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Liebert, Elizabeth. The Soul of Discernment: A Spiritual Practice for Communities and Institutions. First edition. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2015.
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FirstAuthor:: Liebert, Elizabeth
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Title:: The Soul of Discernment: a Spiritual Practice for Communities and Institutions
Year:: 2015
Citekey:: liebertSoulDiscernmentSpiritual2015
itemType:: book
Publisher:: Westminster John Knox Press
Location:: Louisville, Kentucky
ISBN:: 978-0-664-23967-1
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Abstract
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Notes
The Soul of Discernment: A Spiritual Practice for Communities and Institutions
Liebert, Elizabeth
Introduction
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Throughout the pages of this book, you will engage in the Social Discernment Cycle. It merits the term discernment because it is a process for seeking God’s call in a particular situation. It is called social because it deals primarily with human communities in their social-structural, rather than interpersonal, aspects. It is a cycle because one completed round of discernment prepares for the next. The Social Discernment Cycle is particularly apt for any discernment that involves a structure, system, or institution.
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How is God leading me to act in this particular situation? serves as the guiding question in the first volume. Here, the focus shifts from individual persons to persons in systems, so the question shifts accordingly: How is God leading us, individually or together, to act in this particular moment in our organization?
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Groups of faithful Christians have always used the best insights of their day and combined them with the wisdom they inherited from the past to develop ways of discerning that meet the needs of their situation. Today institutions and structures are far more complex than those envisioned in the communal discernment practices gleaned from the long history of Christian discernment.
Part 1 An Invitation to Social Discernment
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Ruth Haley Barton speaks of discernment as “the capacity to recognize and respond to the presence and the activity of God—both in the ordinary moments and the larger decisions of our lives.” 1 In the case of discernment, “capacity” implies both gift and skill, so we might describe discernment as the gift and the skill in individuals and groups to recognize how God is operative in and around them.
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Discernment is likewise a skill because it can be developed and honed by prayer and practice. 4 In this sense, discernment is a spiritual practice, that is, something we do repeatedly that helps us move closer and closer to God.
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Discernment is about distinguishing between goods and choosing the better. We don’t, then, use discernment to choose between something that is clearly morally evil and something that is morally good, for the simple reason that God, the author of all good, cannot be calling us to do that which contradicts God’s very nature.
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is dynamic, ever changing, continuously creating—not simply repeating what has already been created. And since we are created in the image of God, we are able to participate, with God, in the creation of our future. So my second claim: discernment concerns human agency in relationship to the divine.
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Put another way, all humans face an uncertain future, and we must live into it by the decisions that we make. We are creatures whose deepest self-realization comes from moving into God’s dynamic future with all the life and skill with which we have been endowed, within the concrete situations of our particular and finite lives.
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The emphasis in the earliest centuries, and to a large extent thereafter, is on discernment as a means of personal spiritual growth.
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Though Ignatius is often stereotyped as being rigid and controlling, his directions to the spiritual guide set exactly the opposite tone: the guide is to treat each retreatant uniquely, to discern the spirits experienced by each, and to teach this discernment to each retreatant.
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The Reformation caused a shift from monastic discernment to the context of the ordinary Protestant pastor and congregation. That move effectively shifted much of the formal practice of discernment from the clerical spiritual director or confessor onto the individual Christian, but largely without the structures and processes for the laity to learn discernment.
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A major Protestant contribution to the notion of discernment flows from renewed emphasis on the priesthood of all believers.
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Methodist spiritual formation groups, called “classes” and “bands,” developed mutual guidance to the degree that it became a unique Protestant contribution to both spiritual guidance and discernment.
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discernment tradition, his creative contribution had to do with election—making choices in light of one’s relationship with God. The underpinnings and implications of Ignatian spirituality, and specifically the treatment of election, are immense. First, Ignatius operated on the principle that union with God comes about in the world through the continual discernment of God’s call to act in this very world. It follows, then, that from such discernment and choosing flows one’s very vocation.
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We don’t “go up” to meet God; we “go out” to meet God, who is right here among us, acting for the redeeming of the world. Our union comes about through “the act and art of ‘allowing’ oneself to be chosen,” says Javier Melloni, allowing God to act through us in all the events of history. 21 If
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“No man is an island,” wrote the sixteenth-century English poet John Donne. 24 True then, true now. What is new is the complexity of the systems that impact our daily lives.
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We face a two-pronged challenge: Can we develop a discernment process, based in the Christian discernment tradition, that actually brings discernment to bear in the midst of the complex reality of the multiple and overlapping systems in which we live our ordinary lives? And can we develop our understanding of discerning groups so that they themselves function as discerning systems for dealing with systems?
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Awareness Examen for Discernment Groups At the conclusion of your time together, commit to a brief period of about ten minutes to review the quality of your work together. You may wish to adapt the exercise to both the group itself and to the actual task it has just worked on together. Signal the end of your work time by putting away your meeting materials. Prepare yourself to pray by taking several slow deep breaths while also flexing your shoulders, straightening your back, putting your feet on the floor—whatever helps you mark this time as one of recollection… Become aware of the presence of God, who, in fact, has dwelt within the meeting. Allow the gifts that God has bestowed on your institution or organization to surface in your imagination. Speak them briefly in turn, and give thanks for them… Ask God that the next few minutes be a time of special grace and revelation… With God, review the meeting you have just completed. Review the stirrings of your heart, your thoughts, your actions during the time of the meeting… Ponder which of these thoughts, feelings, and actions created openings for the work of the Spirit in you individually and in the group… Speak these aloud into the group. Ponder which of these thoughts, feelings, and actions created blocks for the work of the Spirit in you individually and in the group… Speak these aloud into the group. Ask God for forgiveness for any failure or omission and for healing from their effects… Look forward to the next occasion this group will be together, and ask God to nourish your group’s life even during the time apart…
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Regular practice of Awareness Examen for Discernment Groups will, over time, sensitize your group to the ways God works with you and will help you become more adept in cooperating with the richness of life that God intends for your group.
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Discernment is for all who are serious about inviting God into their lives right where they live. It’s also true that no discernment process is sacred in itself. Seeking God in the midst of our lives, however we do it, is the sacred task. Discernment is a means to this end.
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Wink summarizes his notion of Powers as follows: I will argue that the “principalities and powers” are the inner and outer aspects of any given manifestation of power. As the inner aspect they are the spirituality of institutions, the “within” of corporate structures and systems, the inner essence of outer organizations of power. As the outer aspect they are political systems, appointed officials, the “chair” of an organization, laws—in short all the tangible manifestations which power takes. Every Power tends to have a visible pole, an outer form—be it a church, a nation, or an economy—and an invisible pole, an inner spirit or driving force that animates, legitimates, and regulates its physical manifestation in the world. Neither pole is the cause of the other. Both come into existence together and cease to exist together. 4
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Structures, like individual persons, are called to promote the reign of God by promoting the welfare of the rest of God’s creation, including other humans. And again, like humans, structures get deflected from their call. The “demonic,” for Wink, is the spirituality produced when an institution turns its back on its divine call and starts to serve another end. Positive social change does not necessarily consist only in casting out the demonic, but also in recalling the structure to its divine calling.
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And there is: we can work nonviolently to call the institution back to its divine calling. We might at times do that from within the institution, at other times do it from without. We can also encourage and foster those aspects of an institution that do, in fact, reflect its divine calling. Again, we can do that from within or from outside an institution. 5
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Evil, therefore, is not just individual but structural and spiritual. It is not simply the result of individual human actions but also the consequence of huge systems over which no individual has full control. Only by confronting the spirituality of an institution and its physical manifestations can the total structure be transformed. Any attempt to transform a social system without addressing both its spirituality and its outer forms is doomed to failure, Wink believes.
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To summarize Wink’s argument: God not only liberates us from the Powers but also liberates the Powers from their destructive behavior. Powers can be redeemed. The task of redemption is not restricted to changing individuals in a structure but also involves changing the fallen institution itself.
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Constructive theologian Eleazar Fernandez, among others, believes that we must redefine the notion of sin beyond individual actions to include the notion of systemic sin, for which he employs the terms “evil” and “social sin.” Not to do so obliterates or at least minimizes the enormous power of systems to maintain and perpetrate evil. It also allows dominant individuals and groups to avoid coming to terms with their complicity in these systems—they may not personally sin, but the system does it for them.
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as we proceed through the Social Discernment Cycle, we must allow ourselves to be converted individually even as we seek the conversion of a sinful social system.
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it is necessary to create a discerning system that acts as a whole through the members’ prayerful intuitions and insights converging in unity.
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The ability to embrace silence, self-knowledge, knowledge of the group, self-revelation, and vulnerability, the communication skills to engage in deep conversation and contemplative listening, the ability to solve conflicts within the group, and the willingness to honor a group covenant seem to me to be key to the formation of both discerning individuals and groups. A
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The first quality includes space for silence. While sufficient freedom from the press of daily responsibilities can make possible outward silence, and group processes can have silent times structured into them, the quality I am pointing to here is an inner settledness, a calmness characterized by an absence of internal chatter, a readiness to listen for the subtle traces of God’s communication, however they might come, and even a sense of expectancy at what God will do in the silence.
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What does this mean for people who can’t have inner silence?
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Third, the discerning group must know the individual members who make up the group, which requires self-revelation and vulnerability.
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Sharing stories, he states clearly, is not easy; it requires vulnerability, a belief that one’s story is intrinsically worthwhile, and the skill to articulate what is happening inside.
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In dialogue, participants do not seek to win, only to participate together in a larger pool of meaning that is always developing. This larger pool of common meaning cannot be accessed individually. 19 In dialogue, the whole organizes the parts—a case in which a system perspective is more encompassing than an individual perspective.
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Groups should be large when influencing opinion is the goal, but small if action is the goal. It turns out that the optimum size of an “action-taking” group is quite small—five to eight people. 28
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Fifth, as individuals commit themselves to this kind of deep conversation, disagreements will inevitably arise; these conflicts must be resolved.
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Groups with members belonging to other traditions than Christianity, or to no specific religious tradition, will need to speak about the religious, spiritual, or value foundations that can unite them. Time spent on this conversation will pay off amply when the going gets rough.
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A covenant makes the group commitment clearer on a deeper level than does conversation. Since it contains process guidelines that the group itself has agreed upon, the group can claim shared ownership for their behavior. Indeed, a well-crafted covenant protects the members and discerning community as a whole.
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this, just to form a discernment group? Yes! Discernment is about desiring God, first and foremost. Everything we do to form a group unified in this purpose and skilled in communicating among the members contributes to this end. The individuals and the group both become closer to God in the process of preparing to begin a formal discernment process. The time is never wasted when seen from this faith perspective; indeed the process, more than just preparation, is the product itself.
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In discernment, spiritual freedom or indifference is the inner attitude of looking for God and being willing to “sell any other possession” to move toward God’s heart for you, whether individually or collectively.
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Theologian Eleazar Fernandez offers a refreshing metaphor for spiritual freedom. He speaks of “a heart as large as the world.” A heart as large as the world is a heart that sees the connections of our lives wherever we are located on this planet. It is a heart that knows that we live in the intersection of the global and the local and knows that we share common vulnerabilities. A heart as large as the world is a heart that experiences the pain of the world, especially the pain of those who have suffered the most. It knows that, at the most elemental level, we connect with people in their joys and sufferings.
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Seeking Group Spiritual Freedom The following exercise is designed to assist discerning groups in their prayer for spiritual freedom. It works best with a small, intimate group that has spent some time together. You may need to rework it for large, diverse groups of multiple stakeholders or for the first meeting of a discerning group that does not yet have a history together. Ask for God’s Holy Spirit to dwell within the group as you seek together to understand what God is calling you to become as a discernment group—a group heart large enough and free to together follow God’s call as it becomes clear. Looking back over the group’s life, what signs of God’s presence among you can you notice? Name these signs aloud. Reflect together on what these signs may be saying about how God is at work among you. Give thanks. Looking back over the group’s life a second time, what impediments to God’s life can you notice? Each member individually: Reflect silently on such impediments in you (such as fear to speak, irritation at another’s manner, holding on to a past hurt, overpowering less powerful members of the group). Silently confess these failures, and ask God’s forgiveness and empowerment for the future. Then the group members collectively: Examine your group behavior for impediments in the group’s life. Bring them to light and collectively ask for God’s forgiveness and empowerment. With new realism regarding your group as beloved community that has at times fallen short of its vocation, ask God to enliven you collectively to desire what God desires. Commit yourselves to asking for this gift frequently throughout the discernment process. Give thanks to God for any new clarity and energy that comes through this prayer.
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corollary of this statement: any individual agent (including you or me) is not responsible for the way the system operates; responsibility is a function of the whole system itself. Searching for someone to blame for the way things are, then, is fruitless. But what we can do is look at the big picture and the long view. We can look for leverage points, where a small action can produce seemingly outsized results. We can learn to distinguish high from low leverage points in highly complex structures, seeing through the complexity to the underlying simplicity of the structure. 2
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If we “swim” inside a system, such as capitalist economics, we may be totally unaware that what appear to us as viable options remain within this economic system, rendering us unable to perceive any options outside that system. We are the proverbial fish, unaware of the medium, the properties and limits of the water we swim in.
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system’s structure is the source of its system behavior, which we can spot by watching a series of events over time. 8 Once we understand how structure impacts systems, we will focus on structures as the operative feature of systems.
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Sociologically, an institution is a configuration of social interactions that provides stability, coherence, order, legitimacy, and shape to human social interactions. Institutions emerge out of social interactions and are perpetuated over time, indeed over human generations.
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In our attempt to understand what makes systems work, the first thing that we need to know is that systems, by definition, produce their own behavior over time—this characteristic is one of the ways that a system is distinct from a machine, which does exactly the same thing each time. The behavior of a system will be characteristic of that particular system.
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But, despite this penchant for order in systems, the universe is governed by disorder.
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The fourth crucial observation: in order to understand system behavior, it is necessary to grasp all the aspects of a system whole. The classic fable of the blind men and the elephant—each blind man, grabbing a different part of the elephant, was sure he could describe “elephant” accurately—reminds us that each one’s certainty was anything but accurate. Often our attempts to influence a system are foiled by the fact that we perceive only part of it, act on what we see, and are surprised when our action doesn’t produce the expected response.
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A system, then, is more than the sum of its parts.
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An important feature of feedback loops is that the information delivered by a feedback loop can only affect future behavior of the stock, not past behavior. The stock clerk in our imaginary store can only affect the future amount of the merchandise on hand. He or she can never deliver a signal fast enough to correct behavior that drove the current feedback. So the flow must be set appropriately to compensate for the draining or inflow of the stock over time.
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Peter Senge puts these somewhat esoteric stock, flow, and feedback concepts into colloquial if somewhat counterintuitive statements about systems and their behavior, which hopefully now make some sense: Today’s problems come from yesterday’s “solutions.” The harder you push, the harder the system pushes back. • Behavior grows better before it grows worse. • The easy way out usually leads back in. • The cure can be worse than the disease. • Faster is slower. Cause and effect are not closely related in time and space. Small changes can produce big results—but the areas of highest leverage are often the least obvious. You can have your cake and eat it too—but not all at once. Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants. • There is no blame. 18
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But in a system, a problem is only a symptom of something else. In order to affect the underlying system, not just the symptom, we need a “second-order change,” that is, a change of system itself. 21 A second-order change is applied to what, in first-order-change perspective, appears to be the solution—which is precisely the real system problem. First-order change appears to be based on common sense while second-order change often appears counterintuitive, weird, or puzzling.
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The goal of Social Discernment can be stated in terms of changes in systems: We will be seeking the first contemplative action that addresses the system so that it then moves toward God’s call for that system. Thus we need to understand not only systems and how they work, but also how they may be changed.
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Once we have a sufficiently accurate picture of the system, the ways of intervening can be tailored to the system blockages. We might quit fixing the symptom and look at the larger system maintaining this behavior in the first place, that is, we might reframe what we see as the issue.
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Sometimes, paradoxically, it is important to slow down the rate of system change. Time to ponder, respond, shift mental models, and otherwise regroup, and even to play, can be exactly what injects new life in a sluggish system.
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Selecting the Structure This exercise helps you arrive at a structure in which you now participate and define its boundaries sufficiently that you can focus on the structure in the subsequent steps of the Social Discernment Cycle. Let the silence deepen around you. Enter into it. Renew your desire to follow God’s call as it unfolds through your reflection/ action. Do not rush. Simply turn your attention to God, as you experience God, and address your desire to God. Invite God to direct you to the structure in which you will concentrate your effort. Notice the many structures in which your life takes place. Perhaps an event stands out that is more than it seems and suggests a particular structure. Or notice which structures in your life carry the most energy and concern or evoke in you the desire to improve them. Allow one of these structures to present itself for your consideration. Describe this structure and the place you hold in it. Is this a structure in which you are a regular player? What about this structure could bear improvement? Bring this event and structure to God and attend to any sense that arises in you. Note: A social structure is a formal set of rules, regulations, and relationships that exists—consciously or unconsciously—between and among people and is not dependent upon the personalities of specific individuals. These structures live on even after individuals depart from them. Examples include committees, corporations, towns, congregations, schools, and so on but also normative patterns enforced by laws and mores, such as distinctive ethnic or regional cultures, racism, sexism, corporate culture, and globalization.
Part 2 The Social Discernment Cycle
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There is another reason to associate a system with a concrete incident that occurred in the system. Relating to something as abstract as a system is often very difficult. How do you have empathy for something so impersonal? Encountering a real person, as revealed in one or more concrete instances within the system, humanizes the system. Being able to empathize with the experience of a real person within the system can also provide the impetus to stay with the Social Discernment and resulting actions over the long haul that it often takes for systems to change.
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Why would we want to identify the marginalized subjects in our system? Marginalized individuals function as the proverbial canary in the coal mine. They signal where the system is holding injustice, where it is causing pain, where it is preventing the fullness of life—sometimes even extinguishing life itself. They signal that unjust powers and principalities (using Wink’s language), or anti-Kingdom forces (using Dorr’s language), are at work. Their condition
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The contemplative listening guidelines remind us neither to interrupt nor to contradict the comment of another. Instead, we simply offer our own piece of wisdom and take our hands off of what happens, figuratively speaking. We trust the Spirit to guide the group to move forward on the best wisdom of the group. This way of proceeding is indeed countercultural.
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Social analysis can be defined as the effort to obtain a more complete picture of a social situation by exploring its structural relationships, including how it came to have its present configuration. In
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As we move to the social analysis phase of the cycle, we shift from anecdote to analysis, from storytelling to critical reflection, from a preponderance of feeling to a preponderance of thinking. Our way of proceeding now becomes analytical, critical, dispassionate, clear-sighted. At this stage, we want to avoid value judgments (good, bad, right, wrong, appropriate, inappropriate, moral, immoral) as much as possible. 2 We are still curious, but now we are curious about how the pieces fit together.
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The Social Discernment Cycle, however, invites us to look at our structures from an involved, historical, and committed perspective (despite what I said above about being dispassionate in the social analysis). We
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As we move through the analysis of the structure, we also pay attention to how time affects the structure, examining the history of the structure and noticing the results of our actions over time. We also notice the space dimension; that is, we ascertain the shape of the structure at a given moment. This exercise has questions to elicit both dimensions of your structure.
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The social relationships that form the structure are crucial. The arrangements that govern understandings and responses to class, race, gender, age, and societal role hold whole groups in place in the structure.
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We are interested not only in the externals of the structure—that is, the things that can be observed from the outside—but also in the values, ideologies, and assumptions that can only be uncovered by being inside the system.
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of an institution and its concretions can the total entity be transformed, and that requires a kind of spiritual discernment and praxis that the materialistic ethos in which we live knows nothing about.” 7 We are attempting to put our finger on that inner pole. What we are searching for is no less than the spirituality of the structure.
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“Follow the money trail” has become common folk wisdom for discovering who controls the system economically.
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When a relatively small number of people control the mass media, the editorial policy of major newspapers, the articles accepted into scholarly journals, and the content of daytime talk shows, this small group can effectively shut off the dispersion of ideas they don’t like and, conversely, spread those they do. The connections between idea power, political power, and money power are increasingly visible in U.S. politics as corporate and individual contribution limits are abolished and candidate spending limits are removed.
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Religious power is authorized by appeal to the sacred. But whose sacred? What kind of adherence is expected? What are the sanctions for not believing? What happens when one sacred story supplants another or when two sacred stories conflict?
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Donal Dorr comments on the structural linkages among the four kinds of power. Imagine, he says, four pyramids all set on a common base, as if they were four mountain peaks resting on the same plain. At the top of the first pyramid are the small number of people, countries, and companies dominant in the economic sphere; at the top of the second pyramid are those officials who run governments; at the top of the third are the small group who control ideas and their dissemination; and at the top of the fourth are those holding ecclesiastical power. Those at the top of the pyramids negotiate regularly about how things will be, but they rarely if ever communicate directly with those down on the plain, even at the base of their own pyramid. (Pope Francis seems to be an exception, but the fact that the media responds so strongly when he meets with someone at the bottom of the pyramid proves the point.) We might call this relatively small group of privileged people “the 1 percent,” a term popularized during the 2012 U.S. presidential election. Folks in the large middle of the pyramids are those employed by the powerful and their structures: they are the “service personnel” who keep everything in their respective pyramids running smoothly. They act in the name of their particular pyramid’s elite, making sure their interests are maintained. Consequently, it is in some way in their self-interest to continue the status quo because, at least in their particular pyramid, they have a relatively greater power compared to the mass of people at the base. 10 Outside of their own pyramid, however, they rank with all the rest of the common people. This huge group of service personnel frequently suffers from structural injustice, and the farther from the top of their pyramid they are, the greater toll structural injustice takes.
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There is little or no freedom in this prayer. The situation is so sudden or so intolerable that the prayer simply bursts out of us, born of a situation that should never exist. If I find myself in this situation, I am entitled to be scandalized—we know this from the lament psalms, full of railing at God and at injustice. Even if I cry out against God, the very act of crying out is an implicit act of faith. Why bother if there is no God at all or if God is so distant and unrelated to us as to be completely impervious to any prayer? Faced with the fact that so many of the world’s people are forced to pray the prayer of desperation, Dorr reminds us to be a little suspicious of prayer born of freedom: is it really spiritual freedom, or is it complacency? In the end, however, the Spirit prays through any truly human prayer. I need only come before God with my hands open, expressing what is on my heart. God can work with any sincere prayer to lead us to the next step in liberating action. 12
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Social Analysis: A Simpler Version This reflection helps you to understand what is happening by getting at the facts and connections. Recall the feeling tone at the end of the Looking at the Structure exercise. Record it in your journal as you begin these reflections. Prepare yourself to address God and for God to address you. Renew your desire to follow God’s call once it becomes clear to you. Seek God’s deep freedom for your life. Since this desire is so essential to all aspects of discernment, do not hurry through this point. Notice how you are feeling as you begin. Record it in your journal as an integral part of your discernment. Ask for God’s help to analyze the situation with creativity and hope. What do you notice about the situation here today? What are people experiencing? What changes have occurred in the past twenty years? What have been the most important events? What influence does money have in our situation? Who makes the most important decisions around here? What are the most important relationships people have here? What are the most important traditions of the people in the system? 10. What do people want most in life? What will things be like in ten years if they keep going in the same way? 12. What did you learn from all this? Note how you are feeling as you work with this exercise. Look for any signs of creativity and hope and write them down as they come to you. 17
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The recent demographics gave them insight into their own church’s social relationships, yet they had to check a tendency to read the demographics back into their church. In fact, they were whiter, older, more established than the demographics of the neighborhood suggested. And, they realized, that really wasn’t the point of the question. It was to notice not what class the members of the church belonged to but how the structures of class (and race, gender, ethnicity, age, and sexual orientation) played out in their congregation.
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smaller parts do not, even if summed, give us the structure, which is more than the sum of the parts.
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Theological reflection is a dialogue between your situation and the distilled wisdom from the past. It provides a way to invite diverse and wide-ranging perspectives on similar situations over time in order to enlarge your view of what is going on.
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Theological Reflection on Your Structural Experience This exercise helps bring the resources of the Christian tradition to bear on the situation and its underlying structure. Renew your desire to understand and follow God’s call in this structural aspect of your life that is the focus of your discernment. Ask for the grace to join with God’s desires for this structure. Describe briefly the original situation that caused you to select this structure as the focus of discernment. Does your restatement differ from your original understanding of the situation and structure? If so, how? Review all the data you have so far accumulated for your discernment. What stands out, whether positive or negative? Using the results of your social analysis, describe briefly the most salient aspects of the context surrounding the situation and the structure. Did your social analysis turn up anything surprising to you? Is there anything that seems particularly relevant to the situation and its underlying structure? What biblical text (or other sacred text), parable, or metaphor comes to mind that seems to address this situation and structure? How does it invite or challenge you? What theological theme( s) comes to play in the situation or the structure? Examples might include creation, sin, repentance, liberation from bondage, salvation, exile, death and resurrection, ethical living, discipleship, community, justice for the marginalized, grace. How does this theme play out in the situation or structure? What additional guidance from your religious tradition might shed light on this situation? Notice how you are feeling and what you are experiencing, whether positive or negative. Note carefully any movements toward inner freedom and any blocks to it.
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As a general category, reflection is the process of critically assessing the content, process, or premises of our efforts in order to interpret and give meaning to our experience.
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What, in fact, is theological reflection? Simply put, theological reflection is a process for helping people to learn to see God in their experience, to “make faith sense” out of it, as Robert Kinast puts it. 3
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Our lives are full of meaningful experiences, but we do not always pay sufficient attention to enter them as fully as we might or to see them as theaters of God’s action. Theological reflection reminds us to ponder our experience and to find the theological meaning it holds.
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Unfortunately, too many people have had the experience of theology being played as a trump card that ends the discussion.
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Constructive theologian Eleazar Fernandez helps us understand why we need to do theological reflection on systems. He reminds us that an entity (a person, an object) is only what it is in relation to the whole—that is, a person is constituted by social relationships. The parts derive their being from the whole even as the parts constitute the whole. Nor is a person simply the sum of family situation, gender, class, race, and socioeconomic status, but a person is himself or herself a system constituted by the wholeness manifested in these various attributes in relationship to other persons also so constituted. Being in relationship is also what makes us an image of God, whose very essence is being-in-relationship. 8
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But such theological metanarratives per se are not the crux of the problem. It’s the wedding of these theological metanarratives to power that quickly becomes problematic, because the reflections quickly become universalized. The problem could be stated: Who gets to define what is going on? Who gets to interpret the Sacred for this situation? 12
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theological reflection, as are all humans by virtue of our shared humanity. No particular technical training is required. The caution here is not to quickly assume that one’s take is accurate or even adequate. The remedy: hold your theological reflection lightly and invite other voices into it. Chief among them will be the voice of God as it may be revealed to us in our contemplative prayer—the next exercise.
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Opening to God This reflection helps you allow the Mystery of God to emerge from the murkiness of your structural existence. Bring yourself, as you are, into prayer. Renew your desire to understand and follow God’s call in this structural aspect of your life that is the focus of your discernment. Ask God for the grace to dwell, if only for a moment, in God’s own heart for you and for this structure. Make your petition specific to you and your structure. Bring yourself to your time of prayer with all the insights, calmness, or agitation that is stirred up in you. Spend time alone. Be open to communication from God. You do not have to figure out what you should do, just be present to God in the midst of all the complexity you have discovered. Pause. Allow yourself to become open, as if you are a channel for a river. Spend as much time as you feel able, quietly waiting. Savor the experience. What images came? Metaphors? Imaginative stirrings? Scripture or passages from other sacred writings? Examples of people from the Christian tradition or other wisdom figures? After a while, write down whatever came to you in your time of prayer. Describe the experience of your prayer to someone: pastor, spiritual director, spouse, or friend. How did describing this experience affect you? 6. Pause. Notice any new freedom in you now.
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The contemplative moment is one in which we are willing to attempt—and sometimes achieve—a letting go of old identities and the need to control and are able to enter into God’s desire for ourselves, this system, and all life. 14
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Senge and his colleagues put it in their social-science-oriented language, “If we can simply observe without forming conclusions as to what our observations mean and allow ourselves to sit with all the seemingly unrelated bits and pieces of information we see, fresh ways to understand a situation can eventually emerge.” 16
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Prayer and Theological Reflection, Continued This exercise helps distill the reverberations of your prayer by comparing them once again to the situation and structure and to your earlier theological reflection. Return to prayer. Recall the freedom that came to you out of your prayer. Dwell in that freedom as you proceed with your reflection. As you stand in this place of freedom, what behaviors in your structure support your freedom or undercut it? What, in Scripture or other sacred texts, do you now connect with your sense of freedom? What texts would help live that out? What images or metaphors now express this experience? What theological truths now express this freedom for you? As you are now, look at the structure you have chosen. Name what is graced and open to God in the structure. Name what is sinful and turning from God in the structure. Name the conversion or transformation you notice in your experience so far. Finally, notice how you are feeling as you come to this point in the process.
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At the outset, however, the system may seem impenetrable, with no clear way forward. Nonetheless, we ask to understand the single first action that we are called to implement, small though it may be: speak to one person about what is happening, change one small behavior within the system, shift the power dynamics in one committee, whatever it might be that results from your prayer. Systems, by definition, will adjust to each force acting upon them, so a system that appears immovable still must respond to this single action. Something will be different after the action, though the change may be so subtle as not to be perceptible to the discerner.
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Deciding on the First Contemplative Action This exercise assists you in selecting from among the possible actions the one that seems closest to God’s call in this structure. Return to last prayer exercise. Remember what happened. Reexperience your moments of freedom. Ask God for strength and courage to move into decision and action. As you do this new phase and you experience freedom, cling to it. It is out of freedom that we determine what to do and how to do it. If you do not experience freedom, do not proceed! Rather, stay in your prayer, repeating the earlier set of exercises. Wait for God to stir up freedom. Describe the freedom as you now experience it. Let the freedom deepen. Where does the freedom come from? What does it look like? Smell like? Taste like? Where do you notice it in your body? What images are associated with it? Notice the desire that comes through this freedom. What is it like? Do any concrete responses, that is, actions connected to desire, come to you? What intuitions or nudges about concrete actions came to you during any of the earlier phases? How do these intuitions or nudges look different from the perspective of your freedom? Honoring all your insights and movements, list any other possible concrete actions you could take. Which of these actions (those listed in numbers 6, 7, and 9) is possible for you to do at this point in your or your organization’s life? Which of these would address the needs of the situation? Which of them would be most effective? Choose one contemplative action to work with or live into now, the one that has the most energy or seems to be calling to you. Write it down. Reflect on what you are currently experiencing. What is the quality of your freedom when you hold it up to the action you have chosen?
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The fifth point asks you to name the desires that surface in the context of your spiritual freedom. The source of this direction lies with Ignatius of Loyola. In each of the meditations and contemplations in his Spiritual Exercises, he directs retreatants to ask for what they desire. Why? Our desires tell us about our heart, but they can also tutor our hearts and imaginations. When we know our deepest desires, we know something important not only about ourselves, but also about God, because our deepest desires come from and point to God. Desires are also powerful expressions of our passions, and it is passions that move us to action. Thus, when we know our desires, we will also be alerted to the potential for our most powerful actions, be they for good or for ill.
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Confirming the Tentative Decision This exercise invites you bring your tentative decision before God to see if it stands up in the context of various touchstones for discernment gleaned from the long Christian discernment tradition. These touchstones serve as indicators that the Holy Spirit is most likely present in this decision. Return to the experience of the previous prayer. Remember what happened. Reexperience your moments of freedom. Ask God for strength and courage to move into decision and action. Reflect on the contemplative action you have selected. Now notice any signs that this contemplative action is something you should, in fact, choose and implement. Such signs might include greater peace, consolation, energy, courage, sense of “rightness.” Other signs might come from outside: others who know you well also confirm it, it fits within your previous commitments and honors them, it falls within the biblical witness, etc. How are the marginalized ones involved in this contemplative action? Notice how power functions in the contemplative action you are called to. Does this action involve service with or for others? That is, will this action engage you alongside others or on behalf of others or some other arrangement of power? What are some possible results of this contemplative action (acceptance, hostility, struggle, etc.)? If this reflection elicits some fear or other resistance, touch that fear against your experience of freedom. What happens? Who will join you in implementing this action? How will you select them, invite them, and collaborate with them? What means will be used to evaluate this contemplative action? Name a later date at which you will do this. Name persons who will help you do this review. Continue to pray, dwelling in the freedom experienced, for the strength and courage to move into implementing the decisions and actions that have emerged. However, if significant reservations appear, return to earlier parts of the process and begin again, seeking another contemplative action.
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Chief executive officers who know nothing about discernment still know a lot about executive decision making. They know how to discover and refine the issue about which a decision needs to be made, gather all the relevant facts, data, and projections, consult appropriate persons, weigh everything, and make a decision. Wise CEOs may also pay attention to their motives and clarify any biases they might be bringing into the process.
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Benedictine Margaret Mary Funk offers a useful overview of what happens at the confirmation point in discernment. A confirming sign has these characteristics: • It has indications that it will be good for you. It comes from outside you. (That is, the confirmation is different from you talking yourself into the decision. Certainly you may consult, but carefully, with spouse or spiritual director or others in a position to know you well and understand that you are listening for God. We are listening for God, not what others want us to do.) • It is directly linked to the issue at hand. It brings the accompanying grace to make the action possible, even if it is difficult and requires some suffering It is in proportion to the gravity of the decision. It provides sufficient certainty to move forward, confident that God accompanies us. 10
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Does the decision bring more life? For whom? Do our deep desires point us toward these life-enhancing decisions?
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In the absence of a sufficiently strong and weighty confirmation, it is best to pause longer or return to earlier parts of the process and see if an alternative decision presents itself for confirmation. The tentative decision that receives confirmation may lie among the other suggestions you gathered in the last exercise; to discover if that is the case, simply select the next option that seems right and return again to the confirmation exercises.
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Systems push back when the stability of the existing system is threatened, so many, and perhaps most, system actions will exhibit some kind of resistance or outright punishment directed at the perceived source of the change—often the discerner-actor. It is not unrealistic, therefore, to experience some trepidation prior to confirming a decision.
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For example, are you paralyzed with the fear, or is there a quiet courage and sense of call that coexists with the fear, enabling you to proceed in spite of it? It may take time and some discernment to sort out the difference.
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Her body tensed up. “This isn’t going to be easy,” she thought, “simple, but not easy.” Yet the more she sat with the statement, “If you speak them, they are no longer unspoken,” the more she knew she had the action to which she was being called.