Article February 25, 1985 Issue

Getting it right

EVELYN M. S. DUCKETT

Everyday decisions, such as turning down the thermostat or seasoning the soup, often call for delicate judgment. They need to be neither too little nor too much, but just right. With more intangible things, gauging correctly is even more important. Too much head and too little heart can ruin a relationship. So can too much heart and too little head.

How can we hope to gain this judgment more consistently? The issues themselves may not seem significant, but they add up to either order or disorder in our lives. Human experience and finesse aren't enough. We need something of the spiritual intuition that enabled Christ Jesus to know where the tax money would be found, to locate the room for the Passover, and to feed the multitude in the desert.

Jesus made it clear that his ability to do such things so effortlessly wasn't a mysterious personal prerogative of his own. It came from his continual responsiveness to God, the Principle of the universe—a kind of ongoing, wordless prayer. And Jesus expected his followers to cultivate this responsiveness so that they too could feel the prompting of the Christ in individual consciousness, which would make them do the right thing—not only in major ethical matters but also in precision of detail in everything they had to do.

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