Spiritual direction is a practice of meeting with a trained spiritual director to cultivate openness and responsiveness to the Spirit’s presence in our lives. People often seek a spiritual director because they need to be heard by someone they trust as they explore their deepest spiritual concerns, questions, and yearnings. The spiritual director serves as a companion on the journey, listening attentively, without pressure or expectation, to whatever comes to the surface as people seek to express their experience of the holy in their lives.
In her book Women at the Well, Kathleen Fischer describes spiritual direction as:
a conversation in which a person seeks to answer the question, ‘What is spiritual growth and how do I foster it in my life?’ The exchanges that comprise a spiritual direction relationship focus on awareness of and response to God in one’s life.
But since God is the deepest dimension of all experience, the conversation will range over every area of existence. Spiritual direction concerns the movement of our entire lives in and toward God.
There are few road maps for spiritual direction. Each relationship is unique. Over the course of time, director and directee seek to discern what is emerging in the directee’s life — where there are blocks or fears preventing a deeper communion with God, and where there is movement and change and growth.
If you long for a compassionate and confidential space where your deepest experiences are taken seriously, spiritual direction may be right for you.
What Spiritual Direction is Not:
Spiritual direction is not counseling or psychotherapy. The focus of spiritual direction is to pay attention to and nurture relationship with God. Those navigating significant emotional or psychological challenges will need the assistance of a therapist or twelve-step group. However, spiritual direction can work in tandem with therapy.
Spiritual direction does not offer quick solutions. A spiritual director’s role is not to answer or solve your spiritual questions or dilemmas — no one can do another’s spiritual “work.” The director is also a seeker rather than someone who has “arrived.”
Learn more about the spiritual directors in mid-Michigan by visiting Find a Spiritual Director.
