Tuning used to be pretty complicated. When I was a kid, I built a “crystal set” using a cigar box, a crystal detector, some wire, and a headset. My memory is cloudy about this, but I think I had to move something over the tightly coiled wire to tune in a local station. When I was a teenager, I build a short wave radio from a kit, and it tuned like Mom and Dad’s big console radio, turning a knob to find a station, and then hoping the station didn’t drift off into the ether.
And now…push a button, and there you are!
Using tuning in as a metaphor for spiritual discernment is too obvious, but helpful. I doubt that spiritual discernment has grown easier since I was a kid. Tuning into the Spirit isn’t like pushing a button and voila! there you have it. As I’ve matured spiritually, it still takes carefully directed time to discern the Spirit’s leading. The analogy of the old radios “losing the station” (its drifting off freqency) seems apt. Because as I understand it, it wasn’t the station that drifted off (out of tune, as it were), but my radio. So when I’m feeling as if the Spirit’s direction, will, power, or guidance has drifted off from me, it’s most likely that it is I who is drifting, wandering, losing focus.
So, discernment becomes more critical. And what makes for discernment? For me, it’s that powerful blending of time, quiet (if not silence), awareness of the Presence (being present to the Presence?), and expressing from the heart my own willingness to listen, to sense, to understand God’s (pardon the expression) voice.
Staying tuned…that’s a matter of acknowledging that there is something to listen for.
