Learning the CLEARNESS COMMITTEE PROCESS for Communal Spiritual Discernment

As part of the Centers’ ongoing commitment to helping people to live faithfully to God’s call in their lives, a eight-month program is being developed for people who feel called to listen deeply to others and to ask open, honest questions to help people to discern God’s desire in our everyday lives.

   This program is emerging partly in response to the questions I have gotten from people after training Parish Lay Discernment Committees in the parishes who spend a minimum of six months with an aspirant who is discerning a call to ordination.  Often, a member of a PLDC will say, “It’s wonderful to be able to give this much time and attention to one person about ordination. Is there something like this for me?”  It is a gift for any person to have a group of people committed to listening and asking questions that help to bring clarity in one’s life.  And what a wonderful gift it would be for anyone in any parish, who is wrestling with an issue or decision or needs clarity about something in his or her life, to have some people to go to who can sit with them and ask open, honest questions in an environment of trust, prayer, and deep listening.

     Clearness Committees come out of the Quaker tradition and Parker Palmer has incorporated them into his work. (Read his book, A Hidden Wholeness to learn more about Parker’s work and about Clearness Committees.)  A Clearness Committee is comprised of 5 or 6 trusted people who meet with the (focus) person seeking clarity, usually for about three hours.  The Clearness Committee’s job is not to try to “fix” person, but to help the focus person, through questions and silence, to hear more clearly the Spirit’s voice and guidance in the midst of all the other voices at play.  We are wrestling with all sorts of questions in our lives and what a gift it would be to have others who are committed to prayer and listening to accompany us in our discernment.

      Karen L. Jackson, Ed.D., Retreat Leader and Program Facilitator, Connecting Role and Soul, will be the facilitator for this program.

   If you feel called to be part of this program and on-going ministry, please call or email The Rev. Charlotte D. Cleghorn, 828.274.2681 or charlotte@allsoulscathedral.org

The program will begin in October and will meet the first Saturday of the month from October through May.