Holy Listening

I recently decided to re-read some books on spiritual direction. I thought that it might be interesting to see how they are now that I have a lot more experience under my belt. The first one that I chose to read was “Holy Listening” by Margaret Guenther. I really enjoyed reading this anew after many years. I appreciate her approach to spiritual direction. Here are some of the highlights:

 

1. Directors as Amateurs

 

She talks about directors being amateurs and not professionals. Directors should never see themselves as authorities or gurus, but as fellow travelers.

 

She says “… the amateur is one who loves, loves the art that she serves, loves and prays for the people who trust her, loves the Holy Spirit who is the true director in this strange ministry called spiritual direction.”

 

I think that there is a freedom in being an amateur. We are free to love the practice and to understand that we are continuing to grow and mature ourselves. Being free from any professional rules or oversight lets it be more fully about God.

 

2. Direction is not to fix things

 

She says “Another debilitating effect of the drive and greed of a consumer society on the life of the spirit is the assumption that everything is, in principle, fixable. True spiritual direction is about the great unfixables in human life”

 

This is so true! Therapy seeks to fix things. Direction is simply companioning someone on their journey through life with God, helping them to hear His voice.

 

3. Blessed silliness

 

She also emphasizes that the spiritual life needs to have play in it too. She coins the phrase “blessed silliness” and encourages her directees to make sure that there is recreation built into their lives. This is a good reminder for us all.

 

4. Women

 

Her final chapter deals with women directees and directors. It is a marvelous essay on how women are perceived in society and how they perceive themselves as a result. These are key issues to keep in mind while working with female directees.

Ordaining Directors

I decided the other day that since I am writing now about spiritual direction, it might be good to go back and re-read some of the books on the topic that I read years ago. I thought it might be interesting to do so in light of having more experience myself. I was reading this morning and got to thinking about my own, sometimes not too pleasant, experiences with other directors. The reality is that a lot of people out there who “graduate” from direction training programs are not really gifted and don’t really understand what direction is all about. They can do much damage when they inflict themselves on others in the name of spiritual direction; damage not only to the reputation of spiritual direction, but damage to the person as well!

 

I think that this is why in the old days you were ordained for a role not by fulfilling some academic requirements but by the personal mentoring with an experienced practitioner. This was true of Christianity and Judaism, as well as other religions such as Buddhism. You received your commission or ordination directly from that authority or group, based on their personal experience of you. Their seal of approval said, “This person is capable and competent to carry on this work and pass it on to others.”

 

Maybe we should return to this model in spiritual direction (and maybe other areas as well!). We would have fewer people who could claim legitimacy but really don’t know what they are doing. I have thought for years that if I ever trained directors it would be more of a one-on-one or small group environment, rather than a classroom. My experience this past year working with a group of newly minted directors has confirmed this direction in me. This seems to be a more effective way of preparing people for this vital work.

 

Unique Coins

In my previous blog, I wrote about how each of us are created in God’s image and therefore reflect His essential goodness. While this is true, we are not all identical either. Each of us, while in God's image, have our own uniqueness. We have our own unique blend of gifts, talents, desires, and interests. We are each a unique expression of Godliness. In the Talmud it says "A human king creates coins with his image on it and each is the same. The Master of the Universe creates coins with His image on it but each one looks different." This saying expresses the view that while all of us are Children of God, we are not the same.

When we connect with our true inner self, we find joy. We are connecting with whom God created us to be. This brings great joy and peace. But because each of us are unique, each of us have different joys. For one person it may be art, for another it is teaching small children. For another it will be engineering, and another taking care of the sick. Whatever it may be, each one of us will find true joy when are connecting with who we were made to be.

For me, I experience this as a spiritual director. When I am giving direction (and doing it well) I have a great sense of peace and joy. I have a sense that I am doing what I am meant to do, that I am about my Father’s business.

As directors, we need to listen for this in our directees. When we hear them connecting with their true identity, we need to help them savor this and hear God’s voice of approval and love in it.

Resonance Theology

I recently gave a sermon on what I have termed "Resonance Theology". What is this? Some traditions teach that we are basically totally full of sin and essentially worthless. I strongly disagree with this viewpoint. Scripture is very clear that we are first and foremost created in God's image. So at our core we are essentially good and desire good. It is what Christianity calls "the sin nature" and Judaism calls "the yetzer ha-ra (evil inclination)" that oftentimes overshadows this essential goodness. But our deepest and truest selves are created in God's image. When we have inordinate desires such as lust, greed, and hate, we are distorting this essential goodness.

Given my viewpoint, then, our deepest desires are godly desires. We really do want to have peace, love, compassion, and so forth. It just that these other urges and drives get in the way. But if we connect to these deeper, truer desires, we connect with who we are at our essence; children of God.

This then provides the background for my term "resonance theology". Rather than it being that we are merely conduits for God's love, as some teach, we are actually partners with God's love. When I have compassion on someone, it's not just me having compassion, nor is it just God have compassion through me because I am incapable of it. It is rather, God and I having compassion together. We are resonating! When we connect with our True Self, we find ourselves resonating with God's love, compassion, empathy, etc...

In my Jesuit spiritual direction training we studied Ignatian discernment, which talks a lot about the Good Voice and the Bad Voice. The Good Voice is defined as God or the Holy Spirit. The Bad Voice is defined as either our evil inclination or Satan. I think that another source of the Good Voice is us! When we listen to our deepest selves, we hear not only God's voice, but also our own! Sometimes people ask me, “How do I know that it is God’s will and not my own?” My answer is that sometimes it doesn’t matter! If we are resonating with God, if we are hearing the Good Voice, then it doesn’t matter really if it is God or our True Self. We are probably hearing them both and there is no real benefit in trying to sort them out. In fact, it only adds to confusion and desolation if we try!

So when you are giving spiritual direction, listen for this resonance. Listen for the joy! When a person is connecting with this resonance down deep inside of them, it truly is a great consolation for them. We should encourage this in our directee. We need to help them savor this. We should honor and celebrate when this happens.

Asking Too Many Questions

 

I think that directors should ask very few questions. The reason for this is that if they do, it has several potential effects on the direction session. First of all, there is a greater risk of directors high jacking the session and leading the discussion where they want it to go rather than holding the directee in the presence of God. Second, there is a risk of putting the directee on the defensive, making them feel like they are being interrogated. Third, it leads to bouncing from topic to topic too much. Our goal as directors should be to hold the directee onto a subject until we have mined it thoroughly with them. We want to go deep with one or two subjects during a session, not bounce around.

 

It is much better to ask a few questions, especially early on in the conversation that helps set the agenda of the session. After that point, most questions should be “holding questions” such as “How does that make you feel?” or “How does God seem to you right now?” Or better yet, no questions at all. Simply switch to reflective responses like “You felt peaceful.” Or even merely “I see”. Quite often merely make sounds like “Hmm” works very well. The directee knows that you are hearing them and empathizing with them without you directing the conversation in any way.

 

Once you have arrived at a topic that is a potential God moment, questions like “So tell me more about your other experience last week?” or “How do you think this relates to what you told me two sessions ago about your work situation?” takes the directee away from the moment and changes the subject.

 

Thinking about this some more, I realized that this could be illustrated by a graph. The following graph has time on the x-axis and subjects as the y-axis. The dotted line is an example of too much discussion going on in a session. The participants are jumping from subject to subject, spending little time with each one. This is an “un-centered” conversation. The solid line represents a session where the bulk of the time is spent on Subject 3, whatever that is. It is acceptable and expected that there may be a few explorations prior to identifying a potential God moment and also afterwards. But the bulk of the time is spent on the one subject. This is a “centered” conversation which has a better chance of going deeper to the point of hearing God’s voice.

 

 

 

Our job as directors is to slow the conversation down, getting our directees to focus on one subject and then to go deep to the point of hearing something from God. We can best accomplish this by avoiding asking too many questions which can be distracting, make the directee feel defensive, or make it easy for us to direct the discussion the way that we want to go.