I'm Emily P. Freeman and welcome to the next right thing. You're listening to Episode 208.

This is a podcast about making decisions, but it's also about making a life. If you struggle with

decision fatigue or chronic hesitation, or if you just need a few minutes away from the constant

stream of information information and the sometimes

delightful but also distracting hum of entertainment, you're in the right place for a thoughtful

story, a little prayer, and a, or prayers from my own heart.

Often, I lean more on the story's thoughts and prayers of others,

highlighting someone else's insight and wisdom, commenting on it, quoting their words,

and bringing their wisdom here for us to learn from and to hold together as we continue to daily

discern what's my next right thing. Today I'm sharing words from an author I've

quoted here many times, but it's from a section of one of his books that I've not brought to the

table for us yet, at least not to this extent. It's a concept I'm finding to be both super

helpful and maddening from Parker Palmer in his book A Hidden Wholeness.

This book was one of my top ten favorite reads from last year, 2021, and I pulled it back out again,

and I want to back up just for a moment and pull the curtain back a little bit to let you know

about my own process, which has become second

nature for me, but could be helpful for you and your process. I'm a writer, as you know,

and what that means to me is that it's my job to pay attention both to the world around me,

but also to the world within me and how they talk to each other. But because that's annoyingly

broad, one of the things

that I have honed over the last nearly 15 years of calling myself a writer are the filters

through which I'm always seeing the world. Those filters are, for me, spiritual formation,

...