This evening I am scheduled for the final meeting of the discernment committee that has been meeting to help me better hear what God is calling me to, including the possibility of pursuing ordination as an Episcopalian Priest. The topic for this evening’s discussion is supposed to be ‘Obedience’.

In my past, I’ve been well known for wearing a ‘Question Authority’ t-shirt which may seem contrary to obedience. I’ve worked for some very difficult bosses whom I’ve had to obey their requests, but that I’ve disagreed with and done reluctantly after expressing my belief that their requests were not in the best interest of the organization. To the extent that we are talking about obeying humans in power structures, sums up a lot of my relationship to obedience.

Yet the discernment committee talks about obedience in a different way.

The word obedience derives from the Latin word to “hear or listen deeply.” How are the words “obedience” and “listen” related in his or her life?

If we think about listening deeply, I don’t do as a good a job as I would like. My mind is so full of ideas that it is hard to hear other ideas. Yet at the same time, it is a driving force in my poetry. How do we stop and listen to life, to the sound of the babbling brook in the woods, to the rhythm of our hearts, our breathes, the rhythm of the street, the story of the homeless person at the corner, of those suffering oppression because of the color of their skin, their gender identity, or other many other ways people are oppressed and unheard? How do we stop and listen to God’s still small voice?

For my writing, for my activism, listening needs to be a starting point, and I don’t always listen as well as I should. There have been long periods without writing poetry tied to a lack of listening.

And then, there’s God. How much of my life has been disobedient to God, not out of willfulness or disrespect, but simply out of not listening.

The discernment manual goes on to ask,

Talk about a time when you have been disobedient. What led you to act this way?

We live in a world of distraction. People want our attention, and it seems as if there just isn’t enough attention to go around. How do we tell what should get our attention? How do we re-read stories from the Bible if we think of them in terms of who is paying attention to whom, in terms of disobedience as not listening deeply?” Who pays attention and listens to the man who fell among thieves? Who listens to our needs?

How does this relate to the ideas of abundance, of active listening?

I feel like I’m rambling, which is what I’m likely to do if I feel like someone might be listening to me, so I guess I should wrap this up.

I do not listen as closely as I should, it feels to me like most people don’t, but the discernment process is, or should be, about learning to listen a little more closely to God. I hope I’ve gotten a little better at it. I hope members of the discernment committee have as well. And if someone else stops and listens a little more closely, because of my words, either this post, because of some of my poems, so much the better.