On listening and leadings

So as I mentioned in the first post it seemed like coincidence that Google driving directions would take me past this temple. But as the days and weeks passed I started to feel more powerfully drawn to check it out - to see what this Shim Gum Do thing was about.

And as time has passed, decisions that I've made around it have led to other coincidences; some so unlikely that I’m starting to think that I may have to remove the word 'coincidence' from my vocabulary. In one particularly stunning example, I was meeting with a friend who teaches yoga to work out some stretches to compensate for the strange new movements I'm inflicting on my body with this Korean zen sword work.

So she could get a better sense of what muscles and tendons I should be working on, she asked me to demonstrate the techniques I was working on. While doing this we were observed by a passerby  (it was basically in plain view of the street) who had studied Japanese sword techniques for more than 20 years. He gave me some pointers in Russian - accented English while talking about how seeing my basic drills took him back to when he was just a beginner.

All of that was incredible enough, but I wasn't even supposed to be in Boston that day. That was the weekend of a spiritual retreat for Young Adult Friends of the New England Yearly Meeting. I’d generally been planning on spending the weekend in Providence with Friends, attending workshops, catching up and enjoying the moments both serious and whimsical that I've found at these retreats recently, as well as way back when I was in high school.

But because I was new to the practice of Shim Gum Do (and because I'd missed one of the weeknight classes) I'd decided it was important for me to go back to Boston Friday night (and it was _late_) so I could go to Shim Gum Do in the morning - which, in turn, made the meet-up with my yoga-teaching friend possible.

Sunrise at Providence Monthly Meeting 

This is an extreme example, but these sorts of things seem to be happening with some frequency. So I wonder about describing what I'm feeling as a leading to pursue this study. But “leading” can be a loaded term for Quaker practice. Sometimes it implies a real spiritual calling to do something that can and should be tested by the wisdom of the elders of the Quaker community before taking action (usually something drastic like quitting a job or going to do relief work in a war zone or getting married or other equally catastrophic life changing events).

I also wonder if these ‘leadings’ are coming to me now because I  am more open to them, because I am somehow now more ready for the tasks that may be ahead. Or perhaps the calls have always been there and I just haven't been able to hear or recognize them.

When I lived in Washington D.C., I remember occasionally being amused by the pigeons and other birds that sometimes found their way into Union Station. But it wasn’t until I was waiting for an Amtrak departure at something like 2 a.m. that I noticed I could hear them cooing and chirping up in the rafters. With all the rush and bustle during the day, the quiet sounds of the birds were inaudible.*

So perhaps this voice that seems at times like It’s shouting for me to do something, to start down this path with an unknown destination, is really just the “still small voice of God” that we Quakers listen for, hoping for guidance. And perhaps it just seems so loud because It’s spent so many years trying to be heard over all the other distractions with which I had filled my life. 

I definitely have fewer distractions and impediments to listening today. And as I've said before, I’m also trying to pay attention. I expect that helps as well.

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*I stumbled across the idea of a spiritual message as birdsong in a noisy background in my reading a long time ago and it's stuck with me since. The specific image I read was that of songbirds in a factory, I think. But as a nearly identical set of circumstances happened to me in the Amtrak/Metro station, I went with that one above. It’s not an original metaphor but it did happen.