Is that you, God?

Or is it me, Margaret? I mean Bethany.

The first chapter of Lerita Coleman Brown’s book What Makes You Come Alive: A Spiritual Walk with Howard Thurman introduces Howard Thurman the person. Reading the chapter lectio-divina style, what sparked for me was a sense of ongoing connection and communication with God in the midst of daily life. 

A few phrases that stood out: 

-ordinary mystics as people who sense the presence of God, hear a guiding voice, or have a transcendent experience of oneness 
-living with a sensitivity to the divine presence and responding to God’s ardent longing and enthusiastic invitation to a deeper relationship at this very moment 
-leading of Spirit
-still small voice 
-a ‘knowingness’ - an urge, gut feeling, or intuition - it never leads us astray.

You get the idea.

I tried to think of an embodied activity in response, but got the sense that instead of leading to one specific action, this would serve as the foundation for the rest of my Howard Thurman Experiments; to be in an ongoing conversation with God, as we live out various answers to the question: What do we want to do together? (embodying what each subsequent chapter brings up).

Holding this idea of “hearing from God” in mind over the past couple weeks made me realize that while on one hand I have heard from God a lot in my life, I also hold some suspicion and a healthy amount of doubt around it - which in part comes from some of the other people I’ve known who talk about hearing from God. (Yeah, shots fired.)

We all know that guy who told the woman he was interested in that God told him they should date. (I knew him in seminary.) And yet somehow, bafflingly, God did not give her that same message. 

So I always want to acknowledge self-interest as an operative. At the same time, more and more I’m realizing that my internal nudges (at least when they’re coming from my true self) are not necessarily distinct from nudges of the Spirit. I don’t want to draw a stark line between the two.

And that’s the key question, I think. Is the nudge coming from that deep place of stillness in me, or is it coming from a place of reactivity, or from my woundedness?

An everyday example will make this more concrete.

In an email I received recently, the person wrote something that made me really angry. And I immediately came up with the perfect reply that would demolish the person, and I really wanted to send it. (Trust me, the reply was so fittingly cutting! Brutal in a satisfyingly vindictive way! I can truly be the worst.)

Well, that was an internal nudge - an inclination, an urge…right? But it was clear that it was NOT a nudge of the Spirit. Why? For two reasons:
1) because it was contrary to what I know about God (particularly through Jesus)
2) the quality of the impulse felt different. 

In terms of 1, intentionally hurting someone for the sake of my own ego is straightforwardly not Jesus-y. But in terms of 2, how it feels different, is hard to classify; the best I can do is to say it comes from a shallower place instead of a deeper one.

Then I felt another nudge to ask Michael if he thought I should send that part in my reply. Honestly, I already knew I shouldn’t. I knew it was coming from a hurt part of me, and not from my compassionate, open-hearted true self. And I knew Michael (my Enneagram 9 spouse who has a real gift for helping me be less of a jerk in emails and in general) would tell me I shouldn’t send that part. 

The nudge of the Spirit opens things up, and invites me to look deeper. In this case I felt the Spirit asking the question: Where is this anger really coming from? 

And I realized, as I often do, that my strong anger reaction is rooted in shame. That awareness invited me to attend to that shame together with God, as we brought it into the light for some care and healing.

These can be helpful guidelines when trying to discern whether something I think is God’s voice actually is: 1) does it fit with what I know of God’s character, and, 2) is it coming from that true place of depth and stillness in me? For the first one I can find it helpful to invite a trusted friend or two into the conversation to discern with me, and to get their feedback. But as for that second one, ultimately I’m the only one who can perceive it.  

I guess that’s some encouragement both to remain grateful for friends whose wisdom I trust, and also to slow down enough to stay connected to my true self.

But honestly, usually these Spirit-nudges are about relatively small, morally neutral actions, like - give that person a call, or let’s sit with this feeling for a bit, or try out that new activity, or take a risk and be vulnerable in this moment, or stop and be still, or whatever. They don’t always require a lot of scrutiny.

They still feel weird though. Like, is God really telling me to go to the park and draw a tree? Or to check in on my friend? Or to sign up for that tap dancing class? Or to give that Lyft driver a $50 tip? Or to take a closer look at that flower? Or to give that shoeless woman my shoes?

Maybe, maybe not. It usually does feel real in the moment, but I would probably not claim 100% certainty. And I’m still trying to decide whether that matters.

I feel both envy and criticalness toward people who follow these nudges with complete assurance that they’re hearing from God. I’m not sure I’ll ever claim that certainty, but I also don’t want that to keep me from continuing to pay attention and follow the Spirit nudges as I encounter them.

I’d love to hear how you’ve learned to distinguish God’s voice from the other voices, too. What is that like for you?