What If Uncertainty Is the Invitation, Not the Problem?

CSL Ballard is in the middle of a search for a senior minister. For most of you reading this, that's not news. What I loved about Rev. Marilyn Sprague’s talk on Sunday was how she described her experience with our search, and especially of Rev. Pam Ninneman’s exuberance (Rev. Pam is leading the search team) when they saw each other at a CSL conference. She sees us!

Exuberance. How does that word make you feel? I find it energizing and exciting. How can we maintain that until and then far beyond onboarding our senior minister? That's also a quality I'd love to see in our new leader. Exuberance, plus experience, sounds like a win to me.

And how awesome is it to experience exuberance in our own lives? Especially in the midst of uncertainty? Sign me up.

Coming to us from Portland, Rev. Marilyn continued our May theme of Divine Doubt with Communal Uncertainty: Strength in the Midst of Not Knowing. Hearing her perspective after my own few weeks away was inspiring. I recognize that while I needed that time, I miss the energy of our spiritual home. And she sees that energy, too, and how we continue to show up for each other without waiting until "the thing" happens.

Her words: That's spiritual maturity in action.

Divine Doubt and the Doubt We Generate

Rev. Marilyn made an important distinction about our monthly theme that, while I wasn't fully conscious of it, found it hovering on the surface of my awareness: She doesn't believe that doubt is divine. Doubt is the human experience — and more specifically, it's something we generate ourselves.

Her words are timely. She says it usually starts with comparison. We look outward, at what another community is doing, at what we don't yet have, at what the world says we should be, and comparison erodes and shrinks us. It whispers not enough until we believe it. Anyone who's been through a job search knows this. Anyone navigating a transition of any kind knows this. The moment you start measuring yourself against someone else's timeline, experience, or their version of success, you've stepped off your own path.

Quantum entanglement is the measurable, scientific reality that particles miles apart respond to each other instantaneously.

Comparison leads to doubt. Doubt leads to a sense of separation. And as Rev. Gary Ninneman reminded us during his Oneness candle opening, separation through the lens of quantum entanglement is a thing that isn't true. At the deepest level of reality, we are not separate.

The gap between what we experience and what's real is a gap we create.

The Hourglass We Build

Rev. Marilyn described an hourglass, with our substance, source, and supply filling the upper half. That's Spirit, always available, always giving, never withholding.

At the bottom, our lived experience, open to receiving.

And the narrow center? That's constriction. As a metaphor, that constriction is something we generate through the mental habit of comparison.

The hourglass doesn't have to exist. It's not Spirit; it's us. We create constriction through doubt, comparison, and the habit of looking outward for confirmation that we're enough.

Ernest Holmes was clear: the creative mind receives the impression of our thoughts and always says yes. If we're doubting, it gives us more to doubt about.

Where focus goes, energy flows.

The choice — and it is a choice: Remember that source, substance, and supply are always at the top of the hourglass, fully present and available. The question is only how much and what are we willing to receive.

Uncertainty as Sacred Threshold

Here's Rev. Marilyn's idea: uncertainty isn't a waiting room. It's a threshold.

Drawing from poet and author John O'Donohue, a threshold is not a simple boundary. It's a frontier between what was and what's becoming. And at every threshold, you can expect to feel confusion, fear, excitement, and hope at the same time. That's not a problem to solve. It just feels that way.

She asked whether we're willing to step across anyway, giving Divine Doubt some usefulness. Instead of letting doubt close the door, what if we ask what's here for us to be, do, or learn? What is uncertainty showing us?

When we get genuinely quiet and listen, Spirit responds. Guidance comes. And then we just have to say yes and take one step. Not all the steps. Just one. When we analyze, how many good ideas have succumbed to doubt?

If you're at the threshold, it's a yes moment. Not someday. Now. The fact that you're standing there is the signal.

Be First. Everything Follows.

Be + Do = Have. That's Thomas Troward's formula.

Most of us start with what we want to have. We want to have the certainty before we do the thing. But it starts with being, with becoming the consciousness of what you're calling forward.

For this community, that means we already are a community with a thriving new minister, a living sacred covenant, a clear sense of who we are, before the search ever concludes. Our covenant, reading it, saying it, being it, is our work.

From the place of being, listen for inspired action. Take one step. And on the other side of that step, there are new resources, new ideas, new possibilities that weren't visible before. That's how it unfolds, not all at once, but one yes at a time. All you need is one yes. And Spirit, Rev. Marilyn reminded us, is already saying it.

The Four Faces of Strength

Rev. Marilyn closed with four expressions of the innate strength she believes this community has, the capacity that sustains us when things are unresolved.

1. Patience, not passive waiting. Instead, it's the calm that makes room for divine order to reveal the next right step. At a community level, it's the reminder that things are in process even when they're not yet visible.

2. Tolerance, the willingness to stay open with people we disagree with. Rev. Marilyn was direct: diversity of perspective is the catalyst for creativity. A room where everyone agrees isn't a room in full expression. The most generative solutions come from those willing to talk it through rather than walk away.

3. Steadfastness, staying anchored in truth when appearances may say otherwise. Metaphysical teacher Emma Curtis Hopkins put it this way: turn from the face of appearances. Whatever the noise, whatever the uncertainty, Spirit is present. Spirit says yes.

4. Balance, honoring both thinking and feeling, with neither one running the show. Intellectualizing without feeling misses the heart of it. Feeling without thinking misses the details. The heart-centered solution, the one that actually works, requires both.

A Final Question

What if strength isn't something to acquire, it's something to recognize? What if this community, in the middle of genuine uncertainty, already demonstrates patience, tolerance, steadfastness, and balance? What if the minister search isn't a test of whether we have what it takes, but a time for us to see that we do? Rev. Marilyn saw this in us.

Source, substance, and supply are fully present. Spirit is right here, walking through this with us, already saying yes.

I feel seen. I hope you do, too. And, if you missed this powerful talk, watch it here on YouTube.

With gratitude,

Laura

PS: Rev. Gary shared a quote with me from the morning meditation, and it also feels timely and relevant (we were talking about how some people fear public speaking more than death). From Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Do the thing you fear, and the death of fear is certain.

How's that for navigating uncertainty?