PRAYER & DISCERNMENT
SISTER JEAN HINDERER, C.S.A.
How to wait for clarity about your vocation by
Sister Jean Hinderer, C.S.A. is a Sister of St. Agnes, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. She is vocation discernment director for her community, a retreat director, and a spiritual director. See her blog at csavocations.blogspot. com/.
Sister Jean Hinderer, C.S.A.
“SOMETIMES we don’t seem to know it,” writes author Sue Monk Kidd, “yet in some holy place within us, God lives and moves and has being. At this inmost center of our being, . . . is the Presence in our midst.”
Waiting is inevitable in the human condition. It can also be an important part of discernment.
L
IFE OFFERS MANY OPPORTUNITIES to wait. According to statistics we wait an average of 62 minutes every day, and throughout a lifetime a person spends five years waiting in lines and six months waiting for traffic lights. We wait for our name to be called at the dentist office, for an elevator to arrive, for a computer program to download, for a line to move, for voting results, for a soldier to return, and for time to pass. Often we find it physically and emotionally uncomfortable. When we wait our inner landscape might connect with our feelings of fear, self-doubt, and anxiety. But waiting also excites our thoughts of eagerness and hope. We wait for flowers to grow and bloom, for wounds to heal, for friends to call, for bread to rise, for wine to age, for children to grow and mature. Waiting in the spiritual life can be a sacred exercise of a willingness to “stay where we are and live the situa-
28 | VISION 2015 | VocationNetwork.org
