Every other Saturday morning a group has been meeting for breakfast at 7:30 at the Meetinghouse. We then participate in a discussion on a particular topic. Recently we have been discussing discernment, based on the book, Practicing Discernment Together, by Fendall, Wood, and Bishop.
The authors describe discernment in the abstract as a hunger to know God. Spiritual discernment is described as a process of learning a language and the process of a relationship to God. The art of discernment is learning to first be attentive and then sift through the many spirits vying for our attention to hear the One True Spirit. The authors also note that God communicates with us without words that we hear with our physical ears. They stress that God has unlimited ways of communicating with us. While few of us have attained this ability to engage in discernment consistently, apparently those who are skilled at it recognize a pattern of the way in which God does communicate with us, a pattern that is unique to us and our temperaments.
As preparation for our next breakfast meeting, I encouraged everyone to do some preparation. In an effort to learn about what we think discernment is, I thought it would be useful to spend some time talking with one another about times in which we thought that we were involved in such a process. These would be times in which we were struggling to know something and were aware that there was some greater power that was somehow speaking to us and helping us to know which way to go or whether something would turn out all right. Conversely, there may have been times when we thought we were discerning something and were also aided by this greater power toward certainaty, only to discover that we were not heading in the right direction. Perhaps we should spend some time contrasting our inner thoughts and feelings in an effort to clarify when we were obedient to a will beyond us and when we were merely confirming our own thoughts and motives.
Charles Howland
Friends make decisions in the Monthly Meeting for Business based on the experience that the will of God can be discerned both individually and as a group. Discernment is the process by which one determines God's will for oneself or a group. In the Quaker practice, this may include open worship to specifically allow for God's will to be clearly communicated to the individual or group.