Spiritual Direction
Today I took a walk near Minnehaha Falls. As I watched the water make its way over rocks and fallen tree branches, under bridges and around bends, gradually making its way downstream and out into the mighty Mississippi River, I thought about how the course of the stream is like life.
Our spiritual lives sometimes feel slow and stagnant and other times flow with a powerful momentum.
There are often obstacles in our way that change our course, slow us down, or block the path we need to go. Even so, the need to move along toward our destiny is built into our core and pushes us forward. We are made for a purpose and God is intent on getting us where we need to be.
I have been meeting with a spiritual director regularly for about 6 years now. What is a spiritual director? It is a person trained in listening and asking questions. They are a companion on your spiritual journey. Every month, my director asks me to share what’s been happening in my life and then asks me questions and helps me tune into what God has been speaking to me. She takes notes and refers back to them each time we get together. It is a real gift to have an attentive companion reminding me of things I have said or learned over the course of months and years of my life. My spiritual director keeps everything in our meetings confidential and holds space for me to wrestle with God and to have more questions than answers sometimes.
As I have met with my spiritual director over time, I’ve realized that we have much in common and many of the gifts she has, I have as well. I started writing in my journal, “God, if you want me to become a spiritual director, show me when it is the right time.”
Almost the next day after writing that, I was driving to a meeting with a piano teacher friend and she mentioned that she was going to meet with her spiritual director that day. Since this is not an everyday thing, I immediately paid attention. She said she was considering being trained as a spiritual director. I said, “NO WAY! ME TOO!” I asked her where she went for direction; and she said she met with a Nun at St Thomas More Catholic Church in St Paul. “That’s where my kids go to school! That’s a block from my house!” I said in surprise.
I went home and immediately googled “spiritual direction – St Thomas More” and an invitation came up. It said, “Are you considering becoming a spiritual director? Come find out more!” The meeting would be a panel of directors from different training programs around the Twin cities and would be held at St Thomas More just a few weeks away.
I attended the meeting and found out about a number of training programs. The one that felt most right to me was the 2-year distance learning program out of Chicago with an organization called Christos Center for Spiritual Formation.
Spiritual Direction has its roots in the Catholic tradition, but this program is inter-denominational and has participants from a wide variety of faith traditions. To be accepted into the program, I had to provide a paper, interview, and character references. Becoming a spiritual director is not something that everyone is called to do and the people running the program do a great job of walking through the discernment process with those who are interested. My schooling will start this coming September. The program includes weekly zoom meetings with my classmates from around the globe, small group spiritual direction training, and lots of reading and writing reflection papers. There is a silent retreat weekend next winter and an in person retreat in the spring.
To say I’m excited about this opportunity is an understatement. It feels like I am coming home to a part of who I have always known I am. Being raised in a charismatic church with very little liturgy, silence, or ritual, this is a part of me that has not been exercised much. Every time I am in a space when we are invited into stillness and listening, I feel at home. I first started meeting with a spiritual director during a time in my life when I wasn’t getting much from normal Sunday morning church. I knew that my faith was changing and I was not the same as I was as a young Christian. I didn’t view church the same way as I used to and I had a lot of questions about how what I had been taught fit into the current world I was living in.
Those early meetings helped me feel less alone. I found someone who could listen and seek to understand who God made me to be. On days when nothing made sense, she reminded me that we all go through seasons in our faith journey and feeling like God is silent or having questions is not a bad thing.
If you are interested in finding out more about spiritual direction, I’d love to talk more. It’s really not as mysterious as it sounds. I will not be “directing” anyone as many people assume because of the title. I will simply be a companion who helps people hear the Holy Spirit for themselves. If you would like to give toward the financial needs of my training, all my birthday money this year will be going to my tuition fund.