As companions to someone in this faith journey, we are to be co-re-readers of someone's personal history in order discern (see and hear clearly) together, what God might be showing and saying through that history. As companions, we are invited to help someone else, with eyes of faith, what the experiences of one's life reveal about God, and the unique way in which God deals with this person. In helping someone do this, we are also accompanying her to recognize God's particular call as to how she is to live her life. What do her life experiences reveal about God? This is the question that is central to the accompaniment process, the answer to which will provide a key to the direction her life will take, and the daily choices necessary for living that life.

In responding to this central question, we move from this initial work of reconstructing personal history, to re-reading that history, recognizing religious experiences, and using these touchstone experiences as "divining rods" for discernment.

We begin by consulting our experience, reconstructing our personal history as an unfolding of moments that reveal the God who is present in that history, whether we were aware of it or not at the time. The events of our life will not be all equally significant; what we look for are those moments that we hold in our memories and in our hearts, whether they contain joy or hold pain for us, and which we now see as inevitably making us who we are: without these events – and this is what makes them significant – we would not be who we are now.

DANCE AS AN IMAGE FOR ACCOMPANIMENT

Some people take to dancing as a duck to the pond – there is simply a naturalness about dancing for them. Others feel like they have two left feet, and are very clumsy in their attempts to dance, and come to the conclusion that a dancing lesson is a necessary asceticism to learning what they greatly desire. Still others believe that if they are faithful enough to the lessons and the practice, they will ultimately learn. Some are slow but sure learners. Others just give up - the attempt just might be too hard for them, and the cost too much for the value they put on learning how to dance.

To accompany someone in formation is to be like a dancing instructor, introducing the learner to her potential for dancing, and helping her to discover how she is with the dancing. It is to direct the learner to listen intently to the music and move with it, allowing it to "make sense" out of the steps of the dance, until they become habitually attuned to the music. Discernment in formation is like being introduced to a way of listening to music so that it does not merely remain in the background, but instead becomes part of someone's inner music, to which she dances more and more as a habitual response to it. The dance instructor, ultimately, must go the way of every companion in the spiritual journey: she must move away so that the learner is able to dance with a partner, when dancing has been learned confidently enough that the new dancer goes dancing, savouring the joy that comes with being at one with the music and the partner. A formator, like the dance instructor, is there to help the dancer to reflect on her attunement to her partner and to review significant movements, different steps, changing rhythms and other facets related to the dancing. The formator, like the dance instructor, hopes that the time will come when the learner will have learnt enough to be able to continue dancing – to the music of the Spirit and with God, the lead dancer and partner – without her. Perhaps one of the most profound moments in any relationship of companionship such as we have described, is when the "teacher" lets the "learner" go.

Taken from Religious Life Asia: Discernment in Formation (April-June 2005) by Sr. Linda Lizada, rc