Identifying and responding to a call to Ordination involves many conversations with many people over time. The good of all such conversations, whatever their context, is to discern God's invitation to the individual and the community.

The Right Reverend Chilton Knudsen, Bishop of Maine, has identified several fundamental principles which must be part of a process of discernment:

(1) Discernment is set within the established, disciplined life of prayer and meditation (especially upon Scripture) of each discerner (and of each discerning community).

(2) The predisposing reality of Discernment is freedom (Ignatius' Indifference; 12 steps' detachment)

(3) The purpose of Discernment is a progressive discovery of God's will in all the subtlety and graciousness of that will.

(4) Discernment seeks for faithfulness, rather than a particular result or outcome.

(5) Discernment acknowledges fully the context in which it takes place.

(6) Discernment acknowledges fully the human particulars of the discerner's own circumstances (family, physical limitations, gifts and liabilities, temperament, age, etc.) at this moment.

(7) Discernment encompasses the whole of the personal journey of the discerner.

(8) Discernment embraces, but is not driven by, the emotions, desires, "baggage" of the discerner.

(9) Discernment assumes (or commends) the gift of rigorous insight (self-awareness) as essential for sifting, sorting and distinguishing between temptations and invitations.

                    (10) Discernment is dynamic; it attends to the movements, growth