Listening with our bodies for God’s voice

The question itself was not a total surprise.

“When you think about presiding over the Eucharist, what comes up for you?”

I’m in the process of discerning ordination for the priesthood in the Episcopal Church. Some variant of this question during discernment interviews was to be expected, especially since consecrating the sacrament is one of the roles which distinguishes ordained ministry from lay ministry.

But something about how the interviewer worded her question felt different than expected. She wasn’t exactly asking me to explain my theology of the Eucharist or to precisely name what role the priest plays at the altar, although those understandings might inform my answer. Whether her exact intention or not, her question allowed me to engage my imagination, to picture myself in that role.

And I was able to consider what the prospect of ordination might feel like in my body.

I’ve often envied peers who had such solid evidence of a call to vocational ministry: who audibly heard the voice of God or whose calling responded to an undeniable community need. I longed for something strikingly clear and seemingly irrefutable as evidence of God’s will for my life. Moses, I’ve mused to myself, got a burning bush as an obvious sign; why wasn’t God lighting any shrubbery on fire to get my attention?

But as I’ve heard more people narrate their calling or describe a period of discernment before entering a field, I’ve noticed individuals — especially women and people of color — emphasizing a form of embodied knowing that requires deep attention to perceive. I’ve heard stories like, “The moment I felt called was when I watched someone leading worship and I knew I wanted to do the same thing.” Or “When I’m preaching, I feel a deep sense of joy.” Or “I’ve always felt so close to God through the sacraments.” These moments provided a foundation for them to explore their calling more deeply.

In her book “The Way of Discernment: Spiritual Practices for Decision Making,” Catholic sister and scholar of discernment Elizabeth Liebert lifts up this “body sense” or “felt sense” as a valid source of information for discernment. A body sense is a type of intuition, akin to using one’s imagination or gut sense to make a decision, but one grounded in physical sensations. It’s a kind of immediate knowing without a conscious use of reason.

To foster greater bodily awareness, Liebert asks readers to contemplate a discernment question and to notice their body’s response: whether adrenaline hits their bloodstream and fills them with energy, whether their stomach knots up or their shoulders tense up or relax, whether they frown or smile, whether they’re filled with a sense of well-being or a vague foreboding that locates itself in their body.

Practitioners may find new insights from this close attention or may even find that their body feels out of sync with their initial thoughts about their decision. By attending to this physical and emotional dimension, looking at a question less directly than through rational processes alone, we can uncover knowledge we might not even know that we have.

That said, we live in a cerebral culture that often values logic and reason as the most valid sources of knowledge, and so being attuned to our bodies is not necessarily natural for many of us. That reality makes it hard to perceive this information as a clear sign. 

Embodied knowing can also be ambiguous. We can find ourselves questioning, Did I truly feel that? Sense that? It can be frustratingly contradictory, offering different senses at different times. 

Sometimes, we avoid curiosity about our bodily knowledge for understandable reasons; increasing physical awareness can unlock trauma that’s been held in the body over time. Releasing this trauma can cloud discernment or require more skilled assistance to navigate. 

Still, like all sources of knowledge, bodily awareness is a data point that someone can choose to act on or not. It’s of course still important to confirm what you’re sensing by seeking out the wisdom of others, examining your sense of discernment over time and asking whether it matches up with Scripture. And we can use logic and reason to confirm the truth we feel first in our bodies. 

I initially wondered if I was called to be a priest when I saw a woman preside for the first time. Seeing her preach and then serve at the altar, I was able to picture it and to feel it in my body. A flutter of joy blossomed in my gut. But that sense felt so insubstantial. I didn’t know how to explain it to myself, much less others. 

As I’ve reexamined Moses’ call story in Exodus 3, I’ve discovered that a burning bush in the desert actually wouldn’t have been an obvious sign; small fires occurred in such arid regions all the time. What was peculiar about this bush was that it burned without being consumed. The fire did not destroy it. 

Moses would have had to be attending to his physical surroundings rather closely to see this sign from God. He would have experienced a bodily sense that something unusual was happening that made him draw near, take off his shoes and only then encounter the voice of God. Instead of an irrefutable sign of his calling, his story is a model of listening for the quiet and less obvious voice of our own embodiment. 

While considering this source of knowledge can help us make decisions, it can also shape how we guide others and broaden the questions we ask them as we help them discern. 

Lyndsay Cogdill Clark, a clinical social worker and spiritual director, stresses the importance of teaching young people to recognize “how stress, how anxiety, how sadness or grief or loss feel in their body the same way we would say ‘How do you know?’ or ‘How do you feel when God is close to you?’” 

As we approach conversations with others about calling and life purpose, what would it look like to allow bodily knowing to enter the conversation? To ask not only “How do you know?” but “What does it feel like?”