Thus, in this book we’ll apply the oracular arts of sign-reading to the search for authenticity, deciphering the calls that issue from our lives, that point us toward action, and that come in a tremendous variety of forms, all of which should be considered as divining rods to help us locate the underground streams, so we’ll know where to dig:
* A dream that keeps coming back, or what it is that pursues you in dreams;
* A symptom that recurs, and is exquisitely metaphoric;
* A conversation you overhear in a restaurant that seems as though it was spoken directly to you;
* Where there’s friction in your life, for, as in nature, that’s where changes are taking place, or trying to. Where, for example, your words and deeds don’t match, where you fight with others and what you’re after, where longing rubs against security;
* Song lyrics you can’t get out of your head;
* Instructions that arise unbidden from the silence of meditation;
* An ultimatum your partner gives you: either go to couples-counseling or the relationship is over;
* What you would preach about if they gave you an hour of prime-time;
* What decisions need to be made in your life right now; what issues are hanging in mid-air waiting for resolution.
What we’re after in reading all these signs is the power inherent in simply naming things, for what we cannot name is lost to us, and what we can name is coaxed into life. The danger, of course, is over-explanation, over-interpretation, which, as the playwright Eugene Ionesco once said, “separates us from astonishment.”
Calls are essentially questions. They aren’t questions you necessarily need to answer outright, but questions to respond to, expose yourself to, kneel before. You don’t want an answer you can put in a box and set on a shelf. You want a question that will become a chariot to carry you across the breadth of your life, a question that will offer you a lifetime of pondering, that will lead you toward what you need to know for your integrity, draw to you what you need for your journey, and help you understand what it means to burst at the seams.
These will be questions, furthermore, that will lead you to others whose lives are propelled by the same questions, and from each you will receive “oh, never an answer,” as writer P.L. Travers says, “but a spark of instructive fire.”
A PATH BETWEEN TWO QUESTIONS
The critical challenge of discernment----knowing whether our calls are true or false, knowing how and when to respond to them, knowing whether a call really belongs to us or not----requires that we also tread a path between two essential questions: one, “What is right for me?” and two, “Where am I willing to be led?” Discernment also requires that we ask these two questions continually and devotedly, in hopes that by doing so Providence will, in due course, be alerted to our desires and answers will find us.
In stone sculpting, a stone is tapped lightly with a hammer to see if it’s “true.” If it emits a dull tone, there are faults running through it that will crack the stone apart when you work on it. A clear ring, one that hangs in the air for a moment, means it’s true, has integrity, and, most importantly, will hold up under repeated blows. We must know this same information about our callings, and it takes continual “tapping in” to do so.
