Faith is a curious thing when the central focus of your faith is ripped from your grasp and you are challenged to experience your faith in new and different ways. To be honest with you much of my faith has been rooted in the liturgy and my service to the Church whether as a verger, vestry member, choir member, congregant, or any number of other roles in which I have served. In March, when our in-person gatherings as a congregation ended, I was left with a void. A void that forced me to reevaluate many things in life including how I practice my faith.
I find myself in period of reflection. I have found the time to allow my mind to freely move from topic to topic—family, marriage, work, retirement, health, and faith. I have come to realize how little time I’ve had in the past during ‘normal’ times to really think deeply on a variety of topics. For all its downfalls, the novel coronavirus has forced me to ground myself again. On one hand joyful for this time, on the other guilty for feeling selfish. I grapple with tension of the opposing forces of thankfulness and sorrow—thankful for this space that has been given to me for reflection, sorrow for the endless tragedies that so many are facing. I’ve asked myself how do I practice my faith alone? At a distance? Virtually? How do I connect with God in ways I have struggled to outside of my faith community, my church, my church family?
To help answer these questions I turn to the practice of spiritual discernment, something I learned during my tenure on the search committee for our rector. I learned to rest in the uncertainty, to resist the temptation to solve the problem. To probe to understand the question being asked. Spiritual discernment requires you to filter out the noise, to listen for the clearest signal, like tuning in a radio station. You must start by creating the environment needed to hear what God is trying to tell you. To open your heart.
I don’t have the answers yet, but I sense that God is creating that space for me now. I am listening. I am working to build a new relationship with God, one that I believe will be even deeper. As with this pandemic, I do not know where this path is taking me, what the ‘new normal’ might be. But I have faith that God will tell me the way, I have only to listen.
Andrew Eastman
