The Response Part of Discernment

4/13/21

Dear friend,

We are stepping into the heart of our discernment series, which will be immensely practical.

For many weeks now, we've been building to this point. We started with a short series on learning your personal language of discernment. Then we shifted to noticing invitations, both the day-to-day kind and the bigger, more long-term kind.

(Did you miss any of those previous entries in the series? The archives can be found here.)

Now we're getting to the part about living into the long-term, big invitations. This is the part about our response.

This is the part I (might) love the most.

I've been naming to myself for a while now that one of my favorite things to do is help people discern their invitations and live into them. Because once we've discerned the invitation, the living-into-it part comes next, you know? It's not just about discernment. It's about what comes after the discernment, which is all about stepping forward and living into it what has been discerned, especially if it's an invitation that’s receiving our yes.

Discernment into action—that's what I call this part.

What does discernment into action look like on a practical level? How do we live into big invitations once they come and we've said yes to them? And what if our response is no? (Because that’s totally a possibility too.)

There is, of course, no one specific answer to these questions, and that's because every single invitation is unique, as is the life into which those invitations come. The circumstances are unique. The personalities are unique. The intentions are unique. The purpose is unique.

This is why I love discernment and action work so much. The circumstances and potentialities are infinite. It's about finding what's true and right for you. It's about helping you stay connected to it, whatever your circumstances and potentialities might be.

In order to explore this response part, then, we're going to enter into some practical conversations for the next little while. For as long as it seems helpful, I'm going to share windows into what it has looked like for me to live into the response part of "big invitations" that came my way over the years.

My hope is that by reading examples from an actual life, you'll be helped along in your own path. Hopefully you'll start to notice different big invitations you've tended over the years, too, and how you were present or not present to that tending. Hopefully you’ll be helped along in noticing the big invitations you’re tending now and how you can be present to those.

How does that sound? I hope it enthuses you as much as it does me.

Yours in contemplative light,
Christianne