The Most Important Thing

Last week, I met with my spiritual director.  Throughout the month as I await my meeting, I scribble down thoughts in my journal of things I might want to talk about with her.  Yet, as the time arises, I ask myself:

What is the most important thing we should be talking about? 

The goal of meeting with my spiritual director is to discuss how I’m seeing God at work in my life.  So I’m learning to slow down, attune to my own life, how he’s working internally and externally.  I’m getting used to open ending questions swirling in my mind.

• What is the Lord revealing to me about myself?
• What questions am I entering more deeply?
• What is the Lord saying to me presently?
• What images center me and ground me right now?

So as I walk into the parlor at Tabernacle Presbyterian at the corner of 34th and Central, I anticipate discussing the most important thing.  Currently it’s an image about the tree in Psalm 1, that’s planted by steams of water, that bears its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither.

As the conversation starts, we discuss this image, and keep coming back to it throughout the conversation.  I’m being invited into a more hidden life, a life whose roots keep going deeper and deeper into the soil.  I’m to be grounded, not moving, being tempted to engage in a more active life.  I am to appreciate, to find joy and contentment in staying right where I am.

Peace emerges as the most important thing is discussed.  We end our conversation as I make an observation that the theme of “prophet” has come up again and again this month and I’m wondering how I may be encouraged to take on an unpopular, but necessary stance.  No answers, just a large question to be lived–and to figure out what this means day by day.

What is the most important thing you should be discussing?  

Who do you discuss the most important thing with?