What makes a good Spiritual Director

The Roll of the Spiritual Director

The singular goal of the Spiritual Director is to help the directee find God in the directee’s own experiences of prayer and life(Barry and Connoly 8). It is clear that spiritual direction overlaps in scope and function with many of the other pastoral and soul care ministries. Even if the spiritual director is also the directee’s pastor and may offer council in some occasions, when in direction, this one goal takes over for good spiritual direction to happen.

Rather than a meeting between to people before God to pursue a human goal as in counseling, spiritual direction involves the meeting of the directee and God before another person, the spiritual director to pursue a divine goal (Temple 91). The roll of the director is then to observe the interactions between God and the directee. The Spiritual director has a keen ear listening both to the experiences the directee has with God as well as the stirrings of the Spirit.

“Spiritual direction is a kind of discernment about discernment” (Bakke 18). Through direction a directee can better learn how God has been speaking to him or her and then better be able to recognize God’s voice in the future. Much then rests on the Spiritual Director to not only listen and observe well, but also to demonstrate integrity in response to God’s promptings, and the Spirit’s giftings.

Spiritual Giftings

Given the roll of the Spiritual Director as a discerner, the gift of discernment is an important quality to have. The Spirit gives this gift as he chooses, but, as with all spiritual gifts, it is strengthened through practice. As we just mentioned above, a good way to practice and experiment with discernment is through spiritual direction. This is why a good spiritual director should have had much experience as a directee, and should continue to meet with a spiritual director.

In more directive traditions, like the orthodox or in some cases the charismatic, gifts like discernment (1 Cor. 12:10), words of knowledge and words of wisdom (1 Cor. 12:8) give the authority for a director to step out on the limb of offering directions. This kind of spiritual direction is not palatable to most in western culture, though it is more the pattern of the desert fathers and the Russian Orthodox staretz. Dostoyevsky describes how people would attach themselves to these elders, these holy men. When my first Spiritual Director asked me what I imagined a Spiritual Director was like I thought of Zossima, the staretz from one of my favorite Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. The intrigue and romance his description left me with still makes the Orthodox tradition of spiritual direction the most fascinating to me.

What was such an elder? An elder was one who took your soul, your will, into his soul and his will. When you choose an elder, you renounce your own will and yield it to him in complete submission, complete self-abnegation. This novitiate, this terrible school of abnegation, is undertaken voluntarily, in the hope of self-conquest, of self-mastery, in order, after a life of obedience, to attain perfect freedom, that is, from self; to escape the lot of those who have lived their whole life without finding their true selves in themselves. This institution of elders is not founded on theory, but was established in the East from the practice of a thousand years. The obligations due to an elder are not the ordinary “obedience” which has always existed in our Russian monasteries. The obligation involves confession to the elder by all who have submitted themselves to him, and to the indissoluble bond between him and them (Dostoevsky 27-28).

To be sure this kind of obedience can be dangerous and should in now way be undertaken with out much practice in the wisdom gifts mentioned above. The only place an Elder could exercise such authority is where he or she is convinced the authority is not of themselves. Likewise the directee volunteers his or her obedience, not slavishly, but only under the recognition of God’s voice in the matter.

Listening Skills

More often the kind of direction that Spiritual Directors offer is an active listening ear, attentive to both the directee’s experiences of God in prayer and the stirrings of God during the course of direction. Bakke notes that prayer is the heart of spiritual direction, both during out outside of the meeting. Prayer is when “the human heart discloses itself to God and is open to listen and respond” (39). In spiritual direction the director is invited to listen along.
Effective spiritual direction meetings depend on both people intending to listen attentively for the Holy Spirit, which leans more toward patient waiting than active striving to hear God. Prayer becomes a mixture of activity and passivity: an active intentionality to be available to the Spirit and a passive open willingness that invites God to set agendas for spiritual direction conversations. Directees do not need to have what they describe as an outstanding or successful prayer life. But they do need to be willing to pray regularly and explore the Spirit’s invitations. The willingness of directors and directees to continue to pray and seek God even when prayer is not satisfying or comfortable is essential for spiritual direction to take place (Bakke 39).

The spiritual direction meeting is, then, a place of prayer – a place of the bared soul. Both the directee and director must have this attitude for effective spiritual direction to take place. A good director will bare his or her soul to God and listen for the stirrings of the Spirit. A good director will also have a bear soul toward the directee, absorbing the directee’s heart, prayer’s and experiences as his or her own for a time. This gives the directee the benefit of another heart to feel the consolations of the Spirit and the warnings of desolation.

This is no doubt difficult work for the director. It takes a full and constant attention given to God and at the same time full and constant attention given to the directee. This kind of presence to another takes much practice even for those gifted with relational prowess. It requires a high view of the person sitting across from you as well. “A true director can never get over the awe he feels in the presence of a person, an immortal soul, loved by Christ, washed in His most Precious Blood, and nourished by the sacrament of His Love” (Merton 34). This requires a heart that is ready to be exposed before another, not by the way of disclosure but passively laid bare to receive and commune in prayer.

Integrity

In the process of direction the director is on the look out for resistance within the directee toward growth in God. In order to be ready to receive such resistance without defensiveness and to recognize the opportunity for growth, the director must have a simplicity of heart – an integrity that rests it’s trust in God(Bakke 62-78).

A good director is quick to realize that the primary relationship in spiritual direction is between the directee and God. If the directee responds with shocking or inappropriate feelings toward the director, the director should be quick to contextualize these reactions in terms of the relationship with God.
A director cannot do this if biases exist in the heart of the director that blind, or stir up shocking or inappropriate feelings in return. The bare heart of the director is his or her best asset, the conduit for prayer. He or she must guard the heart. Again ongoing spiritual direction helps the director maintain growth of their heart. Supervision also offers insight for the director as to where the heart might be blocked or not completely bared to prayerful communication(Barry and Connoly 160).

Conclusion

The roll of the Spiritual Director is an important one. With importance comes great responsibility. The director must be a man or woman of prayer, who prayerfully interacts with people as well as God. He or she must also be continually growing in spiritual giftedness, practicing the unique mixture of gifts the Spirit has granted and developing his or her heart in continued spiritual direction and supervision.

My favorite Spiritual Direction tradition

My class in spiritual direction sparked an interest in me to re-read The Brother's Karamazov. When my first Spiritual Director asked me what I imagined a Spiritual Director was like I thought of Zossima, the staretz from one of my favorite Dostoevsky works.

What was such an elder? An elder was one who took your soul, your will, into his soul and his will. When you choose an elder, you renounce your own will and yield it to him in complete submission, complete self-abnegation. This novitiate, this terrible school of abnegation, is undertaken voluntarily, in the hope of self-conquest, of self-mastery, in order, after a life of obedience, to attain perfect freedom, that is, from self; to escape the lot of those who have lived their whole life without finding their true selves in themselves. This institution of elders is not founded on theory, but was established in the East from the practice of a thousand years. The obligations due to an elder are not the ordinary “obedience” which has always existed in our Russian monasteries. The obligation involves confession to the elder by all who have submitted themselves to him, and to the indissoluble bond between him and them.

The story is told, for instance, that in the early days of Christianity one such novice, failing to fulfil some command laid upon him by his elder, left his monastery in Syria and went to Egypt. There, after great exploits, he was found worthy at last to suffer torture and a martyr’s death for the faith. When the Church, regarding him as a saint, was burying him, suddenly, at the deacon’s exhortation, “Depart all ye unbaptised,” the coffin containing the martyr’s body left its place and was cast forth from the church, and this took place three times. And only at last they learnt that this holy man had broken his vow of obedience and left his elder, and, therefore, could not be forgiven without the elder’s absolution in spite of his great deeds. Only after this could the funeral take place. This, of course, is only an old legend. But here is a recent instance.

A monk was suddenly commanded by his elder to quit Athos, which he loved as a sacred place and a haven of refuge, and to go first to Jerusalem to do homage to the Holy Places and then to go to the north to Siberia: “There is the place for thee and not here.” The monk, overwhelmed with sorrow, went to the Oecumenical Patriarch at Constantinople and besought him to release him from his obedience. But the Patriarch replied that not only was he unable to release him, but there was not and could not be on earth a power which could release him except the elder who had himself laid that duty upon him. In this way the elders are endowed in certain cases with unbounded and inexplicable authority. That is why in many of our monasteries the institution was at first resisted almost to persecution. Meantime the elders immediately began to be highly esteemed among the people. Masses of the ignorant people as well as of distinction flocked, for instance, to the elders of our monastery to confess their doubts, their sins, and their sufferings, and ask for counsel and admonition. Seeing this, the opponents of the elders declared that the sacrament of confession was being arbitrarily and frivolously degraded, though the continual opening of the heart to the elder by the monk or the layman had nothing of the character of the sacrament. In the end, however, the institution of elders has been retained and is becoming established in Russian monasteries. It is true, perhaps, that this instrument which had stood the test of a thousand years for the moral regeneration of a man from slavery to freedom and to moral perfectibility may be a two-edged weapon and it may lead some not to humility and complete self-control but to the most Satanic pride, that is, to bondage and not to freedom.

Orthodox Spiritual Direction

Here in the monastery library I found a book called, “Spiritual Direction in the Early Christian East,.” It has a forward by Orthodox Bishop Kallistos Ware which discusses the concept of staretz or fathers in the Russian Orthodox tradition.

He describes a “golden chain,” a sort of secondary apostolic succession happening as these spiritual fathers who helped form the disciples of the next generation.

From what he wrote I get the impression that these fathers teneded to be very directive. They administered penance, not, Ware points out, as punishment, but as a doctor prescribing a remedy (xii). In addition to doctor, Ware also uses the images of counsellor, intercessor and mediator.

“Healer, teacher, man of prayer - the spiritual fathers is all these things, and yet he is something more.... anadochos denotes ... standing surety for his obligations” (xxiii).

While the spiritual director in the Orthodox tradition may be more authoritarian one may also expect to be dearly valued by their spiritual director. They stand before God responsible for their directees. They take upon themselves the responsibility of their directees spiritual formation - a kind of cosigner in their covenant with God.

I haven’t had any experience with a directive approach to spiritual direction. I have neither been wounded by it or could speak to its power. Since reading Dostoevski’s accounts of startsi in the Russian Orthodoxy, I have found myself drawn to submitting myself in obedience to a holy man.

Perhaps it is the romance of
Buddhist monks learning martial arts from a wise old master. Or the mystique of the orient and the draw of the hermitage.