My name is Sister Miriam Alton Hoffen.
I'm the congregational leader of a missionary congregation, the servants of the Holy Spirit. We are congregation in 48 countries, around 2,800 sisters, very intercultural.

And so we are doing since many years actually already communal discernment which is quite similar to the method we are also using here that is the conversation in the holy spirit.

So one fundament of that is to believe that God is speaking, the Holy Spirit is speaking through everyone and everyone sitting at the table. Normally it's a round table um has a voice and there is equality also in the voices. There's no a general superior has the same voice as a junior sister, a young sister or someone else.
So that is one of the principles. 

The second one is that we listen very carefully to each other and that is not so easy because very often we are preoccupied with our own thoughts and ideas and we want to present our own ideas. But here this method somehow slows down the process and helps us to first listen attentively to what each sister has to say with regard to one question or topic.

So we do the first round and listen to every one and the second round is then to not continue with your own thoughts but to actually uh be attentive also to your inner movements like Ignatius says that discernment is being attentive to the inner movements to see what of what the others have said has touched me and has kind of inspired me and moved me in a direction. And the second round is exactly to to share that what has touched me of what the others have said.

And the third round is to to look together what is the Holy Spirit calling us to is there an action or something we can do together uh that would help respond to the situation.

So this kind of process is very helpful for religious congregations because it helps to first of all listen to many voices and then in a prayerful atmosphere also listen how is the spirit calling us forward as a congregation as a group in our response to also the needs which we are encountering in daily life or in our societies.