LISTENING TO OUR KNOWING
Public Domain.
My feet pounded the packed earth of the trail, each one placed to avoid tree roots and rocks. While my pace at this point was objectively slow, it was among the fastest I’d ever managed personally. It’s hard work physically, but complete bliss mentally. Scanning the trail up ahead for obstacles while navigating the ones at my feet occupied my whole brain and there was little space left for anything else. My senses were completely engaged. In other words, trail running equals rare moments of mental peace. The heat of the sun beats down me briefly in a clearing, and then the temperature drops a few degrees as the shade slides back over me.
If you’d have asked me even a year ago if I thought I’d like to trail run, I would have laughed at you. Just goes to show even in your forties you shouldn’t assume you don’t like things if you haven’t tried them. It’s also true that a year ago I wasn’t ready to run. I was talking with a friend who’d started running, and I’d commented how I was sure I’d never want to run: I didn’t like running, it was pointless, hiking was plenty of adventure for me. She replied she’d once felt the same, but at some point her body wanted to go faster.
That reply stuck with me, and some months later, I experienced something similar. What if I could go faster? Would I enjoy it? So this past spring I decided to try, and I loved it. I’m getting stronger and faster every time I go out, and it got me thinking: what if I hadn’t listened to my body?
In the introduction to my book, Inward Apocalypse: Uncovering a Faith for the Common Good, I wrote: "If we are created in God’s image, then learning to listen to our knowing is learning to listen to God and we can trust that." (1) When I posted that pull quote on social media while generating early awareness for the book, I got some push back on my Facebook page. This person posted, “To paraphrase Luther: I farted, you farted, we all farted, so did God fart?” And then followed up with “Absolutely not.” In other words, we can’t trust ourselves or our bodies.
As strange as the example was, I pushed back because after all, if we believe in the incarnation, then Jesus was fully human and absolutely did fart–and poop, and pee, and got hungry, tired, and probably even cranky. Believing Jesus to be fully human is to believe he encountered a fully human experience, even experiencing things we’d rather not talk about at times.
My questioner sprang back with a comment that Jesus didn’t offer his bodily functions as sources of divine revelation. This was some months ago, but it stuck in my head. While I can’t speak for the intent behind this person’s comments, it brought to mind other things I’ve been taught in the past–especially as a woman–about not trusting myself.
I grew up with the idea that women couldn’t be president. After all, when she got PMS, she might just nuke Russia or something. Women were portrayed in the church and in the world as untrustworthy at all levels, driven by hormones, and unable to make competent solo decisions (much less lead others). It’s not all that surprising that it’s barely longer than my lifetime since it was revolutionary that a woman completed the Boston Marathon. People still believed as recently as the 1960’s that women couldn’t possibly run long distances. It wasn’t until 1972 (2) that women were officially allowed to compete: we just marked the 50th anniversary this year. Some of the women who ran that first official race came to the marathon to cheer on today's runners. Much like the civil rights movement for racial equality, many try to consign all of this struggle for progress to the distant past when in fact all of this is in living memory. This landmark inclusion of women in the marathon preceded the equal credit act of 1974 (3) allowing women to open their own credit lines without a male co-signer.
And of course, many churches taught and still teach that women can’t lead, can’t be ordained, and shouldn’t be preaching. In my book, I recount how Deborah’s leadership (4) was looked down upon or even viewed as a curse against Israel because the men had failed to do what was their rightful job. Each time I looked at a woman as exemplary in Scripture, people were on hand to take her away from me.
However, if we really believe we are all created in God’s image–male, female, non-binary–then none of us have to look outside of ourselves for some great external calling. Now this statement does assume a few things: it assumes I’m talking to people who want to better the world and are trying to figure out how they fit into the scheme of things. It assumes the context of a community of faith where we are living our lives in relationship with others and our community has shared texts and creeds that serve as guideposts. It assumes things such as that I can use my natural talents and affinities (such as writing) for the common good. I don’t have to become a pastor or lead a non-profit, or go overseas. Problems with colonization and foreign missions aside for this story, I used to believe I had to be a missionary to serve God based on things I was taught as a child even though I didn’t want to do that.
I was taught God’s call was something I had to seek out, something that someone else might identify in me, but it would be hard and something I didn’t want to do. And yet I was supposed to find the thing I would suffer doing and go do that for the glory of God. Apparently the abundant life God desired for me was somehow synonymous only with suffering and not finding how I could personally thrive and then contribute to the thriving of others. I wasn’t supposed to trust what I knew, and what I knew I could do. I certainly wouldn’t have been on the trail that day, pondering all of this as my feet drummed a rhythmic tread, arms pumping out the time, and my upper body stacked strongly over my core as everything came together.
Back in my days working at non-denominational evangelical-type churches, the pastor once wanted all of the people in the college and high school group to take a “spiritual gifts profile.” Sort of a Jesus-y Meyers-Briggs, but less helpful, these tests tried to help people find their callings. I remember one conversation with a young woman who was surprised at her results. She wasn’t surprised at what the test had said about her gifts, rather she was surprised she had gifts at all. I asked her if she thought God had left her out. She paused and said she’d never thought of it that way before.
I don’t remember if she was at the end of high school or beginning of college at that point in her life, but she’d gotten that far without ever realizing there were things about herself she could trust because she was created in God’s image.
What I find most dangerous about these teachings–or lack of teachings–about innate gifting was at the same time, people were being taught to try to hear the voice of God. I remember one friend I was shopping with years ago praying about whether or not she could buy a sweater she liked. And while not everyone takes these teachings that far, it is sort of emblematic of an overall concept that we are bad, unworthy, and untrustworthy and must suppress ourselves and only listen to God.
There are many problems with this, but one of the ways this manifests is people attribute whatever they feel like they “should” do to God. Of course, this leaves very little room for error because after all, God can’t be wrong. In her book, My Body is Not a Prayer Request, Amy Kenny talks about the way prayer was weaponized against her as a disabled person and even became a vehicle for spiritual abuse and trauma. But the people perpetrating this refused to see it as such, because after all “God told me to pray for you.” And God can’t be wrong, right?
This is just one example of how I believe attributing these things we feel we “should” do to the voice of God is dangerous–far more dangerous than the language of learning to trust our knowing. Are we going to make mistakes? Sure. Is it dangerous to think everything you think of is divinely inspired? Absolutely. But on the other side, if we trust nothing about ourselves, we will miss our own lives, potential, and ability to contribute to the world.
We also miss the things our bodies themselves are trying to tell us. I found it ironic that the commenter on my post used farting as an example. After all, the gaseous content in our bodies actually has a lot to say to us sometimes about the health of our literal guts and the substance of our diets. Our bodies are marvelously equipped to provide us feedback so we can make adjustments. And we should absolutely listen to them.
Of course, sometimes it could just mean we ate too many beans. It takes practice to determine what exactly our bodies are saying to us and whether it’s a short-term comment on supper, or an indicator of something larger that needs adjusting. But I shudder to think where I would be right now if I hadn’t listened to my body telling me to walk, telling me to hike, to backpack, to sleep outside more, and ultimately, to run.
When I speak of learning to listen to your knowing, and even seeing that as listening to God-who-created-you, I’m leaning on Glennon Doyle’s discussion of finding your knowing in her book Untamed. Like listening to the health of our bodies, it is something that takes practice. Ultimately, it is trusting you can discover who you are and who you are meant to be by inward reflection and journeying. It’s discovering delight in things you never thought you’d enjoy or perhaps have been told you shouldn’t or couldn’t do. It is looking for where your gifts and desires collide to create more light in a world desperately in need of all of us to find our sparks and work together for the common good.
I keep believing a better world is possible: a world where everyone thrives and no one is left out.
Anna Elisabeth Howard, Inward Apocalypse: Uncovering a Faith for the Common Good, (Eugene: Resource Publications, 2022) p. x.
Remy Tumin, “In 1972, only 8 women ran the race. Today, 12,100 are running,” New York Times, April 18, 2022'
Jessica Hill, “ Fact check: Post detailing 9 things women couldn't do before 1971 is mostly right,” USA Today, October 28, 2020 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/10/28/fact-check-9-things-women-couldnt-do-1971-mostly-right/3677101001/
Howard, p. 30.
