The Union of Trust and Practicality

Inspiration can come from unexpected niches and this week mine was sparked while reading a review of the book, The Answer to How is Yes: Acting on What Matters by Peter Block. This part grabbed me:

Modern culture’s worship of “how-to” pragmatism has turned us into instruments of efficiency and commerce—but we’re doing more and more about things that mean less and less. We constantly ask “how? and still struggle to find purpose and act on what matters... Asking how keeps us safe—instead of being led by our hearts into uncharted territory, we keep our heads down and stick to the rules. But we are gaining the world and losing our souls.

As I embark on a new chapter of my life, in which financial security has assumed a primary position of importance, I struggle to stay true to my heart. I want to believe that there is no contradiction at play in the confluence of authenticity and profitability and yet I often encounter a seeming chasm between the domain of rationality and heart guidance. Perhaps you can relate to this conundrum in your own life experience, where the demands of life have you feeling split, pulled in opposing directions. As I navigate this apparent dualism, I often find myself swinging between the poles of practicality and full trust and surrender. In one phase I’m all about predict and control and with a shift to my heart, I am given over to the perfection of not knowing and letting go. I suspect Jesus spoke to this challenge when he said, “Be in the world but not of it.”

While I am not completely clear on how to reconcile the human needs with the demands of my heart, I am committed to getting there. It seems personally essential that I work this out to a place of peace and reconciliation and no less a conundrum crying out for guidance on the global question of materiality versus humanity. However, to the earlier point of not getting lost in asking “how” it is perhaps best that we ask a deeper question that invokes an encompassing perspective that obviates either/or decisiveness.

In Block’s book, he poses this profound inquiry as “the mother of all questions”: “What is the question that, if you had the answer, would set you free?”

For now, I am in the flow of this question, bouncing off the banks of this or that but committed to staying in the centrality of where this question points in me. As I sit in this place desirous of some glib answer to relieve my inner struggle, I hear the words of Master Jesus exhorting me to recognize the unseen resolution already at hand, “I say to you, whenever you pray, pray believing that you have already received, and it will be yours.”

I lean back in my chair, take in a slow deep breath, and exhale completely. I trust the air will be there to fill me again. Until that fails, life is supporting me every moment, one breath at a time.

With you in the question, and the knowing that frees.

Larry