Spiritual Direction - 2

What is Spiritual Direction?

Spiritual direction is

 “.. help given by one Christian to another which enables that person to pay attention to God’s personal communication to him or her, to respond to this personally communicating God, to grow in intimacy with this God, and to live out the consequences of the relationship.”

(William A. Barry and William J. Connolly, The Practice of Spiritual Direction)

§  Spiritual direction focuses on religious experience. It is concerned with a person’s actual experience of a relationship with God.

§  Spiritual direction is about a relationship. The religious experience is not isolated, nor does it consist of extraordinary events. It is what happens in an ongoing relationship between the person and God. Most often this is a relationship that is experienced in prayer.

§  Spiritual direction is a relationship that is going somewhere. God is leading the person to deeper faith and more generous service. The spiritual director asks not just “what is happening?” but “what is moving forward?”

§  The real spiritual director is God. God touches the human heart directly. The human spiritual director does not “direct” in the sense of giving advice and solving problems. Rather, the director helps a person respond to God’s invitation to a deeper relationship.

This is a very useful and concise description to be found at http://www.ignatianspirituality.com/making-good-decisions/spiritual-direction/

From own experience I would like to add the following in some instances and expand a little in others:

-       Within the Celtic Christian spirituality they talk of an Anam Cara or “soul-friend”. In the words of Daniel O’Leary such a soul-friend is a true mentor - “one who loves you without being jealous, who guides you without being judgemental, who walks beside you without trying to change your pace.” It is pure gift when you have such a spiritual director or anam cara in your life – I only have to think about my own spiritual director - and it is quite common for such a spiritual direction relationship to span over a period of years. 

-       Barry and Connolly refer to the spiritual director’s role in the “paying attention to” the communication of God in a person’s life.  In The Contemplative Pastor Eugene Peterson puts it thus:  “The assumption of spirituality is that always God is doing something before I know it. So the task is not to get God to do something I think needs to be done, but to become aware of what God is doing so that I can respond to it and participate and take delight in it.” In an interview with Richard J. Foster, Peterson says the same in different words: "Spiritual direction is an intentional form of paying attention to the everydayness of our lives."  The spiritual director has an important role to play in helping the directee in that process of becoming aware of what God is doing in the directee’s life.

-       The “communication of God” is described as being “personal”. More and more my conviction grows that a very important aspect of my task as spiritual director is to help people discover their own unique language and vocabulary in their communication and relationship with God. One of the very first directees that came to me formulated it beautifully: “I want to talk to God in my own words.” God does not have a one-size-fits-all language. His is a personal language. It therefore doesn’t come as a surprise that as we grow in our relationship with God, we also grow in our relationship with ourselves. It is as if God is saying, “Do you really want to know me? The only way for that to happen is that you also get to know yourself. You can’t get to me by leaving yourself behind.”

Against such a background there is a deeper appreciation of the Jesuit wisdom: “Pray as you can, not as you can’t.” Do you find it easier to pray while walking in the garden, preparing a meal, sitting quietly, listening to music, or writing in a journal? Become familiar with your way of praying and your vocabulary instead of trying to live up to some form of prayer ideal that everybody has to follow.

-       Barry and Connolly states: “The real spiritual director is God.” Quite often my experience in the spiritual direction session is something in the order of: “Mrs X, this is God. God, this is Mrs. X.” And then I lift my knees to my chest, put my feet on the chair, get out of the way and somehow become a witness to an extraordinary exchange between directee and God. I experience God quite literally as the wise, compassionate, ever present Director who opens up perspectives and facilitate growth in ways that I never could have imagined.

-       On a very personal level - along with all the aspects that I’ve just commented on, I deeply value spiritual direction as I practice it and have an ever-growing appreciation for the training that I’ve received, because of its roots within a specific tradition. I’ll always be very grateful that I got to know it as a very important aspect of Ignatian spirituality. To this matter I shall hopefully return in more detail at a later stage.

George