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 , March 2003
I once
worked with a woman who was considering entering a religious
community. She had been in regular spiritual direction for
some time and had begun to identify in herself a desire to
give her life more fully to her relationship with God. She
recognized natural gifts and tendencies that seemed to fit
with vowed religious life and wanted to look more closely
at that option.
She considered
her gifts for ministry and community living and identified
five religious communities that seemed to reflect those gifts
in their apostolic and communal lives. She decided to visit
with each of the communities in order to gain more personal
experience of each of them. After she visited the fourth community
she came back to me and said, “I'm done. I have enough
information. I think that I’m ready to take the next
step.”
Discernment
is meant to move us toward an action, a step, a choice that
reflects God’s desires for us as well as the person that
we are. One of the temptations that we face in moving forward
is to hang out indefinitely in the information-gathering stage.
We could spend a lifetime gathering more and more information
and never really move toward a decision or a choice.
This dynamic,
while perhaps comfortable for us, keeps us stalled and unable
to move. Knowing when enough is enough is an important element
in a discernment process. This doesn’t mean that we will
have gathered all the information available or that there
will never be new information made available to us, but it
does mean that we will have gathered enough information to
move to the next step of considering in a rational and prayerful
manner the information at hand.
Considering
the pros and cons of the information at hand is an important
element in our discernment process. It’s in that process
that we see that indeed no option is perfect and each option
has both positive and negative aspects about it. That’s
simply the nature of life.
Making
a list of each option’s pros and cons can be a helpful
tool in gaining greater clarity about each of the options
and your attractions or resistances to them. Weighing the
pros and cons involves paying attention to both the “hard”
and the “soft” data; it means paying attention to
both the facts and to what is going on inside of you in relationship
to those facts.
It continues
to be important to be in regular conversation with people
who know you and who will be honest with you in both supportive
and challenging ways. Talk through with your spiritual director
or a trusted friend what you’re considering in the pros
and cons of each option. Remember, too, to talk with others
who are involved in or affected by the decision at hand.
Weighing
the pros and cons also means that you're able to see past
the “quantity” of each in order to get to the “quality”
of each. You may have a list of pros a mile long and just
a few cons for one option, but the cons may weigh more for
you because of their value or what they mean in your life.
Prayer
and interior freedom help us to remain open to the information
that our pros and cons provide for us.
In the
next issue of The More, we'll continue to look at helpful
ways of considering the pros and cons of the different options
in a discernment process.
— Sister Mary Pellegrino
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