The COVID-19 pandemic continues across the globe. The man, Tom, today is leaving the hospital after nearly two weeks on a ventilator and several days added hospitalization. But a call yesterday came from an elderly person living with spouse in a lovely assisted living retirement facility. The spouse was taken to the hospital late Sunday; no temperature, no symptoms other than a slight cough but oxygen level low.
The spouse has tested positive for COVID-19 and now has pneumonia and is on a ventilator. The elderly person calling me has yet to be tested. Neither husband nor wife had left their room in several weeks, no visitors--just employees of the facility had been in their room, so obviously they were infected by an employee.
There would be no means of finding out about the spouse on ventilator in hospital if not for a granddaughter who is a medical doctor, who is getting phone answers from the treating physician. The one remaining in the retire facility apartment only sees a nurse on rare occasion, dressed in Hazmat suit, to take temperature, blood pressure, and oxygen level. It is a shame to consider the thousands of dollars spent each month to be in an assisted living facility, and to have been "sitting ducks" to become ill with coronavirus. Three weeks ago employees were not yet required to wear masks, while the elderly residents were required to remain in their rooms, on lock down.
An aspect of the process of spiritual discernment has come to me as a reminder of what the late spiritual father said to me many years ago. God gave you an abundance of brains and expects you to use them. I've been thinking of this admonition all the more in times of people becoming agitated with having to stay in, to take precautions against a highly infectious virus. Yet we are finding that the virus subsides, or not, dependent upon compliance by others; we are asked to trust and rely on guidelines that will indeed help and do work--if there is compliance by not only ourselves, but also by others.
When we find that others have their own notions and ideas of what to do, how to behave, what is valid and invalid regarding a contagious, deadly virus with many unknowns and elements of nebulous factors--we realize we must use our intelligence, and to screen what news we watch or listen to for not all is accurate. We must sift through political biases and attitudes of individuals but also information and notions that are reflect persons' virtues and vices.
I continue with a process of spiritual discernment not so much of the vacillating and variating attitudes, actions, and knowledge involving COVID-19--for that seems obvious and cut-and-dried to me--but more so with what God wills of me in what seems turning point phase of spiritual life that also very much includes the temporal and religious life.
The process of spiritual discernment involves not only prayer and information gathering of holy persons, facts, trends, history, and tradition, of Scripture and great writings of saints and those well-versed and experienced in living out temporally and spiritually--but it also includes prudence and common sense based upon temporal realities, lived experience.
Yet another aspect of spiritual discernment includes insights--that of the gift of "inner sight" given, of being aware of "red flags" and inconsistencies, and of sensing that which is the flow of God and of that which is of the foibles of human nature.
I'm information gathering, of which will include a phone consultation with a priest who will be able to guide regarding various personality types and to help assess the signals and insights I've been noticing one after another. Then I will consider along with what guidance proffered, one of three possible actions to take in this progression--in this forward-moving process of spiritual discernment.
I've been relying, also, upon Scripture of the past several days, such as this account from Acts 4:1-12. Lectio divina, or the thoughtful, prayerful, contemplative-type absorption of the Living Word of God, provides a deep grasp or understanding of what it is the Lord Himself is revealing to us, speaking to us.
From Scripture we have revealed to us what otherwise we might not understand or think about, or what aspects Christ is providing personally in answers to us that directly relate to specific, temporal-spiritual situations we are trying to discern.
"On the next day, their leaders, elders, and scribes were assembled in Jerusalem, with Annas the high priest, Caiaphas, John, Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly class. They brought [the apostles] into their presence and questioned them, 'By what power or by what name have you done this?'
"Then Peter, filled with the holy Spirit, answered them, 'Leaders of the people and elders: If we are being examined today about a good deed done to a cripple, namely, by what means he was saved, then all of you and all the people of Israel should know that it was in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarean whom you crucified,whom God raised from the dead; in His name this man stands before you healed.
"He is 'the stone rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. There is no salvation through anyone else, nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved'".
The above Scriptures tell me a great deal in the specific situation that is personal yet will be substantive in the temporal-spiritual outcomes in turning point phase in life. Lord, to Whom shall I go? You have the Words of Eternal Life! Jesus, I trust in YOU! By what power, by what name, by whom am I to do and be?
The answers to each question and of many within my mind and life continue to be revealed over quite a period of temporal-spiritual lived experience and situation. Deep within, there is a sense of what is best, what is right, what is true and authentic, real and congruent. Now am patiently waiting for one more consultation--and then to reflect upon the feedback; the input will be added to all the other signals and answers in the unfolding process of spiritual discernment.
All of God's omniscience and grace from without and within the spiritual discernment process is worthwhile; all is holy unfolding and all will be of God. There is grace in the waiting, the pondering, the praying, the listening; there is courage in the asking and courage in the outcome of action or non-action.
God bless His Real Presence in us!
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