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The Higher Realm of Spiritual Serendipity, and How to Get There
By Richard Eyre
Editor's note: This week we go further with the source and results of this spiritual form of serendipity or "tender mercies," and next week we will conclude the Serendipity (or first Alternative) section, and go on the following week to the second Alternative of Stewardship. Richard continues to welcome your feedback and inputs. Write to him at Richard@meridianmagazine.com . Tell him if you would be interested in receiving a copy of his book, written in Serendip (Sri Lanka), called Serendipity of the Spirit.
Today we will go a little deeper into Spiritual Serendipity and how it can change the way we live our lives.
One of the most fascinating (though little quoted and little understood) passages in the New Testament comes from the fourth Chapter of James, verses 13-15:
Go to now ye that say: today or tomorrow we will go into such a city and continue there a year and buy and sell and get gain …Ye know not what shall be on the morrow …Your life … is even a vapor.
One remarkable thing about these verses is the current sound of their terminology. With minor adjustments they seem to translate into blunt criticisms of the pseudo-positive attitude, goal-setting salesmanship, and high-achievement mentality of today. It could almost read:
Get off of it, ye who say, “Our plan calls for us to go into such and such a city tomorrow and over a year's time we will meet the sales quota and accomplish our business plan.” You can't plan or control very much of what will happen in the future. You are not of that much consequence.
The advice that follows is also as current and as important today as it was then:
For today ye ought to say “if the Lord will, we shall live, and do this or that.”
The fact is that only God knows enough about our future (or about our abilities and foreordinations) to be able to tell us what we should do and who we should be.
Was James (held by most scholars to be Jesus' brother — raised with Him in Mary's house) telling us not to set goals or make plans?
Let's defer the question for a moment — long enough to tell a story:
I was sitting in my management consulting office late one autumn day, writing a memo to a client. The Sunday before, Linda and I, in our traditional “Sunday Session” or planning time together, had looked at our long range goals and reviewed our commitments to certain things we wanted to do professionally over the next five years.
The phone rang in the outer office and my secretary buzzed me. “A President Tanner on the phone for you,” she said.
“What President Tanner?” I inquired, “President of what?” She said she didn't know so I pushed the lit-up button on the phone and said “Hello.” (Luckily I didn't say the first thing that came to mind, which was the line from the movie A Thousand Clowns where Jason Robards says, “Hello, is this someone with good news or money?”)
It was a secretary on the other end of the line who said, “Brother Eyre, President Tanner would like to speak with you.”
“Which President Tanner?” I asked again.
“The President Tanner,” the voice said icily. The next thing I heard was President N. Eldon Tanner's deep, friendly voice.
“President Kimball has asked me to speak with you about something, Brother Eyre. Can you come in with Sister Eyre to see me this afternoon?”
I was, at that time, chairing the Church's committee on the U.S. Bicentennial, so I assumed he wanted a report — although I had never reported to him before, and it seemed strange that he'd requested that Sister Eyre accompany me.
When we arrived that afternoon, President Tanner, in his charming, gracious way, engaged us in pleasant small talk for 30 or 40 minutes (with me becoming more curious and more worried every minute). Finally, amidst questions about family and general well-being, he gave the first clue.
“President Kimball wanted me to ask how your business would fare if you were to leave it for three years.”
(Incidentally, my response — the business would probably collapse — didn't give him the slightest pause in the other question he had in mind and calling us to preside over a mission.)
Instantly, on that occasion,
Our “five year plans”
Vanished like the vapor spoken of by James.
I suppose the experience could be called Serendipity
Because it was a happy surprise,
And it transcended what we had planned.
But is it only major events, like a call from the Lord,
That alter our aims, puncture our plans?
Aren't there smaller things — every day,
Unexpected, impossible to anticipate
Situations, events, occurrences
(and also feelings, nudges, and impressions) —
That enter our lives almost every day?
We really don't know what the morrow will hold!
The question is not whether we can anticipate, predict,
and plan everything
(we can't).
The question is whether we will try to avoid, ignore, or push aside
Things not of our making, things which don't quite fit
With our plans.
I could have said no to the life-changing call
(“No, thanks anyway, it doesn't fit into my five year goals.”)
But to do so, I would have had to commit the absurdity
Of pushing plans instead of following feelings —
Feelings of the spirit which come as soft, silent,
Inner suggestions
And which may be subtle, unexpected answers
To the questions of our prayers.
But back to the question we left hanging:
Is James telling us we are unwise
to set goals and make plans?
Is life a card game with results based mainly on
The luck of the draw?
Or a chess game where we are the pawns
Moved only by God's will?
No.
But life might well be though of
(by a believer in a personal God who foreordains
And guides us)
As a game of “ask and answer.”
We ask for insight and direction to know His will
And He answers — always —
But not always in the way or at the time or the place
We expect.
The answers,
(always in God's language of inspiration:
Impression, feelings and light)
May come quickly and directly to us as we ask and analyze,
Ponder and plan;
Or they may come later
In unexpected formats at unexpected moments.
These answers are missed by those with too rigid plans
(because they will not acknowledge an answer
That is outside of their plans).
These answers are also missed by those without any goals
Or plans
(because they have not thought enough to be able to recognize
The answers when the come).
The Game of "Ask and Answer"
In this game, the wise player connects
The answers that come with the goals he has set and the
Questions he has asked.
he game is won by thinking hard about the right goals
And the right questions
And finding (or recognizing when they faintly appear)
The right answers.
So … ask and answer is a difficult game
But an uncommonly rewarding one.
And the winners are the thinkers, the askers,
And the listeners.
Think of it for a moment in terms of realms:
There is a low realm
In which people float, sometimes passive,
Sometimes resentful,
Letting the world push, mold, shove and shape them.
As it will,
Following the course of least resistance…
Going nowhere, slowly.
There is a middle realm
Where people do their best to take control
Of themselves and their destinies
Shaping events, setting goals, making things happen;
Drawing a blueprint and then building it.
Most people live somewhere between these first two realms. This fact started to become clear to me as a university student. A man much wiser than I asked me why I was majoring in a certain subject. I replied that it was because my uncle had that profession. He said, “So what?” I said I wanted the same profession. He said, “Why?” I said, “Because I like my uncle.”
He then told me that most of the world makes decisions that way. We drift into choices because someone else has already made them — we take a path because it is the most known and least threatening to us at the time.
We forget about things like prayer and guidance until life delivers us a dire dilemma or a clear crisis. Without these, we just float with the current in pleasant waters, thinking very little about where we're going. Before long we find ourselves believing that the main goal is to avoid the rapids (which may be the only exciting part of the trip).
Now,
There is a higher realm, higher than the low,
And higher than the middle.
It involves:
- Prayerfully, carefully setting goals — asking and striving to have inspiration to make them conform to God's will. (Sometimes God “gives us a light” even as we pray.)
- Watching for answers, further light and knowledge, nudges that make our destiny, our foreordination, and God's will more clear — and then accepting them, acting on them, from moment to moment, and changing our goals when necessary to fit the clearer view.
Sometimes God delays the light in order to give us faith,
Not answering at the moment we ask, but later,
Wanting us to be able both to wait and to notice.
The beauty of having faith to ask and to follow
Shine through the well known verse:
“I Said to the man who stood at the gate of years
‘Give me light that I might step forth'
And the voice came back to me,
‘Step our into the darkness and put your hand in
Mine, for that
Is better than a light,
And surer than a known way.'”
We said earlier that “watch and think” was the key to
Regular serendipity.
The two work methodology for spiritual serendipity is
“Watch and Pray.”
Answers come sometimes as we pray,
Sometimes later as we watch.
The earlier story, of our mission call, was intended to illustrate that answers sometimes seem to come before the questions are asked — that they come as we “watch,” not as we “pray” — in the form of unexpected, life-changing surprise. As I think back, however, part of the answer (as often happens) did come as I prayed and pondered and planned. I remember a powerful Priesthood blessing, many years before our call — a blessing I had asked for at a time when we were trying to sort out and plan our future — a blessing that had said, in part, “Prepare yourself for periods of full-time Church service.”
How much of the answer and how many of the answers God gives us as we “pray” and how many as we “watch” is up to His wisdom. A friend of mine in graduate school at Harvard became so concerned about knowing what to do with his life, with knowing God's will and understanding His foreordination that he dropped out of classes (and out of sight) for several days to fast and pray about what he was to do with his life. He said he got some feelings and some glimpses but mostly he got the answer “keep asking — I'll tell you more in my own way in my own time when you are ready to understand more.”
So he went on — much like the locomotive engineer who was asked, “How do you drive this massive train at 80 miles an hour in the dead of night when your headlight only lights the track for 200 yards?” “I have found,” the engineer said, “that when I reach the end of the 200 yards, I see clearly the next 200 yards.”
The point is that most guidance come at one of two times:
As we pray (and plan and ponder and
Struggle to understand),
And as we watch (and are sagacious and sensitive and open to
Answers in surprise and subtle form).
This higher realm of guidance involves a whole new
Approach to life —
And approach where we set long and short range goals,
But watch and pray for the added insight
And the expanded opportunity that may lift those goals
To higher and happier and healthier levels.
It is an approach that requires
Frequent re-evaluation, meditation,
Prayer.
It is an approach exclusively available to those who believe
In a personal God who can and will give light
And in the fact that we ourselves possess
Far too little knowledge, far too narrow an understanding
To adequately guide ourselves.
All who believe in these two things (God's love and
Our own inadequacy)
Have the reason for wanting
And the
Perspective required for gaining…
Spiritual serendipity.
The Source of Spiritual Serendipity (The Spirit)
We have defined spiritual serendipity as
A feeling, a quality, an attitude, a condition of our spirit
(calm, aware, peaceful, still, sure)
That makes us more receptive to His spirit.
So the Holy Ghost is not only the source of that feeling or
Condition but the result of it…right?
If A = spiritual serendipity and B = the Holy Ghost then
A brings B… right?
Wrong and backwards!
The answers and insights we are looking for (call them “C”)
Are often already here — around us and inside us —
Although sometimes subtle, sometimes hidden
By the dark or by the veil.
Serendipity of our spirits lets us see them, find them,
Feel them.
And it is the Holy Ghost that gives this serendipity
To our spirits.
So: B brings A, which reveals C!
The Holy Ghost is the source of spiritual serendipity.
Let us return to Parley P. Pratt's discussion
Of the spirit and of our own Godlike attributes.
He said that we
“Possess every organ, attribute, sense, sympathy,
And affection
That is possessed by God Himself. But these are possessed
By man in a rudimental state…these attributes are in
Embryo…they resemble a bud… which gradually
Develops into bloom.”
Elder Pratt makes it clear that the force that quickens
All these faculties, that enlarges, expands, and purifies
All the natural passions
Is the Gift of the Holy Ghost.
The Holy Ghost is the source of the serendipity
Of our spirits.
Perhaps there are other partial sources:
Deep meditation may bring a certain stillness
And serendipity, making one prone
To unexpected discoveries about self and life.
And a slow, measurable “alpha state” brain wave pattern,
Which brightens creativity and sharpens insight,
Can be obtained through techniques ranging from
Breathing discipline to hypnosis.
But the Holy Ghost is the complete source,
The reliable source,
The true source.
Quick,
Another story now to show serendipity of the spirit
In the small things of day-to-day.
During our second experience living in England (as a private citizen rather than a mission president), I set out one day during a school vacation to take my three teenage daughters on a short trip to France. We had a list of things we wanted to see and do, and I had in mind a couple of topics I wanted to discuss with the girls in the privacy of our trip. We drove all the way to Dover on England's south coast, lined up for the ferry and got all the way to the passport checkpoint, twenty feet from the ferry ramp, only to discover that under a new ruling by the French government, we had to have visas.
Disappointment and “we've wasted our vacation” soon gave way to youthful optimism and to the notion of serendipity (which, you may have guessed, is not an unknown concept in our family). We turned around and set out along the south coast of England. Our “anti-goal” was now to make discoveries. In an obscure antique store in Folkstone we found a wonderful bargain on the type of dining room table we had dreamed of. In Tunbridge Wells we found the remarkable old Wellington Hotel and stayed overnight in a wonderful Victorian room. In an Indian Tandori restaurant we discovered a cuisine totally new to the girls and made friends with two British couples who told us about the Wellington Hotel and showed interest in the Church.
Later, on a long, dark stretch of road, something one of the girls said started a spontaneous, free discussion of marriage relationships and I had the opportunity to discuss exactly the points that I had hoped to bring up in France.
Still later, on a train, we got acquainted with a Scottish man and his two small children. I felt impressed to get his address so we could correspond further but something else came up and he got off the train before we had the opportunity. I repented for not following my impression and asked in prayer for another chance. In the next city we chanced upon him in a museum, talked again and exchanged addresses and phone numbers.
The whole two days were filled with happy surprises. Chances to teach, chances to make new friends, and serendipitous discoveries occurred on many levels.
And…we can go to France some other time.
What is the point of these stories,
Other than reiteration and further examples
Of the pleasure and promise
Of serendipity of the spirit?
The point is the source.
When we ask for the Holy Ghost to guide our growth,
To give us wings of thoughtful awareness,
We connect ourselves to the source-current
Of spiritual serendipity.
Next week, we will ask the question of HOW.
How does one learn to better watch,
And to better pray,
And thus find more Spiritual Serendipity every day?
The discussion of Serendipity will continue here in this column next week.
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