Amos Kim

“Practice: Framing Your Discernment Question Clarifying the scope and content of your discernment can simplify the subsequent steps of your discernment process. This exercise sets that clarifying and winnowing of your issue or question within the context of a prayer that God will help you see clearly where you should focus your discernment. 1. Let the silence deepen around you. Enter into it. Ask God for the desire to follow God’s call in and through the decision you will be making. Do not rush. Simply turn your attention to God, as you experience God, and address your desire to God. 2. Describe the decision that you wish to discern. 3. Elaborate in your discernment journal the aspects of this decision that seem important to you at this point. 4. State as concisely as you can the decision before you. It will be helpful if you can formulate your issue in a question that can be answered yes/no (for example: “Should I begin to work outside our home?”). 5. Bring the issue and the process you’ve engaged in thus far to God and attend to any thoughts or feelings that arise in you. Note these stirrings in your journal. Your first statement of the decision before you may shift; if so, repeat steps 4 and 5 until you sense that you have as clear and concise a statement as possible at this point. STARTING”
― Elizabeth Liebert, The Way of Discernment: Spiritual Practices for Decision Making

“GATHERING AND INTERPRETING INFORMATION Practice: Gathering Relevant Data The quality of a decision is directly influenced by the quality of the data gathered. That faulty data leads to less effective decisions is a truism whether or not the decision is made within a context of discernment. Just because we are discerning, we can’t presume that God will magically make up for not doing this essential step. But what sets discernment apart from other decision making is that we do assume that the very process of data gathering can be set within the context of prayer—and that is the goal of this practice. 1. Pause as you begin this reflection and each time you work on the task of gathering data. Ask for God’s gracious presence and help to seek out what is relevant to your discernment. 2. Ponder various kinds of information that will bear on your decision: —Information about yourself, your personality, history, life experience, spirituality. —Information about your relationships with family, friends, coworkers, neighbors, and enemies that will affect or be affected by the decision you are contemplating. —Information about the groups, agencies, and entities that you belong to or interact with or that will be operative in the decision you are contemplating. —Information about the human-made and natural environment, that is, the wide external context in which the decision is set. —Other information that will help you make an informed decision in this particular case; including, for example, background leading up to the situation you are now discerning, knowledge of the players and their relationships, projected possible out-comes—that is, anything that could impact the decision or its outcome. 3. Imagine how you can gather this relevant information. Make a plan about what information you need to gather, and outline the information-gathering process in your journal. 4. Begin gathering necessary information. As you do so, keep a record of what you find out, assembling the relevant information in a form and in an appropriate place where it will be accessible to your continuing discernment. (This process of data gathering may continue throughout your discernment.) 5. Offer this reflection and the sometimes tedious homework of data gathering back to God. Record in your discernment journal how the growing amount of data affects your discernment. Speak to God about what it reveals: about the situation, about you, and about your relationships, especially with God.”
― Elizabeth Liebert, The Way of Discernment: Spiritual Practices for Decision Making

“PULLING IT ALL TOGETHER: SEVEN STEPS FOR DISCERNING A DECISION How does one go about making a decision by means of discernment? I propose that discerned decision making proceeds in seven interwoven steps, which represent the components of a decision made by way of discernment. The steps represent a logical progression from the beginning to the end of a decision arrived at through discernment. Events in real life, however, can be less of a straight line and more of a circle; with discernment, you may expect to find that the progression of these steps is less linear than I suggest here. More importantly, some steps must be repeated regularly (1, 4, 6, 7), and some can change midstream (2, 3). Nonetheless, as you’ll discover, these seven steps will always be part of your discernment: 1. Seek spiritual freedom, the inner disposition upon which discernment rests and which creates the climate for discernment. Indeed, without this basic intention of seeking spiritual freedom, discernment collapses into self-assessment, self-improvement, or decision-making techniques—all of which can be good and helpful, but they are not discernment. The”
― Elizabeth Liebert, The Way of Discernment: Spiritual Practices for Decision Making

“foundational attitude for which we pray is that we might desire what gives God glory more deeply than we desire any other created reality. This spiritual freedom is so radical and so beyond our power to create in ourselves that it brings us face to face with our own poverty and our need for continual prayer. Sometimes all we can muster is the desire to desire what God desires! But any degree of hunger, any desire for God, any seeking of God’s call already happens through God’s Spirit, and God accepts it as enough. Over time, through repeated discernments and through daily living of one’s Christian life, this desire can become an increasingly natural and habitual orientation. As that transformation occurs, we experience deeper and deeper spiritual freedom. 2. Discover and name the issue or choice you face. What is really at stake is not always self-evident. An ambiguous or sprawling issue can obscure or even prevent subsequent discernment. Carefully framing the issue not only helps to clarify the matter for discernment, but it also actually begins the process of sifting and discriminating that is at the heart of discernment. 3. Gather and evaluate appropriate data about the issue. Discernment is not magic. We have to do our homework. The efficacy of the subsequent decision can rise or fall on obtaining accurate and relevant information about various options and their implications. However, since decision making is not identical to discernment, it is possible to botch a decision while still advancing in discernment. Fortunately, through grace, it is quite possible to grow in discipleship, manifest greater spiritual freedom, and hunger more strongly for what God desires in the midst of a failed decision. But prudence demands that we do the homework necessary. 4. Reflect and pray. Actually we have been praying from the outset. We pray for spiritual freedom. We select and frame the issue for discernment in prayer. We prayerfully select and consider the relevant data. But as we begin the process of discrimination in a more focused way, it is important to renew our attention to prayer. 5. Formulate a tentative decision. Many different methods can help us come to a decision, and therefore aid our discernment. We will explore seven methods in the entry points in this book, but many options exist in the tradition. Discerned decision making can employ any decision-making process, whether traditional or newly created, that fits the material being”
― Elizabeth Liebert, The Way of Discernment: Spiritual Practices for Decision Making