What is spiritual direction?
There was a season of life when I was a much younger person, and I wanted to get in shape. I lived near a church with a pretty stellar fitness center and super affordable rates. My problem was I could walk into the gym, but I had no idea what I was doing once I got there.
Thankfully, I had a buddy who had a side hustle as a personal trainer. And he put together a plan for me. “On Monday, use these machines, and this is how you use them. On Wednesday, those ones over there. Friday, do these here.”
I simply needed somebody to make some space for me, pay attention to me, and help me with what was right in front of me. It was like I had a bunch of jigsaw puzzle pieces, and my buddy provided the picture I was supposed to be making. And it clicked.
There is something similar to the work of spiritual direction that I experienced in that relationship.
Where spiritual direction comes from
There is nothing new or novel in the ministry of spiritual direction. The art and craft of spiritual direction traces its roots to the desert mothers and fathers of the 3rd and 4th centuries. We can see various aspects of spiritual direction in several Bible stories, like Eli and Samuel, Jesus and the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and Jesus and the Samaritan woman.
One illustration of this is when Jesus encounters blind Bartimaeus at the end of Mark 10. Jesus asks him, "What do you want me to do for you?" There is an aspect to spiritual direction that simply holds the question before us: What do you want Jesus to do for you?
Many of us have an idealized vision of what the Christian life should be and spend much of our lives chasing it: pray and read your Bible everyday, go to church every Sunday, tithe to the church, host a small group, volunteer at the homeless shelter as often as you can, tell your co-workers about your faith, go on a mission trip.
And we beat ourselves up when we don’t get it all done. But it’s not real. It’s a false vision of faith. The life of Jesus isn’t a hamster-wheel chase. There’s something much richer and fuller and robust going on.
This isn’t a new experience for people. Generations of Christians have wrestled with these questions about what it means to live an authentic life as a human being before God. Teresa of Avila, Anthony, Ignatius of Loyola, Thomas Merton, Bernard of Clairvaux—all of these saints provided wisdom for people in their own day, and we continue to learn from them and many like them even today. Spiritual direction is a wisdom tradition that stretches through the ages.
What spiritual direction is and is not
Spiritual direction is holy listening. It holds sacred space to attend to the work of the Holy Spirit. A spiritual director listens with a directee as they’re listening to God. A spiritual director isn’t a mediator or advice-giver. They are a companion, a guide with knowledge of the inner movements of the spiritual life.
In this way, spiritual direction looks very different from other one-on-one relationships like counseling, coaching, or even discipling or mentoring.
“We define Christian spiritual direction, then, as help given by one believer to another that enables the latter to pay attention to God’s personal communication to him or her, to respond to this personally communicating God, to grow in intimacy with this God, and to live out the consequences of the relationship.” William Barry and William Connolly, The Practice of Spiritual Direction
There are five significant ideas to unpack from this definition that give spiritual direction its life and breath. First, spiritual direction involves a relationship between at least two people. It is discernment in community, listening to God with another person. Second, this relationship is for the purpose of paying attention to God’s involvement in this person’s life. We trust that God is already at work and that God wants to be known. Third, the directee has the agency to respond to the work of God. They are co-participants of God’s work, not passive recipients. They get to say “yes” or “no.” Fourth, the desire of the directee is to grow and deepen in one’s union with God. The goal is love, not more information. We don’t talk about God as if God isn’t in the room. This is about actual, lived experience. Finally, the growing communication and intimacy lead to ongoing response and living life in God’s love.
Getting comfortable with the mystery
The movements, rhythms, and shadows of the inner life have been documented for generations of Christians. The Dark Night of the Soul, consolation and desolation, the false and true self, The Wall, the passions of the Enneagram—these are all dynamics of the spiritual life experienced by Christians of the past that can guide us in our own journey. We are not alone in our experiences.
“Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self. My false and private self is the one who wants to exist outside the reach of God’s will and God’s love--outside of reality and outside of life. And such a self cannot help but be an illusion.” Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
“Rigorous religious practices, devoted discipleship, sacrificial service, deeper devotional activities may do nothing more than turn a nominally religious false self into a fantastically religious false self.” Robert Mulholland, The Deeper Journey
I recently had a conversation with a pastor who was asking me for advice. A member of his congregation had come to him saying that their spiritual director had affirmed their call to ministry, and therefore, what job was available for them at the church? To me, it sounded like there was a deep misunderstanding by this individual about what spiritual direction was for. It wasn’t to strong-arm the pastor into giving them a role just because a spiritual director affirmed a call to ministry.
While clarity is something we hope for, certainty and control aren’t usually things a spiritual director brings. In fact, spiritual direction is often for leaning into the uncertainty and mystery that life with God brings. Spiritual direction rarely ends with the resolution of a big red bow like a sitcom episode. A session is more likely to end with a comma than a period. The time together holds up a mirror to us to expose the false self and to invite us into ever deeper growth.
What spiritual direction looks and feels like
Spiritual direction is about listening. Which means that it involves some silence. Sometimes awkward silence. But our lives are so, so noisy, we need a place to just stop and simply listen to our own hearts.
Scripture is slathered with invitations to stop and pay attention. Some time you should go through Old and New Testaments, Prophets, Gospels, Psalms, and mark up every reference you see to listening, hearing, or using your ears:
“Be quick to listen, slow to speak”
“Hear, O Israel…”
“He who has an ear, hear”
And so, spiritual direction is about being mindful to stop and listen to the work that God is doing in your heart and life and world. It’s about intentionally and systematically paying attention to God in your life.
In this way, spiritual direction can look like professional counseling. It is a safe, confidential, and often, one-on-one relationship. But where counseling may bring you from crisis to stability, spiritual direction leads you from a stable place to a deeper place of thriving. It is a place to bring the biggest questions of life.
"A block of marble cannot carve itself, it needs a sculptor. An athlete needs a personal trainer or coach. Likewise, a person of faith will certainly benefit from a spiritual director. We are all very susceptible to self-deception and are not always able to detect our own fearful games or blind spots.... It is too easy to make our heart's desires and our mind's speculations into the will of God." Henri Nouwen, Spiritual Direction
Spiritual direction is much more than an organic, Christian mentoring relationship. Your story is sacred. And a relationship with a director is one of deep trust. A director is a trained professional who abides by a set of ethical standards (which you should definitely ask about and confirm in an initial interview). You are welcome to talk about and share anything with a director, and a director holds it in the highest confidence.
The need for a sacred companion
Every Christian needs the work of spiritual direction. If you’re involved in professional ministry, then doubly so. There can be so many pitfalls related to missed expectations when you get a paycheck from a church.
We need spiritual direction because we all need the loving gaze of a seasoned saint on our life before God. I’ve spent a long time around church and have witnessed this story time and again. A person walks into the church for the first time and falls in love with it. They start showing up every week. Then it becomes not quite enough, so they start showing up early and staying late to help out. They think, “If I could just get a job here. Then, everything would be perfect.”
Then, they get that job working with students, or in the office, or with the worship band. But then that doesn’t quite scratch the itch either. They think, “Maybe I’m called to ministry and should go to seminary.” So they go to seminary, get a degree, start to pastor a church. And then they discover that they’re no closer to Jesus than that very first day. Our churches are full of people somewhere on this journey who simply need someone to lovingly ask, “What are you doing here? What are you getting out of this? What is it you want Jesus to do for you in this?”
It’s a really hard day when you learn that you were probably hired in ministry for your false self. It is in those moments when we’ve done everything we thought we were supposed to do and it doesn’t work anymore that the presence of a spiritual director leads us into a deeper awareness of our own souls.
Contemplative practices in spiritual direction
Spiritual direction is about paying attention to your actual, lived, real experience with God. The mountaintops. The desert. All of it. Not whatever celebrity-Christian-of-the-week you maybe didn’t even know you were chasing. Spiritual direction is about becoming aware as God speaks in your own heart and life and world. It doesn’t do us any good to read the latest, most popular book about spiritual stuff if we can’t put it into practice to actually know the love of God.
Life is hard. A vocation in ministry is hard. It can be so easy to get caught up in serving others that you forget to take care of yourself, to tend your own soul. There are a variety of disciplines and practices (periodic retreats, Sabbath, contemplative prayer, journaling, lectio divina are just a few) that transform our hearts and grow our capacity for love. In spiritual direction, we take the time in reflection to notice how these practices are actually producing the fruits of the Spirit in us.
Some closing thoughts
For much of my early life as a Christian, I understood that Jesus talked to me and I talked to Jesus. That worked great until it didn’t. It was such a gift to discover spiritual direction, and that it wasn’t all on me, that another person could listen with me. I wasn't alone. A spiritual director may be like a guide on a trail who can point out what’s coming ahead.
They may also be someone who joins us in tending to our soul. Just like any car needs a regular oil change, tires rotated, engine tune-up, your soul needs frequent maintenance. Spiritual direction is about making a regular rhythm of noticing your soul. It is a safe place to say things out loud like you don’t hear God’s voice and maybe you’re starting to think this Christianity thing isn’t everything you thought it was, or that the Bible doesn’t make any sense at all to you, or that the job at the church maybe isn’t working out. Doubts, questions, frustrations—a spiritual director is a safe place for all of these.
In our age of digital distraction, where our attention is fractured, and our emotions find themselves attached to the latest headlines, spiritual direction with another human being can be one practice that brings healing to our souls.
