如何举办一次贵格会「澄心委员会」？
Early on in my time with Quakers I learned about this thing called a "Clearness Committee."
Basically the way it was described to me is that you've got something that you need
to figure out, you have a problem you need to solve, or a question you need to answer.
You don't necessarily need advice.
You probably know what you need to do, but you need to clear through all the things that
are interrupting your ability to access what, in your heart of hearts, you know you need
to do.
So you can then have a Clearness Committee.
I have a personal prayer: I am the clay.
Mold me.
I am the vessel.
Fill me.
I am the instrument.
Use me.
But in trying to decide how best to be used, I need the prayer and support and listening
of others.
A Clearness Committee is a small group of Friends that gather and basically ask you
tough questions about what your leading is, what your concern is, what is happening inside
you.
What do you feel?
Well people regularly have what is called a Clearness Committee for marriage.
We have Clearness Committees about whether people are actually called to do a ministry
that they are thinking about.
We have clearness for membership.
Are you ready to join the Religious Society of Friends?
A Clearness Committee, I think, in Quaker terms, very much involves humility.
You are submitting yourself, generally voluntarily, to an entity that is part of your Meeting,
your congregation.
And so a lot of people will convene a Clearness Committee if they are getting married, or if
they are choosing what college to go to, or choosing which direction to go in their
career, or that sort of thing.
So that is where we get the name Clearness Committee.
It is about clearness.
Becoming clear about a decision.
When we call this group together, we are looking for very specific kinds of people.
We are looking for people who are good at listening, and who do not have a tendency
to give advice.
These should be people that are important in your life and in the life of your community,
but not so close to you that they are going to be influenced by your decision one way
or another.
They are not there to provide answers.
They are there to try and help you see clearly what the situation is, what is happening,
and what you should do about it.
It is a gift of your spiritual community, saying, "You don't have to struggle alone.
Here are your companions that can work with you and go on this part of your journey with
you," which is, to me, phenomenal in this day and age.
That we could be so blessed that our community says, "You don't have to do this alone.
We'll help."
The prep work for a Clearness Committee is that the clerk will find a place and time
and put together the committee, and then the person who is the focus person of the committee
will write a page or two in advance.
And so you start off by actually describing the situation.
Like, really sitting down, writing it out so that everybody has access to it and you
can say, "Ok, this is what is going on, and this is why it is confusing to me.
These are what I perceive my options to be in this situation.
What am I missing?"
The steps involved in the actual Clearness Committee are to come together and for the
person who is asking for the Clearness Committee to state what it is that they want clarity
on.
So they state their problem or decision point.
Even though it is been passed out beforehand, I say in my own words, "This is the situation
as I understand it."
Then the committee should ask clarifying questions that are really just about facts.
Like, "Did you mean you are moving to Georgia in the U.S. or Georgia in Asia?"
That kind of thing.
After this time of questioning, we sit and we wait.
I've been in Clearness Committees where sitting and waiting lasted for 20 minutes,
and I've been in Clearness Committees where sitting and waiting lasted for 3 hours.
So usually people will just listen and hold the space together, and ask the Spirit to
bring to them clarity.
The committee starts listening together and asking deeper spiritual questions.
Do you feel that God is calling you to do this?
How do you see your life evolving if you follow this path?
How do you see your life evolving if you turn away from this opportunity?
So the questions that a Clearness Committee asks are all going to be questions that are
open ended and that lead to greater self-reflection, and to deeper prayer and to a more imaginative
engagement with the problem or question.
At that point, the committee's role is to step back and listen and let the focus person
for the clearness process really respond to those questions at a deep mind, heart, and
spirit level.
So out of that time, a lot of times people will share things that they noticed.
Maybe they'll share, "I noticed your eyes really light up when you talked about this
idea," or "I noticed a change in your body posture when you talked about this decision."
But my experience in this is that when you've got this group of people gathered to listen
around this issue, each person is going to hear a little piece of God's voice.
Of a way forward.
A lot of times the person themselves will start feeling that clarity in themselves and
will be able to name it to some degree, and will be able to say, "Yes, when you shared
that, I really felt like that rang true," or "That felt right in my body or my spirit."
I've come into a Clearness Committee with a preconceived notion of what is going to
happen, and it gets blown out of the water every single time.
It is kind of hilarious that way.
I've been on Clearness Committees where the group found that people weren't clear
to get married, for instance, or that membership might need to take a little more time, or
that there might need to be 2 or 3 more meetings spaced out over a number of months before
we get at the clearness part of things.
I think that is helpful in a couple of ways.
It is helpful in the "yes," like: "Ah yes, so this was a leading.
Okay, self-doubt, take that!
There is a committee of other Friends who have listened and heard!"
It is also, like, I can rejoice in the "no".
When a Clearness Committee ends in a "Wait." or, "That wasn't what I thought it was,"
then that is coming from God, and I can feel so much more comfortable in that "No"
or in that "Wait" than just like, "I really said no, or wait, but it was my own
self-doubt."
That is gone.
That is out of the picture at the end of a Clearness Committee.
Sometimes you don't come to clarity, so that is kind of a bummer when that happens.
But it definitely is not uncommon, so if that happens to you, don't worry.
You are not a failure at Quakerism.
You can try again or you can allow the wisdom that did emerge out of that community to inform
your decision.
In this space of faithful waiting and listening, and frankly listening with love for the person
who has the question, means that when we bring that love together in the different ways each
individual holds that, even if no clarity comes from it, there is a sense of being held
in love by our community that can make the lack of clarity not as scary as it used to be.