The Contemplative Crisis

Having a spiritual director has  become a little like having your own therapist or your own personal trainer at the gym. “It gives one spiritual status”, notes Alan Jones in his forward to Margaret Guenther’s book, Holy Listening, p. viii.  Not all would share this benign view of the spiritual director. Some when they hear the word, ‘spiritual director’, think of a guru figure who tells them what they must do. This view is entirely the opposite of their role.  Other misperceptions abound, not just within the Evangelical churches, but also Roman Catholic and Orthodox as well. Spiritual directors are perceived to be either too clinical or authoritarian and possibly for good reason.  Many ministers within these traditions have been overbearing, moralistic and focused on peccadilloes and it is easy to assume spiritual directors will be the same. In the recent history within the Roman Catholic Church, their role was frequently fixated on issues of morality. Thankfully, things have moved on and the traditional role of the spiritual director of guiding someone in their journey with God has been recovered.

Others think the whole idea of seeing a spiritual director tantamount to entering  ‘therapy’, meaning  they are weak and in need of someone to put their life back together for you.  In this view, the role of the therapist and the spiritual director are both being misunderstood. A spiritual director simply guides you to pay attention to where God is at work in your life. This often this involves helping you identify what happening in your prayer life and helping you discern between the good and the better. And the discussion doesn’t have to be anything particularly ‘spiritual’ either. Anything which is happening in your life, even if nothing is happening, can be brought for discussion and reflection because God is at work in all the different aspects of our daily life. They are there for you, particularly if you are going through a rough patch and nothing in your spiritual life is working. If a mother with a baby comes and says that she has no time to pray, the spiritual director’s role can simply be to support you, hold you and assure you that this is will be only for a season. Your prayer life need not be compared with a saint living in the cloistered life; it will be by necessity different now and practiced at different times and in different ways from when you were child free and had hours to journal and reflect.  Their presence is a stabilising influence in our lives at such a time.

Spiritual directors come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and I am often surprised at how ‘ordinary’ they are. Most are not (if men), ‘monkish’, or  (if a woman), grey haired and with wizened face, although for many of women spiritual directors, the need for excessive makeup and other artificiality has long been discarded as a façade.  But most spiritual directors I have met are in the older age bracket and it is for good reason. They have spent years trying to sort out this thing of living with Christ in daily life. Time has had its effect with good result: they are weathered like the drift wood on the beach, once rough, now smooth, at least on the inside.  Their wrinkles and whitened hair have accorded them the depth which has been hard won from years of struggle with God and the struggle in understanding themselves and others. Often they have seen the gamut of life – its  joys, its  pain and its disappointments and somehow, in spite of things which would have crushed me, they have risen above them and continued holding onto God.  Some have even abandoned God or lost him, but come back again. They have reached the cross roads in life where they considered that there was either no other option but to return, or everything and anything else had been tried but found wanting and was empty, so they came home again to discover how much they had really missed being away.

What are the qualifications for being a spiritual director? The obvious one would be that they have listening skills, but not in the modern therapeutic sense of Rogerian listening as if this is all that is required of a spiritual director. They must have the gift of being able to listen for the voice of your true self that masks itself in the narrative we share and behind the busy life we pursue.  Good directors also ask good questions, which help us clarify what we are struggling to articulate. They must be men and women who know the paths we take with the best of intentions toward God, but then get sidetracked. And they must be studied in the classical mystical literature of St Theresa of Avila, St Bernard of Clairvaux, St Ignatius of Loyola and so on.  Kenneth Leech in his book, Soul Friend lists the different qualifications from pages 37-45. One quality he lists which has stuck me is that the ‘spiritual father’ didn’t teach a spiritual technique, but was a father who helped shape the inner life of his children through prayer, concern and pastoral care.  The spiritual director is a mother or father who gives their life to the directee and gives them the freedom to become the person they are meant to be in Christ. They don’t ‘impose’ themselves on their directee but love them.  Somehow they create in the relationship with the directee the space for the directee to be there with God, while remaining unobtrusively on the sidelines.  Leech also notes that a director should speak out the depths of his or her own prayer and lifestyle experience. (Leech, p. 39) This ability to speak about their prayer experience is important as much of direction is about our prayer life and what’s affecting it. As a consequence, they must be able to teach us to pray in the appropriate way when a different method is required and the old ways (of prayer), no longer work.

Some of the qualifications I like are that they are someone who has sinned much and now lives a life of continual repentance.  They are someone in touch with their own brokenness, faults and weaknesses to sin, but without being morbid. This provides them with a freedom from the need to enter into the relationship with a judgmental spirit. They are able to welcome the directee, as Christ would himself, because they are have learnt to apply the grace of God to themselves first, and now offer that grace to others. The grace and peace of God have so worked within them that they have become the embodiment of grace.  Perhaps they are someone who has been prepared by withdrawal from the world and even  the affairs of the church - a common method of preparation in the past. They have left for the far country, and on returning, have something which is lacking in much of the church leadership. Church leadership is often priestly, preoccupied with maintaining the institution; spiritual directors are sometimes awkward prophets, saying things to us we need to hear and know we need to hear, but it’s a voice the institution would often like to silence because its  values, the ones we often live by, often lead to a place of death, burnout or idolatry.  On this point, good spiritual directors are not concerned about making you feel good, but helping you find yourself in God and sorting out why you may have drifted away or lost your bearings.  They are not about rescuing you (from the situation you find yourself in), but sitting with you in the situation and helping you to find God there too. They challenge our assumptions and our ego driven need to be ‘doing stuff’ asking us to consider where we are experiencing God’s grace and freedom.

Despite their awkward relationship within the church community, one value I nevertheless would require of a spiritual director is that they are rooted in a church tradition and a church community. This will mean they are not operating as a lone ranger or unaware of the roots and traditions of the church and in the rich heritage of mystical theology. Undoubtedly they are not indifferent or unaware of the problems of the institutional church, but have a judicious eye of distance by which they offer a vision that is refreshing. Entering into spiritual direction is to enter into a very long conversation in the Church of how do we grow more into Christ; how do we move though phases in our life of prayer; how do we become more holy. The director is well versed in the nuances of this conversation and is sensitive to only recommend what is appropriate for you in your situation, and not a particular ideological line.

The ability to be a spiritual director is dependent on having a calling by God. This calling often only emerges late in life as a consequence of getting some way along the path and realising that you have something which others come seeking. Sometimes it is the in depth conversations which begin  to alert you to the idea that perhaps these conversations are not accidental and are resting on a certain kind of depth often lacking in others. However, the plethora of spiritual direction courses would imply that all who wish to be a spiritual director can be. Training, although important in itself, is not enough. The charism of the Holy Spirit is needed.  Spiritual direction is an art and acquired skill like that of a qualified tradesman or surgeon who has practiced under the direction of an experienced practitioner. It has been noted that the directee will draw the gift out of the spiritual director, as when the friends of St Anthony broke into the fort where he had prayed and meditated for twenty years to draw out his gift because they were in need of his counsel.

Spiritual direction is not for the spiritually elite but the average person. How then do I find one? The first place to start is with yourself, by praying that God will open the way for you to find one. This will help prepare you. Next, you might know someone who is already seeing a director. Ask them about it.  Ask your minister for a referral. This might scare them a bit, but it will be good for them. There might be churches or centres offering retreats which you see advertised, such as through a monastery or convent. These often have spiritual directors attached to them. You could approach Ignatian centres or other contemplative centres which offer spiritual direction. The Spiritual Directors International offer a locality map for most countries that show where directors live and their religious and denominational background.

“It’s too easy to lose touch with who we are and become obsessed with what we are not. We become alienated from our very selves as we develop bad habits that verge on addictions. We are convinced by television commercials and become obsessed with the latest laptop computer, the newest model of an automobile and the miracle drug that will solve our weight problem, our sexual dysfunction or our struggles to have a good night’s sleep. We desperately crave affection or attention and will do anything to obtain it. We live in the present for a fleeting moment, only to return quickly to tomorrow’s worries and concerns. We become so consumed with our careers and roles that we end up defining ourselves by what we do. We are restless and weighed down with the guilt and regrets of the past.”

So writes Albert Haase, a Franciscan and professor of spirituality at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, Illinois in his book, Coming Home to your True Self, p 37. His words describe what many of us are and because we sense that this might be our condition, fear peering inside our lives to discover that what he’s said might be true. How do we become free from these obsessions, restless desires and unsatisfied ambitions?

Our hearts and our lives can be likened to a donut and in the middle of them is a gapping hole into which we stuff all sorts of things in order to find fulfilment or to cover up the hole. We become quite skilled at doing this and become people whose lives are consumed by filling these needs. Haase calls this the construction of the false self; a false self which we project out into the world but at the cost of ignoring our true inner self which was made for God. Haase makes a helpful description of the things we are likely to become obsessed by or slaves to. They all begin with the letter P. (He could have been a primary school teacher in an earlier life with a skill like this.) The empty P’s as he calls them are:

Pleasure

Praise

Power

Prestige

Position (in our work, family or church which gives us a sense of importance or power)

Popularity

People (filling up our lives with lots of relationships to hide the loneliness within)

Productivity

Possessions

Perfection

What shall we do? It is at this point that the Bible readings for Lent are helpful at illuminating what must change within us and how this might occur. On 14 March the reading will be the parable of the lost son and his elder brother. The younger son took his inheritance, wasted it and came to his senses in the pig pen. But this is our story too, of those who come to their senses in the pig pen of their lives lived out in suburbia. We have left the household of the Father and have become obsessed in filling the hole in our lives and spent all that we have trying to fulfil the “Empty P’s”. We are destitute. But by returning to the Father and accepting his welcome embrace and grace, we can begin to build a new life. (The elder son was just as lost as the younger one, but did not realise it. He works to obtain his Father’s praise. He fills his life with perfectionism, focused on productivity. He is unable to feel pleasure such is his performance driven life.)

On 21 March the story of Mary anointing the feet of Jesus from Jn 12:1-8 will be studied. This devotion and sacrifice by Mary highlights that she has abandoned seeking praise (she is criticised by Judas), popularity and prestige (by effectively washing the feet of Jesus like the household slave would do). Her possessions have no claim on her heart as she has had to sacrifice much in order to purchase the costly perfume which is poured out on his feet in utter devotion to her Lord. 

Then the Good Friday readings come upon us, often catching us out because we are still not prepared with what will now happen in the last week of the life of Jesus of Nazareth (Luke 22:14-23:49). The annual Passover dinner with his disciples turns into a farewell dinner; a new covenant is instituted between God and humanity; and the betrayal by Judas strips back the veneer over human nature to reveal the basest and darkest qualities which lie just beneath the surface. Judas is addicted to power and possessions; he will do anything (even betraying an innocent man) in order to meet their insatiable thirst. Just after Jesus announces that he is going to be betrayed by one of his own disciples, two of the disciples make a grab for the best seats in the kingdom and reveal their own slavery to position and power.

The rulers, religious teachers and Pilate who silence Jesus by crucifying him are exposed as men who are constantly seeking praise. Their hunger for prestige and popularity has blinded them to the coming of Jesus the Messiah and the momentous moment in history that they have become participants in. Peter caves in to the accusation by a servant girl that he is a disciple of Jesus and denies him. Peter, we now see, wants people to love him; he is afraid and will seek popularity rather than standing with Jesus.

But Easter Sunday is about a new day dawning; of evidence of God’s power and redemption; that by death Jesus has done with the penalty of sin and the resurrection is the evidence and justification that God has accepted his death and work on the cross for us. The resurrection is proof that the power of God working through the Holy Spirit is able to transform even death men to live again (Rom 4:24-25); this same power can set us free from the “Empty P’s” (Rom 6:5-11; 8:11). There is new life revealed in Jesus the resurrection and the life (Jn 11:25), a new life beyond our hostage to these “Empty P’s” which is able to transform us – now; today, tomorrow, for all eternity. The purpose of Easter is to remove the penalty of following the Empty P’s, and to set us free from the power they have over our lives. Easter points us to the essence of Christianity: that one died so that all may become the righteousness of God, not only free from the Empty P’s, but free to give ourselves to the one who redeems us, God. Surely the fact that we are no longer slaves to the Empty P’s, but sons and daughters of the Father should inspire us to give our lives, time, talents and money to him who has loved us and died for us?

I had gone into a large Christian bookshop to buy some books to give as Christmas gifts and just inside the door was a prominent display of suggested purchases for Christmas. The title of the book “10 Minutes A Day with Jesus” grabbed my attention. Next to it was another devotional book probably aimed at women looking for something to give their husbands. It had the title: “The One Year Book Of Devotions For Men On The Go”. Now I was intrigued. Both books promised that I could have a Bible reading, think about it and pray, all in about ten to twenty minutes. I picked up the devotional book aimed at men with such a busy life that they had only at best ten minutes in their day for God and had a look. The book was well laid out. The content was generally good. It had some insightful comments on the text which I thought might make good material for sermons or bible studies. It made some thoughtful suggestions about how to apply the text to our daily life. I even considered buying it.

But what these well intentioned books offered, was in the end, inadequate and superficial. No one would advocate that we eat fast food every day as a healthy diet, let alone suggest to a growing teenager that the consumption of fast food will be sufficient for them to mature into a healthy adult. But ten minute devotional books are the equivalent of spiritual fast food. They might be useful for occasional consumption, but are no substitute for a good solid meal of meat and veggies. They suggest, misleadingly, that all we need in life is a quick devotion with God and that this will be enough when it will not be enough. I left the devotional books and went further into the shop to find something else.

My thoughts turned to the topic of a very important but related issue which every Christian faces sooner or later. The issue is whether Christian maturity can be achieved with little effort and quickly, or does it require hard work and a long period of time? The ten minute devotional books give the impression that maturity can be achieved quickly and with little effort – if the idea that we should be maturing is even considered at all. Reading the writings of John Cassian and other Desert Fathers of the fourth century highlight that maturity and how it occurred, was their concern also. Like us, they lived in a period of history undergoing much change in the church; it was riven with doctrinal controversies and sects. Charismatic individuals established new and exciting churches which attracted a large and excitable crowd. What concerned some who were sincerely seeking God like the Desert Fathers and Mothers, was the feeling that nominalism was sapping the church of its life. It was too easy being a Christian now that the Church was a legitimate institution of the Roman Empire.

For the Desert Fathers and Mothers, Cassian and Benedict, Calvin and Luther, William Law and John Wesley and many, many others, maturity was understood to be the goal of the Christian life. It has been a distinguishing feature of many religious movements in church history that maturity and how it is attained is recovered and then given prominence in the life of the Christian. These leaders did express it differently as ‘perfection’, ‘union with Christ, the Beloved’; ‘conformity to holiness’, or ‘entire sanctification’, but it was the centrifugal force around which all other Christians doctrines revolved. Within the Spiritual Direction tradition, it seems to have disappeared as a model for listening to and interpreting the life and experience of another person. There is much talk about ‘the journey’, but not much is said about the destination or what it looks like. Evangelicals focus on conversion through faith in the gospel, and in doing so, allow the focus of Christian experience to fall predominately on the beginning of the experience. Spiritual Direction tends to focus on the process of transformation; but perhaps we need a recovery of the teleology of Christian faith – maturity in Christ.

This blog post is an introduction to an essay on this topic which will be put under the ‘Essays’ button at the top in several days.