Friday, June 28, 2013

Discernment: The question revisited of dependence, independence and interdependence


Discernment:  To what is God calling me? That is a question each of us needs to ask ourselves on a regular basis.  We have been created to become our best selves, to rely upon God as an infant or a young child relies upon its parents/surrogate parents but to also to separate from such to develop a healthy dependency upon oneself and finally to become interdependent, recognizing our need for help, the importance of teamwork, of collaborating with others, of empowering others, of building upon the accomplishments of others.  The process of becoming our best selves and growing in maturity involves this climbing the ladder from the utter dependence of childhood and the developing independence as adolescence and  young adults to embracing the challenges of interdependence of mature adulthood.  This growth involves discerning what is asked of us as independent, separate human beings functioning from a state of individual competence to working maturely in unison, in collaboration, in reliance upon my own skills coupled with the skills of others, that is, working interdependently and in communion with others as modeled by the Trinity.

As the author of Ecclesiastes might say “there is a time for dependence, independence and interdependence.”  How well do I discern those times?

No comments:

Post a Comment