Let me wax a little spiritual here and share something I wrote years ago when I was a Jesuit. This might sound boring and religious for others, so let me warn you ahead of time. This is just a snippet from a reflection paper I made. If you want to add to it, or if you have your own reflection, please feel free to add in the comments section below. Let us continue the conversation.

“The man/woman of the Spiritual Exercises is by vocation a man/woman called to be a “contemplative-in-action”.

Ignatius urges those who follow his spirituality that there is a need for formal personal prayer. This is so that familiarity with God is fostered. Need for personal prayer is exhorted in both the Spiritual Exercises and the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus.

This week, we will be talking about the actual steps in making decisions. While these are not foolproof, you are assured of making an informed decision when you follow these steps. Remember, intuition comes in all steps of this decision-making process. It is important to allow your gut feel to guide you as well.

If you’ve ever said, “I just knew it was a good thing” or “I can not explain why, but I just had to do it” or “It just felt right” or “I had a really bad feeling about it”, then you’ve experienced what some people would call “intuition” or “gut feel”.

It’s that primary, basic, instinctive system meant to keep us out of harm’s way, even protecting us from accidents, or from marrying the wrong person. We’ve heard stories of people deciding at the last minute to cancel their flights on airplanes that eventually crash, or making choices that years down the line make perfect sense even when they didn’t when they first made it. Our gut instinct allow us to “know” more than we can ever explain logically.

Last week, we talked about Discernment and how it is about honing a gut feel of what is right and wrong. Two weeks from now, I am going to talk about HOW to hone this gut feel exactly. After that I am going to discuss specific steps to make well-discerned decisions. For today’s post however, let’s just step back and talk about Decision Making in general. Let this be Decision Making 101.

I apologize for the rather longish post but it’s really worth the read. A couple of weeks ago, Benedict XVI lead World Youth Day 2008 in Sydney, Australia. This is not from Benedict but from his predecessor, John Paul II, who came to the Philippines several times to visit this “only Christian country in Asia”. I read this many years ago, but I think the late Pope’s message is still very relevant until now. He was dead-on in his assessment.

Last week, I talked about Living in the Tensions in terms of accepting the paradoxes of life. This week, let’s talk about living in the tensions in terms of it being a prerequisite for discernment.

St. Ignatius of Loyola has another word for living in the tensions: indifference. He said that we should be able to to hold ourselves in balance: not putting ourselves in one or the other choice or extreme. God’s will is said to be found in the tensions.

This post is for my mom who is one of the regular readers of this blog. Pray-as-You-Go is a really cool website for those who want to pray but do not have the time, or those who are in need of a spiritual break, religious fix or devotional energizer (whew!) in the middle of a busy day.

It is by Jesuit Media Initiatives, which is like the British version of our JesCom here.

Last week, I talked about the 20 Things I Learned in Life. I forgot to put in that list one really important lesson I have also learned. It’s good though because then it gives me a chance to talk about that topic today.

This lesson is something I learned in the Novitiate of the Society of Jesus, and it was taught to me/us by the great Fr. Benny Calpotura. He calls it “living in the tensions”. The concept is similar to Parmenides’ Golden Mean (check that out yourself in wikipedia! hehe).

I first heard this story from a Jesuit priest when I was in High School. I remember he asked the choir to play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star before he said the homily. I also remember Fr. Bill Abbott, SJ sending me an email and ending with this story when I was teaching in Cebu. I got this a third time in the email the other day. Third time’s the charm, and so I’m posting it:

Wishing to encourage her young son’s progress on the piano, a mother took her boy to a Paderewski concert. After they were seated, the mother spotted an old friend in the audience and walked down the aisle to greet her.

Here is a summary of major lessons I’ve learned in my life (so far). I know there should be more but I’m keeping the list to 20 so I don’t tangent to other things.

Read on and leave me a message below if you can relate or if you want to add your own lessons.

1. Faith is believing that something bigger than us holds us in the palm of His hands. Hope is the ability to wait things out for this kind of faith to kick in.

2. If you worry, you didn’t pray. If you pray, don’t worry. But even if you really worry, it’s ok.

3. It will always turn out better. Always.