I was asked to give a presentation at an upcoming conference. I wasn’t surprised that I might be a good fit, but I was surprised by how comfortable I initially felt about the invitation. I was given a few days to think it over.
The proposed title was Contemplative Prayer 101. I understood what the title meant. I had given talks on contemplative prayer before, but those talks were more about teaching information than about prayer itself, particularly as we come to know it through contemplative experience.
So I put together a proposal for a different talk, one that made more sense to me and seemed more in line with the work I’ve been doing recently.
I felt confident in my ability to give the talk.
But the more I thought about standing before an audience of people knowledgeable and experienced in contemplative prayer, the less comfortable I became. My initial confidence gave way to uncertainty. I even told the person who invited me that I wasn’t sure I was ready.
Something had changed, and I wasn’t quite sure what it was.
Around that time, the subject of fear came up during a spiritual direction session. We were considering how fear can influence the choices we make, sometimes without our being aware of it.
I hadn't connected that conversation with my own situation.
After another visit with the person who invited me, I began to look more carefully at my reluctance to say yes. That was when I made the connection.
Perhaps fear was influencing my own discernment.
I don't think our fears are always easy to understand or even to name. Some fears are legitimate, while others may have little basis in reality. Some are obvious to us, while others remain hidden. But all fears are real in the sense that we experience them, and they can influence the decisions we make.
Sometimes fear tells us something important about our limitations or uncertainties. It deserves our attention.
But fear can also influence our decisions without our recognizing its presence.
As I continued discerning whether to give the presentation, I began asking myself different questions.
Was I genuinely unprepared? Was the invitation beyond my abilities? Or was I allowing my discomfort with the audience to influence my response?
Was I finding reasons to say no simply because saying yes had become uncomfortable?
Perhaps what I needed was to recognize the fear without allowing it to make the decision for me.
I've come to think of this as bracketing fear during discernment.
Not denying that fear exists. Not dismissing what it might be telling us. But recognizing its presence and giving it its proper place.
Fear remains part of the discernment, but it need not determine the outcome.
And now I find myself wondering about my own past.
How often has unrecognized fear influenced my discernment? How many opportunities might I have missed to respond to invitations that could have helped others, as well as myself, grow in our spiritual journeys?
I cannot answer those questions. Nor can I know whether saying yes would always have been the better choice.
But I wonder how often I have passed by an invitation, not because I was unable to respond, but because I had allowed fear to answer for me.