Expertise is overrated

When you have a problem it is tempting to look for an expert who knows a lot about the thing with which you’re struggling. Sometimes that’s a good idea and works out well for you as you seek to overcome your challenge. However, it is also common that experts exacerbate the problem and increase your anxiety because they are so certain that their way is the way that any deviation from the path of their counsel is considered a shortcoming on your part which adds weight to the burden of your issue. Now you’re more anxious about the problem than you were before you asked the expert for help.

What is likely is not that you need an expert, but that you will be most helped by someone who is simply calm. One who has the gift of a non-anxious, calm demeanor is likely so because they have discovered their center of gravity in God. They then proceed from the peaceful landscape of their inner core to encounter and love whatever and whoever is right in front of them with God in certainty “all is well, all is well, and all manner of things will be well” no matter what outcome befalls us. When sitting with someone who has been granted the gift of calm your problem may change shape. It may transform as you speak of it into an opportunity for growth and grace that you couldn’t see when talking to the expert. Calm is catching and as you sit with the calm person you settle and discover that you have the answer you were looking for.  You just couldn’t see it because your vision was cloudy with anxiety. 

Br. Lawrence was, as far as we can tell, expert at exactly nothing. However, through his practice of the presence of God, he was amazingly calm. Therefore people with all manner of problems came to him from all over for counsel and advice. They always left comforted with a sure sense that they had been given a solution for their issue. But what they had really been given was the gift of calm transmitted to them by someone who was actively grounded in love. 

What’s troubling you? Reach out to someone who has the gift of a calm, loving demeanor and see if their gift unearths the answer that already lives inside of you. 

Or maybe you need an expert.