On Spiritual Direction

After such a long hiatus, fueled by a call to a new church and the need to attend to my new duties, I would love to offer something pithy and real, some words of great import.

But words will, no doubt, fail me when I try to describe the events of last week. I spent last week in a training session on spiritual direction and the immense honor and the awesome responsibility of sharing someone's most intimate experiences of God is all but indescribable.

I can think of nothing more sacred than employing this art of listening with the aid of Holy Spirit as individuals or a small group describe their experience of God for the purpose of helping them to better see the presence of God in their lives and to listen for the next step to which God is calling them. To sit with someone as they relate their experience of the Holy and to try and help them discern where and how God is at work in their lives is a wonderfully daunting task. But fortunately it is God's Spirit who is actually the spiritual director and we who are privileged to witness the work of God in the lives of others.

So many of the things mentioned in earlier writings here come into play in spiritual direction--paying attention to God-given desires, discerning what God is up to and how to get in on it, listening for an indication of that next step God gives us, making space in our busy pursuit of religion to actually have a conversation with God--all of these things are brought into play as directees and directors enter into the presence of the Holy together.

So what is to keep Spiritual Direction from just being escape into our imagination? If it's just about people sharing their experience of God from their point of view, how do we know if any of it is real? Basically, it is up to both the director and directee to listen for the voice of Spirit as the stories of one's life are related, grounding them in scripture, theology and tradition while still being open to the new thing that God may wish to bring forth. The difference here is that we are not just talking about God but relating details of our personal experience of and relationship with God.

So spiritual direction avoids the realm of talk about God which often enters into discussions of theology, belief systems, dogma and tradition. Spiritual direction is about entering into a relationship of sharing deeply one's actual experiences of God for the purpose of learning more about ourselves and the desires of the one who created us as we are.

As such, this is a daring adventure that cannot be entered into without significant investment of one's self and a willingness to reveal what lies at the depths of one's soul. The rewards are great but the risk is ultimate in that one who truly desires to know God and to be completely open to God can hold nothing back in the end. Of course, no one starts out at such a level of complete openness and honesty and often much time is required in order to reach the point of being so vulnerable and so completely transparent. This level of transparency can only happen when one comes to know the sheer depth of God's grace and when one understands the cross as a measure of the willingness of God to do whatever it takes to be in relationship with us.

The advantage of spiritual direction is that trained directors (and even novices like me) can often observe things about the way you tell your story that remain hidden to you. These little revelations are often the keys to opening up deep, hidden pockets of self-knowledge and ways of being with God that would otherwise remain obscured.

If you sincerely desire to know God more intimately, spiritual direction may be worth considering as a way of getting beyond your own limits of understanding God and becoming open to the ways God seeks to be present in your life.