Dear Readers,
I’m offering you something a bit different this week: a glimpse into a conversation with a friend about faith. Aimee Guest and I have been friends for two decades or so. She’s a long time homeschooler and was one of the reasons I felt encouraged to take that leap with my family years ago. We currently meet weekly to write, chat and take in some art.
While Aimee and I met at a small group at the church we attended, we go to different churches now. She had an experience a while ago that made her think perhaps we should try an experiment: instead of talking this through over coffee, we’ll do it over our newsletters.
Before you read below, I encourage you to hop over to Aimee’s post at Good and Beautiful Things and read what prompted my response below.
Dear Aimee,
I am so excited to do this experiment with you! Since reading your letter, I’ve been pondering it. I have questions (that I should be applauded for not asking we’ve seen each other in person) and I have thoughts, but of course I don’t really have answers. I just have my own reaction, my own experiences, my own relationship with Jesus.
As I began to mentally approach this letter, part of me went to potential readers of these letters. But that’s not how I want to respond. I want to imagine that we’re sitting at a coffee shop together - one where we have space to have a real conversation without fearing being overheard. That feels safe and authentic to me. So here goes…
I’m so glad Emily Freeman’s podcast prompted you to ask yourself— and me— these questions. I think the idea that we can trust ourselves (and therefore our hearts) is a key part of the freedom Jesus invites us to.
One of the first examples that comes to my mind is St. Ignatius. St. Ignatius was a soldier and his conversion came after he was hit by a cannonball. While recovering, he had two books available to read: the equivalent of a romance novel of the 16th century variety and a book about the lives of the saints. Ignatius noticed something— when he read the romance novel, he felt good for a while, but that feeling dissipated quickly. When he read about the saints, their stories stayed with him and he found himself imagining his life alongside their lives.
Two key things stand out to me about his experience: he noticed what his body was telling him and he noticed where his imagination went. Ignatius trusted his experience of Jesus, shared what he learned and equipped others to do the same.
The second example that comes to mind is my own life. As you know, I’m a practicing spiritual director now. I began receiving spiritual direction about fifteen years ago in a group setting. One thing I learned from spiritual direction groups was that we could each pray with the same verse and have completely different experiences. That gave me confidence and freedom that God wasn’t saying just one right thing in a scripture passage. Instead, the verse might suggest one thing to me and another entirely to someone else in the group.
Over time, I learned to discern God’s voice from my own. When I say I trust my heart, it’s my-heart-with-the-Holy-Spirit. Spiritual direction has been the single biggest way that I’ve moved from a head centered faith to a heart centered one. And that shift has helped me to trust my heart as one Jesus speaks to.
It has not been my experience that my heart is deceitful above all else. Instead, I would say my heart is longing above all else. Before I became a Jesus follower, my heart longed for many things, but most of all to know I was lovable and loved. It took a lot of time to let my walls down and begin to comprehend how deeply Jesus loves me. (St. Ignatius says we each need to spend two or three years in verses on God’s love for us. I imagine letting my heart marinate in that way has tenderized it and made it more trustworthy.) Now my heart longs for two main things: to be as close to Jesus as possible and to live in a way that lets others see how Jesus has influenced me.
I think the ways I think of “trust” and “heart” are more shaped by spiritual direction— especially Ignatian spiritual direction— than the fact that I became a believer later in life. While I wasn’t being taught to not trust my heart or my feelings in the church, I picked that message up just fine from culture. I learned early on to ignore my feelings in order to get along and go along.
Learning to trust our hearts is a complicated business. As people who follow Jesus, I think trusting our hearts and our own experiences is the harder path. It would be so much easier to treat faith like a checklist. But it’s the worthwhile path because it’s the one where we meet Jesus.
I’m grateful for your friendship, Aimee. I’m grateful we can ask each other hard questions and know there are no easy answers. I’m grateful for the pondering together.
Love,
Shannon
Book Corner:
What I’ve Been Reading Lately
via Library audiobook:
How to Stay Married by Harrison Scott Key
This book is getting a lot of word of mouth, but it was only so-so for me. The author’s “everything is funny” tone got old pretty quickly and I wasn’t a fan of the way he referred to non Christians as “pagans.”
via Library loan:
The End of Drum-Time by Hanna Pylväinen
This novel is set in Norway the mid 1800s. It’s the story of Willa, the pastor’s daughter, and Ivvar, who has good looks and charm. But it’s more deeply the story of traditional ways of living and being and more modern ways of living and being. It’s beautiful and heartbreaking. It’s lovely, but heavy. The writing in this book was great. The transitions from one viewpoint to another were seamless yet easy to follow. If you’re a lover of Scandinavian culture or want to think about the ways the Christians church has and hasn’t loved people well, this novel paints a picture in sharp detail.
May you have the grace this week to trust your own heart. May you have the gift of friends who ponder alongside you.
Love,
Shannon
I came over from Aimee’s letter and have so enjoyed this exchange- thanks for sharing it! I really appreciate how you describe the heart as “longing”- it made me think of St. Augustine: “our hearts are restless until they rest in you, O Lord.”
I don’t offer spiritual direction but my consulting work is adjacent to it, helping people learn to discern well and make good decisions. So often Christians are suspicious of their own desires, but appreciate the Ignatian explanation of how our desires become more drawn towards the good, and therefore more trustworthy, the more we are in the habit of living well and being conformed to Christ.
I'm impressed you two managed not to talk down any trails in real life prior to the writing. 😊
Thanks for your part in the exchange! I resonate with your response, and also am intrigued by your comment about the application of imagination for Ignatius.