Midweek Faith Lift
Intuition and the Power of Wisdom
Rev. Deb Hill-Davis
September 3, 2025
Spiritual Passages
August 25, 2025
My nine-year-old granddaughter, Jessie, told me she was dreading school the next day. The school would be conducting emergency procedures: a fire drill, an evacuation drill, and a lockdown drill. She said she always felt scared during those exercises - having to hide, be quiet, or get out of the building quickly. We talked about her fears for a little while, and then I shared a story about a Buddhist monk who asked his students, “You’re holding a cup of coffee, and someone bumps into you, and you spill the coffee. Why did you spill the coffee?” The students said, “Because someone bumped into me.” The monk shook his head and said, “No; you spilled coffee because coffee was in your cup. If tea had been in your cup, you would have spilled tea. Whatever is inside you is what will spill out when life shakes you. If you carry fear, anger, or jealousy, that’s what will spill. If you carry love, kindness, and compassion, then that is what will come out.” I then asked Jessie, “So tomorrow, when you’re going through those emergency drills, what do you think will spill out of your cup?” She looked at me and said, “Throw-up.” - Scott Awbrey, Spiritual Passages
“Peace is both an inner journey toward a disarmed heart and a public journey toward a disarmed world. This difficult but beautiful journey gives infinite meaning and fulfillment to life. We become a gift for the whole human race." - John Dear, The Beatitudes of Peace
James 3:17
The wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, without uncertainty or insincerity. (NRSV)
Affirmative Prayer for today: Infinite Presence of Love, open us to the energy of spiritual intuition. Empower us to speak what we know to be truth with clarity, strength and fearless certainty so that we will know peace. Amen.
Wisdom and intuition! Have you ever heard the voice of Spirit speak so clearly that you had NO doubt or question about the matter at hand? It was so clear that you had to try to miss it? And perhaps it spoke directly to you as a clear, small voice or even a really loud message, and still you missed it!?! Or you ignored it! Been there, done that, more than once! We, in our humanness, make it so complicated and confusing, over-thinking or “over-feeling” everything.
As we noted last week, our human self rushes to give an answer rather than giving wisdom, discernment, the time needed to reveal itself. The other side of that coin is our human propensity to avoid doing anything about a challenging situation, preferring to ignore it, hoping it will go away, resolve itself on its own?! And we have very creative ways of avoidance that seem reasonable and defensible for sure. They can usually be described as “the story I’m telling myself…..” Then when we experience the discomfort of avoidance, we go shopping, watch a movie, or best of all eat chocolate…. at least that is what I do.
After a while, however, that no longer works and we do begin to notice our “gut feelings” about things, which are generally accurate and trustworthy. We begin to embrace our inner wisdom, our intuition, which sees the “facts” from a spiritual perspective. Sharon Conners writes about this in Adventures in Resilience, p. 116
Divine wisdom is discerning and results in clarity regarding the next right steps. Wisdom marries the facts of life with spiritual principles. Like King Solomon, it is the judge that sees beyond appearances, senses the truth in the midst of circumstances, separating with uncommon accuracy the wheat of life from the chaff.
When you begin to “trust your gut,” your intuition, you experience clarity about the situation before you, sensing the truth in the midst of circumstances. This empowers you to respond from a place of wisdom and power and you know what to say or do without know how or why!
I love the honest response of 9 year-old Jessie in the opening story. Her gut response is spot on, literally as well as spiritually. Children feeling fear because of active shooter drills in school does make you want to vomit because it is so clear that it should not be that way. And all the “spiritual wisdom” of Buddhism does nothing in the face of her clarity and honesty. Jessie’s intuition is speaking words of Truth which the grown ups have yet to hear, and no amount of spiritual by-pass can change Truth.
That is the intuition of wisdom in action. When we are in that space, we don’t need to know how we know, we just do! What does it take for us to be in this space of intuitive wisdom? Well, genuine connection with our feelings in a mature way, and the honesty to admit them clearly are what we need. However, when we cling to our feelings, then feelings become a blockage to our capacity for the intuition of wisdom. How is that so? Richard Rohr spoke to this in his blog “Welcoming but not Clinging” August 17, 2025 in which he writes:
Emotions are necessary weathervanes, in great part body-based, that help us read situations quickly and perhaps in depth. But they are also learned and practiced neural responses, often ego-based, which have little to do with objective reality and much more to do with the storylines that we have learned and created. Our separate self loves to hold onto such emotions to justify and defend itself and assert its power.
Much of the work of emotional maturity is learning to distinguish between emotions that give us a helpful message about ourselves or situations and emotions that are merely narcissistic reactions to the moment. I dare to say that, until we have found our spiritual center and ground, most of our emotional responses are usually too self-referential to be helpful or truthful. They read the moment as if the “I,” with its immediate needs and hurts, is a reference point for objective truth. It isn’t. The small, defensive “I” cannot hold that space. Only Reality/God/Creation holds that space.
What that ultimately means is that we have to “get some distance” from our emotional reactions to situations before we can hear the voice of Spirit that is our intuition and allow room for it. We feel and honor all our emotions, the ones we welcome and the ones we don’t. By avoiding the unpleasant feelings, blocking them, they fester like a backed up sewer, and it just gets more and more stinky and yucky. Water, metaphysically, represents emotions, and they do need to just flow through you. Your intuition tells you in no uncertain terms what you need to say or do, but your attachment to your fears, your desire to avoid unpleasant feelings prevents you from hearing it and doing it.
How do you escape this? Well, you don’t, not ultimately, because if you skip the lesson this time, it is sure to come around again, and again! We lean into the lesson and let the unpleasant feelings, the fears, anger, resentment, outrage, the genuine hurt and emotional pain and so on flow through us without attaching to these feelings, or “over-feeling.” That is not easy. We do so like to linger in self-righteous indignation and “I told you so” but that is a toxic waste dump for sure. We cultivate that observer self that has the capacity and clarity to see what and how our human self is responding. And we remember how frequently it is written in Scripture, “This too shall pass” or “It came to pass.”
So, feel it, see it and let the feelings pass and then listen to your inner spirit, the “God-ness” of you, that knows and shows the next right step, the next thing that you need to say and do. True spiritual intuition always speaks the truth, and calls forth the highest and best good for all. So trust your gut feeling, which is what remains after you clear out all the other “stuff,” which does not hold that energy. Clarity is the precursor to trusting and hearing your spiritual intuition, and that can take time, just like discernment.
As usual, I had the opportunity to practice what I preach recently, in dealing with a contractor who wanted to charge us for work we did not request. I had to gather the actual facts, feel my anger, outrage, frustration, and acknowledge my resistance to making that phone call. In my gut, I knew it would not be very pleasant, and my gut was right! I wrestled with it last Monday, and Tuesday, finally deciding I would make the call on Wednesday when I was here at church. I wanted to have a first-hand look at everything to have the facts clear before I made the call. I also wanted a witness if need be! Thank you, Su! Having done my fact-finding homework and my emotional homework, I was able to navigate this conversation with strength, clarity and spiritual intuition and I can truly say Spirit was speaking through me.
The contractor attempted to bully me, shame me and threaten me and none of that worked to his advantage. I just kept repeating my bottom line, we weren’t going to pay for work we did not request. We will pay for what we did request. I had prayed about it, asked for prayer to have the conversation and then decompressed with the chaplains afterward Wednesday evening. My intuition was spot on and I am actually grateful to have had that learning experience!! I don’t necessarily want to repeat it, but I learned what my true spiritual strength is and that it’s always there. And I know in my gut, Spirit is always with you, always!
Isaiah 55:12
“For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
Blessings on the Path,
Rev. Deb
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