Spiritual Direction - 3

What is Spiritual Direction? Connected Transformation and practicalities

In describing the fundamental aspects of spiritual direction, I would like to focus on two other issues that I feel require further attention.

§  The first is what I would call spiritual direction as connectedness, or seeing the bigger picture. Carolyn Gratton explored this best in her book The Art of Spiritual Guidance. Through our busy, complex lives we somehow lost touch with life’s underlying connecting fabric. We feel fragmented, scattered, adrift. We are left with a sense of confusion and we are unable to see the wood for the trees. How do we make sense of it all?

“Between the ambiguity and messiness of our everyday lives and the invisible but energizing Mystery of holy Otherness that gifts our lives with ultimate meaning, there is an intrinsic and transcendent connection. Spiritual guidance can help us grow in awareness of that connection and that ultimate meaning.”

She illustrates this aspect of spiritual direction with a beautiful Sufi story.

There once were some fish who spent their days swimming around in search of the water. Anxiously looking for their destination, they shared their worries and confusion with each other as they swam. One day they met a wise fish and asked him the question that had preoccupied them for so long: “Where is the sea?” The wise fish answered: “If you would stop swimming so busily and struggling so anxiously, you would discover that you are already in the sea. You need to look no further than where you already are.”

At one stage or the other, we are all in desperate need of a wise fish.

§  Constant transformation - Up close and personal. 

The beauty of spiritual direction as a ministry based on sound principles and old traditions lies - among other things - for me in the fact that every spiritual director goes for spiritual direction. There is no master spiritual director at the top, an all-knowing expert who has a grasp on everything through years of study and a string of qualifications. Although Thomas Merton refers to matters of contemplation in general, his words are just as true for spiritual direction in particular: “We do not want to be beginners. But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else but beginners.”

It may be that I read the Sufi story above and being a spiritual director find myself feeling quite proud on being a wise fish. The sense of smugness is in the first place a sure sign of a lack of wisdom, but through experience one also discovers that a constant transformation process is taking place in each one of us. Through the spiritual direction sessions with directees God is ironically just as busy with me as spiritual director and when I go for either supervision or spiritual direction I have quite a lot to convey about my own struggles and growth.

As E. Glenn Hinson puts it:

“Becoming a spiritual guide, I think you will find, will involve not the learning of a technique, such as you would do for personal counseling, but paying the price of letting God work you over, being purified by the power of divine love, undergoing transformation from within by divine grace. And our work- and works-oriented, success-driven society and churches will not only withhold encouragement for that but will do everything possible to thwart it.”

Being a spiritual director means being a work in progress. A transformational work in progress.

On matters practical: How and where do I find a spiritual director?

If you are living in South Africa and you are not familiar with any spiritual directors in your vicinity you can contact the following:

-       The Jesuit Institute in Johannesburg. They have a data base of all spiritual directors that have done the Advanced Training in Spiritual Direction through them and can bring you in contact with a spiritual director in your area.

Telephone:                  (011) 482-4614

Email:                               admin@jesuitinstitute.org.za.

-       Centre for Christian Spirituality in Cape Town.

Telephone:                  (021) 686-1269 (mornings)

Email:                              info@christianspirit.co.za.

-       By visiting Spiritual Directors International at http://www.sdiworld.org/about_us.html you can also find out about spiritual directors in your area or country.

George