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.