Spiritual Direction Resources

Parents as Spiritual Directors

Then little children were being brought to him in order that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples spoke sternly to those who brought them; but Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.’ And he laid his hands on them and went on his way.[1]

Who would doubt Jesus’ sincerity about wanting children to come to him? Yet the actions of many in the church imply that we don’t believe children can really access the depths of relationship with Christ. There are challenges associated with the spirituality of children, to be sure, but against them stand the very nature of God and ancient practices that can assist children on the way.

Challenge

When I was a teenager I was delighted to be ministering to children. I felt called to children’s ministry as a child and as a teenager I was already realizing the dream.  However, one Sunday morning shook my convictions so violently that, for a time, I abandoned the thought of ministry to children. A new pastor had just taken over the children’s ministry that I had been running with some friends. I was helping her this particular Sunday when she invited the children to respond to a salvation message. I saw many children finding places of prayer, asking Jesus to be their Savior.  Instead of producing joy, this event rocked me to my core.  Many of these children were already saved and had in the weeks and months before been finding places of prayer to deepen their relationships with God and seek the baptism in the Holy Spirit.  I was immediately faced with the question: Can children understand this spiritual life? Is the richness of relationship with the triune God available to them?

Today, I am the father of five-year-old Foster and seven-year-old Ella. This challenge comes home to me as I attempt to use all of my training as a children’s pastor to help them find their own experiences of God. Ella is naturally more interested in the things of God. Foster is younger and is at a stage where “Jesus things” are boring.  Exploring Foster’s spirituality with him is even more challenging. I have come to believe that the wealth of spiritual relationship is for them, yet those questions from my teen years spur me on to study how that spiritual growth happens.

Habits of a Child's Heart

Habits of a Child's Heart: Raising Your Kids With the Spiritual Discipline by Valerie E. Hess

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
In Habits of a Child’s Heart, Valerie Hess and Marti Garlett present a very accessible retelling of Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline. They take each discipline that Foster covers in Celebration of Discipline one at a time.  They give an overview of the discipline, providing stories from their own experiences with the discipline.  Then they give the parent suggestions for practicing the discipline. The practices are very practical and often geared toward the challenges faced by parents.  The authors then give age specific suggestions as to how children could practice each discipline.  They offer three categories, young children (5-7), middle childhood (8-11) and adolescence (12-15).

Present in this outstanding work is the assumption that the disciplined life is accessible even to children.  The goal of the disciplines is not simply character development or building a Christian worldview. Rather it is building of experiences with God through God’s grace.  Experiences like these are the stuff of spiritual direction.  Fathers Barry and Connolly point out in their book, The Practice of Spiritual Direction, that with out such experiences there can be no direction.  The spiritual director is primarily concerned with the experiences the directee is having with the Spirit.  Parents have a great resource in the Habits of a Child’s Heart for offering places where children can experience grace moving on them.

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The treasure chest of pain

I met with my Spiritual Director today, and I told her the story of my time in solitude.  I told her that I started spending about an hour with Rublev's Trinity, then attempting some centering. She perceptively called me out.

"Why do you start your time with Icons when you have an elephant in the room to deal with."  She recognized that I had a boiling cauldron of emotions from the less than stellar showing at our missions convention. I said that I had been wrestling with God about my fruitfulness. She pushed back, "How can you say that you were wrestling with anybody?"  She saw that I was reluctant to really go there in my prayer.  I poked at it, gazed into the pit, but I didn't descend there to experience the feelings.

She told me that was a shame, since that is where God was waiting for me.  Her advice, don't waste your time with icons when you have a treasure to explore in prayer.

"Pain as a treasure chest, that's nice," I said, but that is where God can touch and heal those feelings, and embrace the child of God within me.

Resting

As I was reflecting on the structures and systems of my church, and where I could begin implementing strategy, I leaned back in my chair and heaved a sigh. Mindy Caliguire caught my emotion and stooped to talk to me. I explained that I served a small church that had no real systems in place with which to contend. I went on to relate how we’ve tried implementing classes and other creative forums to use for spiritual formation but have seen few people come out to them. I know it means continuing to talk about vision, but, I told her, I have been preaching this stuff for six years now. When will it take hold?

I could hear in her response that as she was listening to me, she was also listening to the Spirit. With prophetic force she commanded me to, “Rest.” Then she exempted me from the rest of the discussion about strategy!

This isn’t the first time recently that God has been speaking to me of rest. I spent five days in silent retreat at St. Gregory’s Abby in October. While there I had a powerful emotional response to Psalm 6:2. “Give me strength, I am completely exhausted.” I was surprised then because I didn’t realize that I was exhausted, yet I sobbed in sympathy to this word.

I find this ironic, and am struggling to understand what God is saying to me. Often I consider myself lazy! Why would I need to rest? I find myself tired often and I do sleep and nap, whenever I get the chance!

I get my class work done, and Sunday’s preparations never fail to come together by God’s grace. There is certainly a lot to do, and our finances are so tight I can’t even think about them, leaving them in the hands of God, my wife, and the back of my mind. Life is stressful to be sure, and my body doesn’t handle the stress well. Yet, is that an excuse for merely getting by?

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.

Contemplating the poor.

Christ is in the poor. Even when we recognize that the poor are not in the least Christ-like He is there in their suffering. If God stands in profound solidarity with the poor as the scriptures affirm shouldn’t we as well?

“Solidarity is the social meaning of humility,” writes Dean Brackley. He applies the ancient rules of St. Ignatius to social justice today. “Just as humility leads individuals to all other virtues, humility as solidarity is the foundation of a just society.”

Henri Nouwen wrote of Christ’s “way of downward mobility.” To follow Him we must reject the council of yuppie culture to climb the ladder of success. The witness of Christ and the challenge offered by Nouwen and Brackley lead us to ask questions. “How much should we have? Better to reframe the question,” writes Brackley, “Do we feel at home among the poor? Do they feel comfortable in our homes? Or do our furnishings and possessions make them feel like unimportant people?” (100)

The solution to our global social crisis is not that the poor become rich, which is neither feasible nor desirable, but that the rich join with the poor. The only solution is communities of equals, resisting pyramids of inequity (see Luke 22:25-26). While some economic differences are legitimate, discrimination and misery are not. In communities of equals, personal talents, instead of advancing some at others’ expense, are stewarded for the benefit of all. Authority is a service for the common good (101).

In my graduate work I have been studying spiritual direction. The director meets with people desiring spiritual direction in an attitude of contemplation. He contemplates God and at the same time the directee, and the directee’s relationship with God. One book, The Practice of Spiritual Direction concludes with an observation of where direction and social action meet.

We need to know how God is experienced by the very poor and destitute. A few directors have begun to work with the destitute. The work is still in its very early stages, but where the director’s contemplative attitude is well developed, it seems promising (196).

I dream of one day studying as a cultural anthropologist the ways faith is formed and transmitted from one generation to the next across culture. I imagine joining with the poor working in the world’s coffee plantations and doing the work of contemplation with them, while also finding ways to get them living wages for their crops.

What is God dreaming for the poor? What is he dreaming for you and I to do with Him about poverty?

Resistance

Fathers Barry and Connoly take on the resistance that pops up in relationships. This resistance can hinder change and development of the relationship whether this is between men on man and God.

“It is important to remember that these patterns or images organize both our experience of others and our experience of ourselves. Thus, the way we see ourselves in interaction with others is involved. Part of the change that must occur if an intimate relationship is to develop is a change of the self-image, at least in relationship with this intimate person. As I allow the other to be different from my expectations and thus more himself, so too, I allow myself to be different from my ‘ideal self’ and thus more transparent to him. When relationships are allowed to develop, more of oneself and of the other is revealed, and each becomes better able to influence and change the other’s personality patterns. Each takes on for the other a life and a personality that is independent of that other’s expectations, and in the process each takes on for himself a life and personality freed of at least some of the constraints of his own self image” (86).

This reminds me of an Anime I have been watching lately. In Shugo Chara, “All kids hold an egg in their soul, the egg of our hearts, our would be selves, yet unseen.” The plot is interesting as the kids wrestle to find their true selves and strip away the characters they have built to meet others expectations, or to simply cope. Their would be selves are tied up with their dreams and aspirations that so many let die as they grow up. There is a resistance in society and their own lives that crops up to keep this from happening.

In the Brother’s Karamazov, Katerina Ivanovna wonders why her relationship with Dmitri was facing resistance too. He had spent some three thousand rubles she had asked him to send to her sister in Moscow. Now he is ashamed and has sent Alyosha his brother to talk to her.

“He did speak about it, and it’s that more than anything that’s crushing him. He said he had lost his honour and that nothing matters now,” Alyosha answered warmly, feeling a rush of hope in his heart and believing that there really might be a way of escape and salvation for his brother. “But do you know about the money?” he added, and suddenly broke off.

“I’ve known of it a long time; I telegraphed to Moscow to inquire, and heard long ago that the money had not arrived. He hadn’t sent the money, but I said nothing. Last week I learnt that he was still in need of money. My only object in all this was that he should know to whom to turn, and who was his true friend. No, he won’t recognise that I am his truest friend; he won’t know me, and looks on me merely as a woman. I’ve been tormented all the week, trying to think how to prevent him from being ashamed to face me because he spent that three thousand. Let him feel ashamed of himself, let him be ashamed of other people’s knowing, but not of my knowing. He can tell God everything without shame. Why is it he still does not understand how much I am ready to bear for his sake? Why, why doesn’t he know me? How dare he not know me after all that has happened? I want to save him for ever. Let him forget me as his betrothed. And here he fears that he is dishonoured in my eyes. Why, he wasn’t afraid to be open with you, Alexey Fyodorovitch. How is it that I don’t deserve the same?”

The last words she uttered in tears. Tears gushed from her eyes.

For Dmitri there must be that kind of change of self-image that will allow him to talk to talk with unashamed intimacy with his fiancé.

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.

Pentecostal Spiritual Direction

Dallas Willard told us that everyone has a spiritual formation the question is: what kind of formation will it be? In the same way Moon and Benner’s book Spiritual Direction and the Care of Souls has shown us that every tradition has ways of offering guidance for that formation, though it may not traditionally look like spiritual direction, as we know it.

This is true of the Pentecostal tradition as well. I found the places where McMahan found spiritual direction in my own tradition interesting. I hadn’t thought about it in those terms. (The terms the other authors who write about spiritual direction use make these ideas foreign and in many cases McMahan seems to find it hard to distinguish between pastoral council and spiritual direction.)

I remember many times growing up when the Spirit would talk to us in the midst of a service. Talk about spiritual direction! There he was, the Spirit speaking directly to us. I’ve often wondered why God would choose this method to address us, and why we didn’t take it even more seriously.

Here’s how I remember it happening then: the service would come to a place where it was particularly warm, what I would call today, consolation. Sunday nights were always warmer to me, they were less restricted, or stuffy, no one seemed in a hurry to leave. Often it would happen even before the sermon was given (the sermon would always still be given) when the time of singing was coming to an end and this feeling of consolation was over us. The music would be playing and we’d all be worshipping on our own a sort of melding of voices all expressing the worship of each heart. The voices would rise and fall together, and in some beautiful moments create new harmonies – a new song that would build, as a group and no one knew where it was going or even what language it had become. Then in the midst of this someone would feel a bubbling with in him or her, the Spirit tugging on them to speak out. They didn’t know what they would say, but they yielded and words came out – they spoke out loud sensing that what the Spirit was about was for everyone, they would raise their voice above the rest. As those around them recognized that a voice was standing out, they would hush and soon the whole room would be in hushed, uneasy silence as we waited hearing a message in a language not our own, perhaps not of this earth. The speaker would finish and we would wait. We understood that if this was of God, there would be an interpretation we all could understand. So I would continue my uneasy silence with the rest, listening to the Spirit afraid he might want to use me to bring his message. Then the interpretation would come, in the same way as the message in tongues. I don’t think the interpreter would know what she was going to say ahead of time, perhaps just a phrase or a word would come to her mind and as she said it the Spirit offered more.

There were of course times they would get it wrong, times when you could sense where they left the trail and finished under their own power. The message always had to be weighed against scripture and understood. Then there was the matter of responding. Often it would be something like, “This message was for someone here to night, if you sense it was you take the message to heart and do what it says,” though I wonder if the message wasn’t always for all of us, since it was given to us all and we had to do more wrestling with how it applied to each of us.

Sometimes it would be a comforting reminder that Jesus would come for us soon. Sometimes it was a warning to get our house in order, or to love more fervently.

Sometimes the interpreter would preface the message with “thus saith the Lord…” echoing the words of the prophets in the King James Bible that they undoubtedly loved very much. We pastors usually teach people to offer a little more wiggle room, “I feel the Lord may be saying…” Either way we recognized that the words coming from the voice of God had great authority and importance.

In this way the direction offered by the use of the gifts of the Spirit is like the direction of the Russian Staretz, it can be very directive and authoritative when truly discerned and spoken.

McMahan mentions also the use of testimony (155). From the very beginning of our movement publications spread the testimony of what God was doing in the lives of individuals. The Apostolic Faith was a publication from the Azuza street revivals covering 1906-08. They contain direction in the form of testimonies, instruction and answers to questions. This tradition still continues with Today’s Pentecostal Evangel.

There is a danger of the Spiritual Direction becoming too individual. I think McMahan is wrong to suggest that meeting one on one with a spiritual director increases that danger. The spiritual director as another human member of the body of Christ is a point of contact with the community that can be lacking in the anonymity of the worship service. I dare say every believer finding growth through the charisms (charismata) of the Spirit would do well to find a mature director.

Band of Brothers or On The Lost Arts of Holiness

John Wesley had this idea. He would put the members of the Methodist society into bands. A band had half a dozen people of the same gender, so you’d have like a band of brothers or a band of sisters. These bands were a component of the grand schema to foster a spiritual formation that would create holy Christian, well advanced toward perfect love. The bands created a mutual spiritual direction and accountability. Here we have a practice that we have largely forgotten. Wesley Tracy notes that the Wesleyan tradition has also forgotten (Spiritual Direction and the Care of Souls 122).

I am struck by the concept. It seems in our efforts to create viable small groups the revitalization of these Wesleyan methods would be a good idea and not just for Methodists! The questions that Wesley prescribes for bands to consider are relevant and pointed for today (Spiritual Direction and the Care of Souls 121).

1. What temptations have you met with?
2. How were you delivered?
3. What have you thought, said, or done, of which you doubt whether it be sin or not?
4. Have you nothing you desire to keep secret?

As are the questions Foster offers for group examen.


I think these questions could fit well into the structure of inductive bible study that we engage in on Sunday nights. The fellowship and connection having been established, it would be a powerful time to explore the deeper life through this group direction.

I love the full on integration intended in the Wesleyan societies, especially including families. I am thinking it would be cool to incorporate some of Wesley’s order for family devotions, which expand on the one from the Book of Common Prayer, with the notable addition of the blessing the parent gives to each child and is never withheld no matter how bad they have been (Spiritual Direction and the Care of Souls 123).

Listening to God

Vibrations.

Words uttered before time,

Out side of time

Strike the ear of my soul

At just the right time

In the nick of time

You are speaking to me

In the tone of the air

In the timbre of the soul

An angelic voice

Sweet and crystal
Clear bell tone

I hear you around me

Penetrating me - Pervasive

But only gently persuasive

The vibrations pass through me

Like gamma rays

And unseen ways

I hear you when I listen

When I miss you

When I don’t resonate

The crystal goes dead

The tone of my life dying
On my own senses relying

I hear you play your song

On the strings
Of other souls

My heart follows along

Resonating, joining
Undulating, harmonizing,

Strengthening in harmonic bends

As the feedback loops our souls
Back onto you

The Atonement and Spiritual Direction

In Moon and Benner's book, Spiritual Direction and the Care of Souls, they give a section to Spiritual Direction from various traditions. Gary Temple offers an interesting description of Spiritual Direction in the Episcopal tradition that has me thinking.

I find it interesting that the "snake belly low"* Episcopal churches in America have, in their focus on the Atonement, left out spiritual direction all together (83). Every Thursday I hear from one local Methodist pastor whose congregation has Baptist roots. He has a hard time getting them past their salvation (a product of the blood) to see the importance of sanctification (spiritual formation). He notes that the most cantankerous trouble makers in his congregation often pray "Thank you that you have covered me with your blood," and yet it doesn't seem to amend their lives.

I come from a tradition myself that has a high view of the Atonement, or I should say a tunnel vision view of Atonement. I, too, have seen a reticence among the more evangelistic of my colleagues to see any importance for ministry beyond the salvation altar call. Certainly spiritual direction to many of them would be a foreign concept and a waste of time.

However, Temple offers the way out (94). Couch your high view of the Atonement in a high view of the Incarnation. Now you can appreciate the work of Christ's life as well as his death.

*This was the term used by Anglican retreatants at the Abby while I was on retreat in describing the vast variety in the Anglican Communion, from High Church to low - snake belly low.

Prayer for beginners

Has my time of prayer been a success? How would you answer that? I remember times of sweet consolation, I remember striking out across my grandparents back yard in the dew of the evening, making my way out into the fields: a stop at the creek, a hike by the pasture and a soak in God’s presence in breeze blowing through a stand of elms. I remember finding God in the sunset, and being knocked on my back by the Spirit’s breath. Fathers Barry and Connolly suggest that such touchstone experiences with God, where God is more real to us than the dew soaking our shoes, provide us a standard to recognize authentic spiritual experiences when they come along (The Practice of Spiritual Direction 104).

It is important for us, as we begin our journey into prayer, to recognize that those times don’t always come. They are gracious gifts, and prayer need not be accompanied by them to be authentic or successful. Still it is tempting for us to seek or even manufacture such experiences to feel we are succeeding at prayer.

When I wasn’t on the farm, I didn’t have the same kind of experience with prayer. When I would go to the prayer room on my dorm floor, I could spend some time in prayer, but I couldn’t work myself into a frenzy of powerful prayer the way some others could. I felt my prayer life was weak, and wanted more. I have found my personal times of prayer hit and miss, and when it is more miss than hit, it is easy to fall out of practice.

So what kind of prayer do we recommend to other beginners? Perhaps the “just do it” isn’t the best advice for prayer. The trainer is at the prayer closet door giving the person a pep talk and opening the door and sends them into battle. The door closes and the darkness and solitude envelops and the pray-er goes says everything he wants and all the nice things she can think to say and in three minutes the time in prayer has become a chore.

Paradoxically a form of prayer can help us pray more effectively from the heart. We Pentecostals tend to believe that if our prayers aren’t spontaneous, they are “vain repetition.” But when the beginners, the disciples, asked Jesus to teach them to pray, he gave them a form. The Lord’s prayer is a great place to start, as beginners we can look to each line and find wealth of meaning. Praying the psalms has been a great experience for me these last few years. That is another form called “The Divine Liturgy.”

Thomas Merton has said,

If we compare the sobriety of the liturgy with the rather effusive emotionalism of books of piety which are supposed to help Christians to ‘meditate,’ we can see at once that the liturgical prayer makes sincerity much easier. The liturgy takes man as he is: a sinner who seeks the mercy of God. The book of piety sometimes takes him as he is only on very rare occasions: on fire with exalted and heroic love, ready to lay down his life in martyrdom, or on the point of feeling his heart pierced by the javelin of mystical love. Most of us, unfortunately, are not ready to lay down our lives in martyrdom most days at six o’clock in the morning or whenever our mental prayer may occur, and most of us have little or nothing to do with javelins of mystical love.

I have found that praying the liturgy of the divine office has given me freedom - freedom to invest meaning into the psalm-prayers rather than working myself into an insincere good feeling. To be sure there is a danger for the novice to make this into law. “I must pray all seven hours every day or I fail” (it is strange that doing anything in this spirit is called by our culture doing it ‘religiously’). I have come to appreciate the benefits of catching a single hour in a day, and have learned not to berate myself for missing out.

Other forms of prayer are also good for the beginner to learn, such as centering prayer or the prayer of examen. Tom Trask, at our ordination service, rightly noted that there is a world of difference between saying prayers and praying. Forms of prayer that help us to listen and get us beyond saying our peace to God help to bring real praying to our prayers and to our work.

Taking over the world

I had a dream last night where I was conspiring with some others to take over the world. The discussion started with creating an advertisement for a product every one would want to buy, but the product didn't really exist. Rather their intense desire that could not be fulfilled would render their will ours. Then we thought of creating a wave generator on Antarctica that would hijack the waves of every broadcast radio and TV implanting a subliminal message. When we controlled the world we could finally create a just distribution of wealth. We just had to conspire to supplant the sinful nature of humanity.

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius begin with a focus on sin in the world. Can we choose to meditate on the injustice and sin that controls this world? Can we look with unblinking eye at our own sin and the systems that we participate in? Can we do this with out hopeless despair and condemnation, but rather find in it the grace of God to live and supplant the system of this world?

Brackely suggests that the role of spiritual formation espoused by the exercises are to bring us into the Reign of God (The Call to Discernment 26). As Dallas Willard notes, this is a Divine Conspiracy to bring the world into the kingdom of God.

All of the great roles of the director as listener, mediator, doctor and the rest my friends and mentors in this class all come down to one thing, making the Kingdom and the King real in the lives and practice of the directees. It is the selfless subversion of the greatest order.

Perhaps being a spiritual director is like being Che Guevara to some one, inspiring them to the revolution, or that could just be the ad for the proletariat green viva barista t-shirt talking!

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.

The Focus of Spiritual Direction

When I first started Spiritual direction My director asked me what my conception of a Spiritual Director was. This was well before I began this program and my main example for spiritual direction was Father Zosama in Dostoevsky's “Brothers Karamazov.” I thought of some contemplative who I could submit in obedience, who would stretch me in the practices of devotion and discipline - like a good doctor or gardener will diagnose and treat ailments.

Instead he gently listened to what God was doing in me. He didn’t hold me accountable, though my disciplined life did become stronger.

Still Barry and Conolly’s description of one whose sole purpose is to help me see God’s involvement in my every day life, clarified for me what my director had been doing (Spiritual Direction in Practice 5).

It is that focus, I believe, that distinguishes spiritual direction from the other helping ministries. There is indeed much overlap as the authors note, but singleness of focus on the presence of God in all things provides boundaries for the way the director will respond to any given situation (Spiritual Direction in Practice 142.)

I am reading Barry and Connoly’s Spiritual Direction in Practice here at St. Gregory’s Abby. The compounding of the Divine Office and daily Eucharist in this beautiful setting has me all warm with consolations. So I receive it easily and joyfully that the spiritual director should have “surplus warmth.” In a world which sometimes grants more desolation than consolation it is easily apparent why a warm environment works for spiritual direction. The director his/herself is the representation of Divine consolation. In their presence we are warmed by God, through the gifts he has given them. No wonder Bakke calls directions sessions “a pure gift.”

Spiritual Direction and the ordinary Christian

Thomas Merton suggests that spiritual direction is necessary for those with a vocation as a religious. An argument can be made, and he entertained (Spiritual Direction and Meditation p.14), that all ordinary Christians have a vocation of some kind to use their all for God.

What strikes me is that Merton suggests that the ordinary Christian should, in the course of faithful involvement in church, have their basic needs for spiritual direction met.

Much has changed, even in the Roman Catholic church since Merton wrote this. Private confession is rare. I wonder what we can do as churches to fill the basic needs of spiritual direction that will draw people to a greater intimacy with Christ, where perhaps they will desire a more formal directing relationship. Can we somehow create a community that is mutually supportive, a family of spiritual friends? How do we start?

Yet Merton points out that the general direction afforded by participation in church is “not really what we mean by spiritual direction in the present study” (Spiritual Direction and Meditation p.14).

If the ordinary direction that should be expected as a part of the sacrament isn’t deep enough for those who have a vocation to be a religious, how is it enough for the ordinary Christian? Is it that it has become a more hostile world than it was in Merton’s time? He points out that spiritual fathers and mothers were desperately needed in the danger of the hermit’s desert. Are we face in our cities and affluence less assaulted by demons than the monks who thought the dwelled in the desert? Perhaps to face the powers of hell today one only need visit an industrialized country.

Or is it that the contemplative life - the inner life isn’t for the ordinary Christian? I hope not. I sure hope the ordinary working class folk in my church can taste the depths of Christ, not content to work and struggle and wait for their piece of the pie in the sky by and by. “Man fully alive is the glory of God.”(St. Irenaeus).

Even if the whole life of a person in in their turkeys, God can be found there, perhaps with the help of a director.

Interestingly the Monks here at St. Gregory use Merton's logic to justify their own lack of a spiritual director, their rule creates a structure for the spiritual formation of the men.

Pentecostal Foodstuff

“For us, therefore, religious experience is to spiritual direction what foodstuff is to cooking. Without foodstuff there can be no cooking. Without religious experience there can be no spiritual direction” (Spiritual Direction in Practice 8).

Barry and Connoly give the work of spiritual direction as drawing out those times in life when God is interacting with the person they are directing. This means that the directee has to have had some kind of religious experience to draw on. Some prayer to discuss, maybe not even formal prayer, but the opening of the heart to God and experiencing him.

This got me thinking of the conversation I had with Dallas Willard. He wrote that the ecstatic experiences we Pentecostals cherish don’t build character. They are for something else, namely ministering to the body of Christ.

But they do provide religious experiences to draw on. A dutch reformed pastor who is on retreat with me related the story of a friend who went to the Toronto Airport Vineyard church during it’s famous revival. He went with his Ph.D. adviser as a sort of anthropological experiment. He even reluctantly went to be prayed over, being goaded by his adviser to study it. Those praying over him prayed some very specific things (like we experienced when we experimented with Spirit directed prayer during our January retreat). He was even “laid out” by the Spirit.

He now has that experience of the Spirit moving in his life to remember and know that it is real.

Perhaps those goose-bump moments and the excitement they produce do not by themselves develop character, but build faith and become the foodstuff for later spiritual direction.

Missions Statement

My mission is to Glorify God and enjoy him forever, ministering to and making disciples of my family and the families of my church, community, and world.

I dream of my future. I imagine the steps I can take to Glorify God and to minister and wait on him for the cues.

I also recognize that his primary way to minister through me is by transforming me. I focus first and foremost on glorifying and enjoying him. He is my love and my life. May I ever draw closer to you my Dearest one!

He has placed in my heart a great desire to build relationships with people that will have the intimacy of family. He has called me to extend the intimacy of my dearest to them. This is a difficult call for me, though I want nothing more and with my whole being.

He has also graced me with a desire to lead children into the depths of his abundant life. My greatest privilege is to work with him to make disciples of my children Ella and Foster, along the dearest wife he could have given me.

He has made me a pastor, so I imagine myself bringing children and families in my church and community to be apprentices of the master of my heart.

He has also opened my eyes to the spiritual needs of children around the world. I relish my reverie when I imagine working on a PhD in cultural anthropology, transforming my mind to learn how to best bring about spiritual formation intergenerationally across culture. I imagine myself living on coffee plantations around the world as I learn how spiritual formation is done in those cultures. I imagine myself later teaching indigenous pastors how to best address the spiritual needs of children and their families.

I also secretly dream of one day doing nothing more than running a coffeehouse and acting as spiritual director. Perhaps one day...