Spiritual direction or companionship is a valuable practice for a person’s spiritual growth, personal integration, and when engaged in a healing process like recovery. It’s helpful when questioning one’s faith and beliefs, looking for a way forward. In this video, I’m sharing some personal insights as to what makes me unique as a spiritual director.
The following is a text version of this blog posting.
I talk a lot about spiritual direction. I recommend working with a spiritual director or a spiritual companion if you are serious about developing the spiritual dimension of life, are discerning your life direction, or when healing some part of life that is hurting, perhaps from trauma or addiction. Spiritual direction can be an important practice for whole and healthy growth that empowers people to better integrate their lives.
But what makes me a unique spiritual director? Why would someone want to work with me? What types of people seek me out for spiritual direction?
Among the answers about what makes a person an appropriate spiritual director are those related to training and experience. Yes, I have a master’s degree in spirituality that trained me for individual and group spiritual direction. Yes, I’ve taught in several spiritual direction training programs and supervised new spiritual directors. Yes, I’ve been engaged with others as a spiritual director for several decades. That’s great stuff, but it doesn’t tell you about what makes me a unique spiritual director.
While my own spiritual life is grounded in contemplative Christian spiritual practice, praying the monastic hours and engaging in spiritual reading and meditation regularly, my experience has always been between the margins. I don’t have an insider’s perspective about life or spirituality. I look at life from the outside, from the margin. I’m not focused on definitions and dogma, because I look at life and the spiritual dimension of my own life from the margin. I have a skepticism when it comes to organized religion of any kind. What’s important to me is people’s experience, their real experience.
What’s important about the spiritual dimension of my life has to do with the experience of the Divine. I prefer to talk in terms of the Divine rather than of God because the term “God” conjures particular images that are usually male, usually powerful, and usually distant. Instead, my experience is of the Divine: a presence or essence that is both mysterious and accessible. I find the presence of the Divine in my day-to-day experiences, in other people, in nature, and deep within myself. The Divine is life-giving, life-renewing, as well as both strong and tender. It is in my spiritual practice that I encounter the Divine – and encounter within myself something that evokes within me a yearning to find something more in life.
My spiritual practices are rooted in the Christian contemplative tradition, but that’s probably reflective of the time and culture I was born into. They are important to me, but I don’t think that my spiritual path is better than any other path. It’s simply the path on which I’ve found myself.
When I work with someone in spiritual direction, my focus is on what’s significant for them and what they are experiencing. Because of that focus, as well as because of my knowledge about a variety of religions and wisdom traditions, over the years I’ve been a spiritual director to people who were Buddhist monks, pagan witches, Christian clergy, people who describe themselves as spiritual but not religious, and many other people as well. Because of Skype and Zoom, I’ve met with people in Europe, Africa, Australia, and Asia. It’s an honor for me to work with others in spiritual direction because they share such rich and varied experiences from the depth of their lives.
Something I laugh at each year is a form I fill out when I renew my membership in Spiritual Directors International. They ask on the form if I can work with people who are — and then list a bunch of categories based on gender, race, and many other things. Why I laugh is because I don’t focus on beliefs or distinguishing characteristics but on the unique experience of each person. Just because someone falls into this or that category doesn’t mean they are like everyone else in that category. We are each individual, no matter our external characteristics.
I think I’m unique as a spiritual director because I don’t make assumptions about anyone or their spiritual path. What I find is that most people today draw on a variety of practices and have beliefs that may not objectively fit together but nevertheless work for them. That’s my focus. Where is spirituality in your life? In what ways do you experience the mystery I call the Divine? How can you live in a way that’s richer, fuller, deeper, and most consonant with who you are most deeply? That’s what’s important to me in spiritual direction.
If you want to talk about it, reach out and let me know.