When I began my DMin program, I started in the Christian Spirituality track. When, during my first seminar in person in Atlanta, I got to preach during community worship where all seminar participants would congregate before going back to our classes, I was invited to have a conversation to think about whether the Preaching track might be a better fit for me. I think so, and that’s been the direction of my work ever since.
Part of the preaching track is working with a preaching coach/consultant. My coach and I actually crossed paths in seminary which I think is very cool! As part of the Christian Spirituality track, students work with a Spiritual Director. Other students work with a ministry coach. I really like that experiencial guidance piece of the program for each track.
My second semester, I worked with a Spiritual Director. The DMin program director connected us because of our similar interests in activism particularly within Latine communities, and because his work with a church that meets at the US/Mexico border in San Diego would be helpful in my own journey of identity formation, embodiment and belonging. After I switched tracks, we stopped meeting, and last month, began meeting again after my most recent class and seminar “Spiritual Practices in the Life of the Church,” ignited a desire to work on tending my own spirituality so I can effectively continue to nurture the spiritual needs of my church and the community of senior adults where I work.
I was talking to my parents about spiritual direction, and given my own hesitance to engage at first, because it was such a mystery to me, I thought a post on the benefits of spiritual direction might be fun.
In my class this past semester, we read a lot of books about spiritual listening, and were introduced to the concept of “spiritual companioning:” a less top-down relationship as in spiritual direction, shifting to understanding this process as a spiritual companioning. Your director or companion walks alongside you as you navigate the spiritual life, drawing from their own wisdom to help you listen and discern the presence and movement of the divine in your life.
Spiritual direction is not therapy; though sometimes it can feel therapeutic. Margaret Guenther defines it as “holy listening.” Cindy Lee conceptualizes it as a “third space” between the social locations of 2 people, who bring all of who they are (their sociocultural background, life experience, etc) to a spiritual listening encounter, being open to learn from one another, and listen for the movement of the holy in that middle space between what is foundational and known, and what is mystery yet to be uncovered.
It was hard to wrap my mind around it at first, because there’s no goal in spiritual direction beyond turning inward and embracing vulnerability. There’s no external measure of growth, per se; and that much unknown can be a little much. I like to know things. I need to know. The first thing I learned in spiritual direction is the less I know, the more I discover.
The process has been very inviting, and one of the things I’ve learned recently in the absence of a multiethnic faith community to be a part of - a staple of my spiritual life to this point, there are things I need to do to tend to that spiritual need, because it turns out, my spirit needs diversity to thrive because it was formed on that early on as a missionary kid in Brazil.
For starters, I found a bunch of acapella hymns in Spanish on Spotify to listen to on my commute. They remind me of the songs we used to sing when I was translating for mission teams in Baja California, Mexico. I loved those days living in Mexico - communing with the people, the ways the words would just come to me when I struggled to find them, in a moment of translating a bible study or class - surely the movement of the spirit of God with me. I loved eating the local food every day, and to this day (even though when I got back, I was off sandiwches for a while), a mission trip lunch of pb and j or pimento cheese sandiwch and a little bag of chips with a diet coke is my favorite simple meal to nourish body, mind, and soul.
Spiritual direction, a guided journey of tending to spirituality and listening for the holy in little and significant moments in ordinary life has been, and is, quite a gift.
This is very similar to the approach I take with my coaching clients. I’m the empathetic witness who holds safe and secure space for them to turn inward and vulnerably explore thoughts, emotions.