculties were unchanged. He could think logically, he could reason, he could analyse, he could understand cause and effect…. yet what happened is that he became completely unable to make any decisions at all. Even with the most basic decisions he would get stuck in an endless cycle of thinking of pros and cons and consequences and he would end up going round and round in circles.
I think it is one of the great fallacies of our rational age that we believe that our decisions are not influenced by our emotions.
And in some of our hot button Christian debates I often find that it’s precisely the people who insist that their views are purely rational and Scripture based and who reject all emotion as special pleading, don’t appear to be rational at all when it comes down to it, as they only engage with those rational arguments that support their view and not with any that might threaten it.
The real challenge Ignatius of Loyolla sets us is to recognise our emotions, how they make us who we are, and to accord them their rightful place in our lives.
That’s not to say we must become purely driven by feelings, that would be wrong. And the Ignatian concept of consolation and disconsolation goes way beyond superficial good feelings. If we truly listen to ourselves we can even find ourselves drawn to deep truths that aren’t actually what we thought we wanted to hear.
If God has our best interest at heart, then what he wants from us will, by its very definition, turn us into holistic beings with integrated hearts and minds.
Hi Anita,
Like you, I can be cerebral but I have learned the hard way that when I ignore my emotions and intuition, I usually make poor decisions.
I still rely on Scripture, God's wisdom, and wise counsel but now I also trust that God can and does also speak to me through my emotions and intuition.
Blessings!