Making connections is essential to the spiritual life, as I see it. And, we are making connections every day, all the time, in many ways. Most of those connections happen subconsciously because they are being filtered by previous connections and the judgments we have already made about them. I see a young person stop to help an elderly person in the parking lot of the grocery store with packages that seem too heavy to lift into the car, and immediately, without thought, I affirm that there are good people in the world, and that random acts of kindness are examples of that good flowing through our lives. I don’t have to stop and think. I’ve already made that judgment about many other such instances. 

We make different automatic judgments about other connections, too. Recently, I was driving on a multilane highway, and approaching me was a school bus that indicated it was stopping. Red lights flashing, stop sign going out. I wasn’t sure, on a multilane road like that, if I was supposed to stop or not, so erring on the side of caution, I stopped. The cars behind me had no choice but to stop, and the cars parallel to me stopped because I stopped, which shut down their lanes, too. Then the horns started to honk–behind us. Clearly, they did not think that we were supposed to stop. Immediately, I deemed them thoughtless, impatient people. My judgment was immediate based on other, previous experiences. I’ve met people like that. Then another idea occurred to me: what if they simply knew what the bus rule was on a multilane highway and were trying to indicate that? Were these impatient, rude people, or people who knew more than I did about the situation? How often in my life is that the case?

Many times, every day, we make connections. And we make judgments about those connections. Our automatic judgments secure us where we are. We can, however, choose to open ourselves back up to a connection and reconsider it. When we do that, we open ourselves to change and to possible growth and movement along the path. 

Making connections is essential to the spiritual life. Are we open or closed to the ones we will make today?

~Robert Patrick

If these kinds of questions and experiences sound familiar, you might find spiritual direction a good way to explore them.  Here’s how to get started.