The Contemplative Crisis

What is spiritual direction? Inevitably when I have explained what spiritual direction looks like, I find many people want to see it as a type of counselling, but this leaves me feeling uncomfortable.  Counselling tends to be more about giving solutions to problems, helping people cope with their problems and the problems are usually treated as an unwanted obstruction in their life. I also find that my deep commitment to God is subtly pushed aside in favour of employing various secular techniques to deal with the issue at hand. As a Anglican priest, this has left me unsatisfied and unsettled that there is little integration between my religious calling, theological training and life experience with God with the practice of counselling. Please don’t misunderstand me, counselling is vital and helpful to those in pain or struggling to cope with life. As a practice, spiritual direction is open to a variety of intrepretations but also misunderstandings as well. How does it work if I was to meet with a spiritual director? Can only those who have spent years in academic study of theology be a spiritual director? Perhaps the following illustration from my life will help.

While undertaking a day walk to climb a mountain in northern Tasmania, an island of rugged beauty to the south of mainland Australia, I could hear water rushing through rocks beneath my feet. I was thirsty; we had been walking for only about 40 minutes, but as I was slightly unfit and it was a relatively clear day, I had become quite hot from the climb. Although I could hear the sound of water below me, I could not locate its source or see it. I could only hear it’s alluring sound.  I had not brought water with me because normally there are creeks and little rock pools of fresh water available in Tasmania’s national parks.  But I was still to climb up onto the plateau where pools (tarns) dot the high altitude landscape like a series of swimming pools or wash basins fit for a giant.  I contemplated the walk ahead as the sun beat off the rough surfaces of the greyish basalt. There would be no tree cover because of the boulders strewn everywhere, the remnants of the last ice age. I could do nothing to relieve my misery until I had walked further up the mountain side of boulders until a creek was found.

Perhaps to divert my attention or to fill the time in while I cooled down, my brother in law Ian then told me the story about the stone track on which I was standing.  I wiped the sweat out of my eyes and looked at it more closely. Where we stood it was straight and level, but when I looked down on my left and right, it was apparent that the rock had been carefully piled up from a wide base with a slight incline to form the level track on its top. It appeared that what I was standing on was something like a bridge that spanned between two sides of a chasm on the side of the mountain but without the customary arch in the middle.

Ian went onto explain that following World War Two, European immigrants had come to Tasmania to help build the hydro-electric dams. They were keen skiers and would climb the mountain to its summit along this path in winter and ski down its slopes until exhaustion set in and the brandy came out. This occurred in the era before the windy road had been bulldozed up to the summit that tourists now enjoy. These keen skiers also built a rudimentary lodge on the mountain and carted the building materials on their backs up along this track. On their route to the summit, they had to cross a ravine through which a small creek gushed with melting snow water. Someone had a bright idea one day. Why not fill the ravine in using the large boulders and rock screed from the mountain side so that they did not have to descend sharply into the ravine and then clamber up again on the other side? The water could continue to flow through the ravine in between the boulders. Within a short time the bridge of rock had been put into place where it still stands.  This Ian explained, is where we now stood.

It has been about ten years since we made that day walk together and only recently that the memory of the day has come back to me as a way of explaining what spiritual direction offers those who thirst for the living water which they have heard beneath their feet in daily life. Hot and bothered, with my hope evaporating under the hot sun that any relief to my thirst might be found, my brother in law had enabled me to stop, to listen and to understand where I was located on the path. He had become an unintentional spiritual director and encouraged me to continue our walk  in the hope that what was illusive and unable to be grasped now, would be eventually given by continuing up the mountain.  Unlike counselling which would have seen my situation as a problem to be solved or relieved, Ian saw my thirst as an opportunity to learn something new about the journey and the location I had found myself in. My ability to hear the water beneath my feet was treated as a gift, even though my thirst was not going to be sated in the short term.

Sometimes the sound of the water trickling through the boulders may awaken a person to a deep desire to pursue a contemplative lifestyle, but they are uncertain about what to do. They may want to be more intentional in their practices and would like to know what practices would be helpful to strengthen and encourage them. At these occasions, the spiritual director can be both a teacher and a guide to the pilgrim. She can encourage the pilgrim to stay true to their calling and faithful to a certain kind of internal posture of waiting, of seeking to find this water even when its hot and lifeless on the path. 

Once a person has heard this stream of water flowing beneath their feet,  life cannot remain the same. Choices will inevitably need to be made about commitments, obligations and other activities which although good in themselves, are sometimes unnecessary hindrances or distractions to the pilgrim’s interior sense of calling to find the source of this water. They may have a desire welling up within them to experience this moment of contemplation again and may wish to explore their experience more deeply with someone who has been this way at an earlier time.  Attentive to the sound of the water’s splash, they may want to know the location of its source and more about those who have been this way before. In this role the spiritual director can be of great help as someone who has trodden this path before and experienced the hardships, struggles, temptations and periods of dryness.  The director is not so much someone who knows, but has lived the journey and knows the struggles involved in making the climb.

Sometimes we face the possibility of loosing touch with the sound of the water beneath our feet, such as when we are facing moral temptations which could divert us from our path or the impact of trauma, busyness or a difficult time in our lives.  Regular spiritual direction can help us to stay immersed in the contemplative stance of listening for this hidden stream of water in daily life. As one of several spiritual disciplines, spiritual direction helps us to notice or see God’s activity in our life which we could otherwise overlook or misinterpret, such as my experience of the illusive water. 

Occasionally we meet someone who is unaware of the sound of water which is flowing below their feet, yet they are thirsty for it and frustrated by what they see is a lack of relevant spirituality and spiritual practices in their religious community. The spiritual director can direct their attention to where they already stand, above the stream of water which flows just below the surface of their daily life;  a sound which may be deafened by external noises. With patience, compassion and care, the director can guide them to the source of their frustration and give them the space to become aware of their surroundings and awareness of what is already at work, hidden, but nonetheless, pervasive in their lives. On other occasions, the director will help the directee to be faithful to their heart’s desire to seek the water’s source. When distractions have intervened, the director’s role can be to help the pilgrim identify these and to encourage them to lay them aside. Sometimes the director’s role will be to explain, as Ian did to me,  how it came about that God’s presence and work is flowing through our lives in a particular way. In this role, they act as a guide to the pilgrim as they make their way along the path. The spiritual director will know the particular tradition they have come from so that they can draw upon it at the appropriate time to explain to the pilgrim the landscape they are now standing in.

Some climb mountains solely for the aloneness they provide, the space they provide opens up the life inside.  Others walk in order to seek the face of God.  Most of us however, need not just a guide, but a companion, who is able to interpret the unfamiliar terrain; someone who will encourage us to stay firm to our commitment. As I cast my mind back to remember that particular day walk, I remember how good it was to have someone who knew where I was located and what lay ahead. It was good to have someone who has remained my closest friend on what can sometimes be, an isolating and sometimes confusing experience. This, I think, is the role of the spiritual director.