Learning Lenten Hope

Psychologists have marveled at the existence of expert intuition. How does a firefighter "know" that a burning building is going to collapse when the amateur eye sees no evidence of the impending doom? How does a skilled physician make an accurate diagnosis seconds into a clinical examination? How does an experienced pilot almost "see" weather patterns, wind currents, and dangerous traffic before the ground controllers can alert the pilot to the problem? There are some things that we just "know" without really knowing.

It is intuition. Herbert Simon described it this way. "The situation has provided a cue; this cue has given the expert access to information stored in memory, and the information provides the answer. Intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition" (see Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, page 237). Intuition is the recognition of patterns stored in memory.

There are some things that we can learn to recognize after just an exposure or two. For example, we have a narrow bridge that leads from our home to the main road in our part of town. It took only two near-misses on that bridge for me to learn some significant lessons. Now even when there is no visible traffic, I slow down and put my foot on the brakes in preparation for something potentially bad. I think about it after I have done it and realize that this has become an automatic behavior.

Our intuitions are most easily trained to recognize danger. This is obvious in the experience of the firefighter who flees a collapsing building and then later figures out why. We can learn, however, to recognize other patterns as well. We can learn, for example, to have hope in difficult situations. In every divorce mediation, for example, I hear people say, "This will never work." Sometimes that's true. But in most cases I can now see the patterns of thought and behavior that will make a resolution of some kind possible. I have been trained to see hope.

That's a good description of the Christian discipline we call Lent. It is training to see hope. In this journey through Lent, we practice the pattern of Cross and Resurrection. We train our intuitions more fully to see that death can lead to life, that despair can lead to hope, that loss can lead to gain. When we confront loss, despair and death, we are equipped to say, "I've see this before. I know how this turns out." That's why we practice this discipline year after year.

Studies show that experts in a discipline need ten thousand hours or more of practice (as well as some real skills) in order to become experts. The same is true of our intuitions. It takes practice and discipline to have a well-formed and reliable set of intuitions. Sometimes there is a flash--a moment when all becomes clear, when the cross points directly to the empty tomb. But mostly it takes practice and formation. We must be exposed repeatedly to the story that leads from Good Friday to Easter in order to see that story at work in our daily lives.

This is one of the goals of learning this Lenten hope. I pray that you will be able to say, in the face of despair and death, "I've seen this before. I know how this comes out."