CHAPTER 1

Shall We Dance?

The beginning of a spiritual direction relationship may be initiated by a phonecall, correspondence, recommendations, or even some personal familiarity.Occasionally a former student of mine will come to me for direction. Someinquirers have read something I've written and seek me out. Sometimes someone Idon't know who is part of my church community will be interested. Others simplyget my name from a minister, psychotherapist, physician, or an organization thatmaintains a referral list of spiritual directors. Each new contact is asurprise, introducing me to a person who wants to grow in faith, seriouslyexamine spiritual experience and belief, and, ultimately, become more alive.Even when there is no follow-up to an initial brief phone call, I am left withthe delight of having encountered a person who is reaching beyond weariness,busyness, indifference, and trepidation in order to seek holy mystery. Severalpeople I have listened to for only one hour, yet something in their story orperspective persists in my memory, shedding light on my own path in life.

Many years ago when I was training to be a spiritual director at Mercy Center, aRoman Catholic convent and retreat center south of San Francisco, there werepractice requirements throughout the three years. At some point my classmatesand I were told we needed to meet with directees. We were encouraged to letpeople know we were available free of charge while we were interns. I mentionedthis to a few people. The deadline for having a directee approached, and I hadno one asking to meet with me. My life was full with family and work, and Ihadn't strategically worked toward this goal. No doubt cold feet were as muchthe problem as were full hands.

I had no idea if I had much to offer. Even if I could identify what I had tooffer, the relationship felt too sacred to subject to marketing analysis andpromotion. My spiritual direction professors had said that although spiritualdirection is an art that can be learned, taught, and cultivated, it is also acharism, a gift from God. I sincerely hoped I had received the gift and that,God willing, the gift would be recognized by people who could benefit frommeeting with me. My teacher Mary Ann Scofield asked, "Have you prayed about it?"Not much. But starting then I did, tentatively imagining that people might beushered into my office by the hand of God.

First Encounters

To my surprise, that was what appeared to happen and has continued to happen. Myfirst spiritual direction relationship, however, was short-lived anddisappointing. The potential directee came from outside my religious traditionand with expectations I couldn't meet. She had been reading a series ofcaptivating novels by Susan Howatch in which spiritual directors playsignificant roles. The focus of those novels is an Anglican cathedral town inEngland. The characters are, on the whole, complicated, educated, articulatepeople of faith. A number of them seek counsel from spiritual directors, whoseem nearly omniscient. Like Yoda in Star Wars, they reveal deep knowledge ofdirectees' innermost souls and exude complete confidence in their own powers todiscern and proclaim. They confront, cleanse, and heal, often in short order,though they are also depicted as wholly human, engaging in their own faithstruggles. In one of these novels, a spiritual director, Father Darrow, says toa directee he has met the previous day, "[God] has come to your rescue at last,and here in this village, here in this house, here in this room where you've hitrock-bottom, here's where your new life finally begins." This fictionalspiritual director with such brief acquaintance with his directee has moreprecise knowledge of God's action in a directee's life than I ordinarilypossess, which has been frustrating at times, not only to me.

This first, Howatch-loving directee told me some things about her life and thenasked me to tell her what really was going on in her life spiritually. I toldher I would be happy to keep listening and tell her what I noticed, but that Idid not have access to any knowledge about her other than what she chose todisclose. She was disappointed. It was clear I was no Yoda privileged withsecret knowledge. I did not have a soothsayer's insight. Worse, I was not even agood host, being acutely self-conscious and ill at ease throughout the entirehour we spent together. The candle flamed as I sputtered.

As time has passed, I have come to know better what I do have to offer and amable to offer it confidently. People come with various expectations, and I do mybest to welcome them, even if I cannot fulfill their stated expectations. Fearshave ebbed while my trust in God's grace has increased. I myself am less andless on my mind when I meet with someone for spiritual direction. My job is tobe host to a time of reflection focused on the other person's experience of theholy. I do not create the experience, nor do I have to understand it. I help theother person move more deeply into it, noticing what I can as we go, and tryingto keep us on course toward the sense of God. From time to time I do sense theSpirit's movement when the other doesn't seem aware of it. If the awarenesspersists, I mention it to the directee as my experience and of possible value tohim or her.

In early sessions, I want to learn that person's spiritual make-up: What is hislanguage of spiritual experience? What kind of religious culture is she part ofor coming from? How have they experienced the holy? I listen for that. Oftenpeople who come to see me are ready to talk about their experiences withorganized religions, positive and negative, or about their tenets of faith. Thatinterests me. But I am most interested in what has opened a heart, stirred thesense of hope and joy, immersed the other in a broad stream of peace, andinspired care in such a way that joy, grief, and action are possibilities.

God created us as human beings. I listen for the depths of humanity, believingthat in those storied, embodied, sensate, emotional, intellectual, social, andspiritual depths lies the presence of God. An encounter with God is not achievedby stripping us of our human nature, but rather by entering into it honestly, asJesus did. As a new relationship begins, I listen for the ways God encountersthe real person and how the person prays from the depths of his or her heart.

Hearts' Desires

Seeking spiritual direction is an act of courage and hope. The people who climbthe three flights of stairs to my office for the first time have felt sufficientdesire to know God better that they have come. Like the word "heart," "desire"is a word that most academic education has not addressed, yet it is core to thework of spiritual direction. Desire is a state of being in which we encounterthe other. It is an opening out of oneself, a posture of reception andvulnerability.

In the soul work of spiritual direction, we strive to discern the desires ofhearts and the conforming of those desires to God's desire. Desire includes bothorientation and leaning toward. We may desire success or wealth or integrity.Desire itself is the opening outward, like the baby's mouth straining toward themother's breast. There is an infinite range of objects of desire, and Scriptureenumerates many of our hearts' unhealthy desires. The first mention in Scriptureof the heart's inclinations describes a dissonance between human hearts and theheart of God: God sees that "every inclination of the thoughts of their [our]hearts was only evil continually ... and it grieved him to his heart." TheGeneral Confession of the Book of Common Prayer reads, "We have followed toomuch the devices and desires of our own hearts." We often fail to attune ourhearts to God's heart.

Much of Scripture and Christian theology is aimed at encouraging us to train ourdesires toward God. Theologian Belden Lane in writing about John Calvin notesthat "spirituality, in Calvin's thinking, is a performance of desire shared bythe whole universe, a deliberate practice of delight that echoes through everypart of the created world.... All created reality, extending each moment fromthe hand of God, is shot through with longing." In a first session with aperson, I listen for that desire, that longing.

Many who write about our relationship with God—the focus of spiritual direction—mentionhearts and desires. There we find images taken from music: attunement,harmony, resonance, amplification, reverberation, and more. The image that comesto my mind in spiritual direction is often that of dancing to music.

Many years ago I danced with my husband's uncle at an anniversary celebration.He was such a fine dancer that with him I became a good dancer. He led firmlyand minimally, and I did all kinds of things I didn't know I was capable of. Forthe first time I experienced the music flowing through me as I danced. Myattention wasn't anxiously fixed on my own movements, nor was I particularlyattending to the man. The memory lives in me as a revelation of how my body candance music. Now I know that such a capacity is in me, though I seldomexperience it. At the end of that time of dancing, I was hungry for more. Itevoked a desire in me to experience music with my whole self.

Fragility and impermanence lend intensity to the pleasure of pursuing desire.The dance came to an end. Jesus' parables of the lost sheep, coin, and sonillustrate the pleasure that comes from desire fulfilled, a pleasure far greaterthan continual possession would have brought. The fragility and impermanence ofmortality lend force to its preciousness.

Philosopher Emmanuel Levinas writes that "the relation to the Infinite is not aknowledge, but a Desire.... Desire itself cannot be satisfied.... Desirein some way nourishes itself in its own hungers and is augmented by itssatisfaction." Desire feeds desire. In dancing with that man my desire to dancewas magnified rather than satisfied. As Levinas claims, that is true of relatingto God, a situation of reciprocal desire. Stated in another way, Ann and BarryUlanov write that "the answer to prayer is prayer—more prayer, fullerconversation, more listening, more straining to hear, more reflection on what isactually heard, on what has really happened."

A spiritual director is like the man who helped me dance: a firm, gentleprofessional, familiar with tempo, patterns, variations, and steps. Spiritualdirectors know what it is like to learn to "dance." They have lots of experience"dancing" and know that there is no end to growing in the practice. Sometimesour partners, directees, hear more in the music than we do and move into stepswe had never imagined. Sometimes we, the spiritual directors, are the ones whosuggest steps.

When a person arrives in my office for the first time, I recognize the desirethat has brought him or her to me, the perhaps not mentioned but inevitablypresent fears that surround that desire. It is more difficult in our culture tospeak of prayer than it is to speak of sex. The Ulanovs write that "prayer isexposure." To pray is to expose oneself to the One prayed to as well as to whatis deepest within oneself. Reading the Psalms, the Bible's prayer book, showsthat prayer opens the one praying to every variation of human feeling andexperience. Ordinarily, we exert ourselves to contain powerful feelings,especially those that express unmet longing, as the feelings of prayer often do.How much easier it is to turn from those irresolvable feelings to a problemwithin our control. Yet in prayer we allow our whole selves to be held bysomething larger than we are, just as the music holds and flows through thedancer. That something will change us, placing our feet in unexpected places.

As I await the knock on the door, I turn to God and pray to be a trustworthypartner in the dance of prayer.

CHAPTER 2

Held in theCurrent: Grant

His name is Grant," Pastor John informed me, standing in his church's largeparking lot. "He has a lot of questions about faith, and I thought you two mightwork well together."

That was this pastor's first "referral" to me, and I remember thinking, "Johnmust be warming up to spiritual direction." I expressed my gratitude and gaveJohn the private voicemail number people use to contact me about spiritualdirection.

Days later, Grant called and left a message. He sounded quiet and formal. Ireturned the call to his office, and we set up an appointment to talk about whatspiritual direction is, what he was looking for, and what I could offer. I oftenoffer an initial one-time, no-fee, no-commitment hour of conversation. Somepeople never call back after that first hour together. Some ask for names andnumbers of other spiritual directors or psychotherapists, and sometimes I thinka person would be better off working with someone else, and I say so. Some wantto see me again. Grant did.

Grant arrived in a gray suit that complemented his steel gray hair, lookingevery bit the corporate executive he is. He carefully folded his jacket, turnedoff his cell phone, and put them and his briefcase on my worn conference table,an action he repeats every time he visits.

He told me about his spiritual life: a long journey of faithful churchattendance, Bible study, and prayer. He mentioned his desire for a moreheartfelt experience of faith. Like many, he was experiencing his religious lifeas stale and rote. He went through the motions, but felt no emotion. He hadhoped that theological study would amplify his spiritual experience, but it hadnot. He knew a lot about who theologians think God is, but that wasn't helpinghim know God. In fact, it was scaring him a bit. God's holiness seemed prettyincompatible with his own flawed humanity. The sense of God's holy otherness hadbecome an impediment to prayer.

Grant had questions. Lots of questions. Questions about the Trinity, about theway Jesus' death and resurrection affected his own redemption, about the Personof the Holy Spirit and what Scripture meant in claiming that that Spirit livesin us. He had questions about Christian community, and what it means to grow infaith together. So much of the faith journey seemed solitary and unspoken. Howcould he even begin to talk with others about his intractable experience ofspiritual alienation despite his steady striving in the faith?

I listened to him. Then he listened to me describe spiritual direction as Ipractice it. Having done all his speaking with eyes lowered, in listening heturned his gaze toward me. I spoke about my willingness to listen to him with anear toward God in his life. I told him about my belief that God is present inall aspects of our lives, and about the way that belief helps me attune to hintsof God in the world.

I also explained how spiritual direction is different from other listeningprofessions. Spiritual direction is not psychotherapy, though it can look likeit. I am not looking for pathology, diagnosing, or treating it, nor am Iattempting to assist someone in problem-solving. All those activities areworthwhile, but are not ones I am trained in or am licensed to practice. I amvery much in favor of psychotherapy when needed, have benefited from it myself,and know that some psychotherapists listen to their clients with spiritualattunement. A number of the people I work with are working concurrently withpsychotherapists and tell me they find the two practices complementary. Those ofmy directees who are psychotherapists speak often about the differences in thetwo practices and make the distinction increasingly clear to me.

I told Grant about my experience with my spiritual director at the time. Knowingthat I was going to talk with Sister Barbara kept me alert to what was going onwith me spiritually. Her engagement with my life and her care for my spiritualhealth generated in me a kind of accountability. When I was with her, she helpedme notice things I hadn't noticed on my own. Sometimes she challenged ways I wasthinking about God and my experience. Even more than the time in her presence,though, I valued the time between our conversations for her work with meradiated far beyond the time we spent together. When I would have an experienceof what I think of as grace, instead of just rushing past it into my to-do listfor the day, I would pause and think, "Yes. This is grace. I'll remember to tellSister Barbara."

Grant listened to what I said, nodding from time to time. His eyes drew me. Atfirst glance they matched his suit and hair, another gray surface communicatingreserve as he glanced up from his hands to my face. As he listened to me, Ibegan to see his intense, shy longing for God. When I spoke of my faith in God'spresence, I saw a flash of hope. When I told of my experiences with my spiritualdirector, I saw keen interest.

Shifting from my own story to the subject of our possible work together, I said,"All stories are appropriate for spiritual direction. Let me illustrate how Iwould orient myself as a spiritual director, in contrast to how manypsychotherapists would work. For instance, you might say the following to me:'One night when I was about ten, my mother yelled at me and I went to bedcrying. Lying there in the dark I sensed a comforting presence that held me. Ididn't see or hear or feel anything concrete, but I knew I was loved. Thatfeeling was gone the next day when I encountered my mother's anger again.'

"If you told me that story, my first movement would be toward the feeling ofbeing loved, not toward the turbulent relationship with your mother. Both partsof the story are important, and both hold spiritual significance, but my firstmove would be toward the comforting presence, helping you remember thatexperience, and holding you in it as much as possible. The experience of thatcomforting presence then will be there, remembered and real, as we turn to othersubjects, including, perhaps, that of your mother's anger."

What looked like pain seared his face, as he dropped his head. I hoped I wouldget to work with him.