Summer of Discernment

Thanks to our recent move, I’ve been enjoying the unusual and special privilege of spending a lot of time with my girls this summer. I’m making use of our time together. I’m teaching them the art of discernment. Age appropriate, I’m helping them to weed through impulsive words, to look for patterns, and to recognize inconsistencies and hypocrisy they identify in themselves and in others. I’m not making a big show of it. We don’t sit down and have family meetings about this. But I’m teaching it. Because now more than ever these things matter.

“Eomer said, ‘How is a man to judge what to do in such times?’
As he has ever judged,’ said Aragorn. ‘Good and evil have not changed since yesteryear, nor are they one thing among Elves and another among Men. It is a man’s part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his own house.”
― J.R.R Tolkien, The Two Towers