Understanding Spiritual Direction

When I meet someone new who is interested in learning what I do vocationally, I think carefully before offering an explanation for what I do. If the person hasn’t explicitly declared themselves as someone of faith or someone interested in spirituality (by context, association or overt statement), I often say something like, “I’m a spiritual director—sort of like a counselor for the spiritual life.” It’s an inadequate summary on many levels, but for those who are primarily engaged in social niceties, it works.

If the person I’m talking to has identified themselves as someone of faith, I usually go into a more detailed explanation of spiritual direction as the care of souls. I use the guiding image of my practice (“a midwife to the soul”), and usually field a few clarifying questions. Often enough, my conversational partner says something along the lines of “Oh, like discipleship” or “So you’re a mentor, then.”

“Not really,” I say, “but sort of.”

I wish I had a laminated handout of this chart to carry in my back pocket for these conversations. It’s one of the clearest and most useful breakdowns of the various helping disciplines in Christianity that I’ve yet found. I may laminate it, yet.

Sdchart copy

 

Silence

At a recent retreat I led, I shared the following quote from Mama Maggie Gobran:

 

To be in silence is to be full inside of yourself.  It’s not easy. 

Silence your body to listen to your words. 

Silence your tongue to listen to your thoughts. 

Silence your thoughts to listen to your heart. 

Silence your heart to listen to your spirit. 

Silence your spirit to listen to His presence.

In silence, you leave the many to be with the One.

 

So true. So worth sitting with and meditating on.

 

Where has silence been part of your life recently?

 

Feast of St. Francis

To tell you the truth, Francis is one of my favorite saints. He was iconoclastic, deeply in love with God, and more than a little bit weird. He talked to rocks and wolves and worked for peace. He broke the mold.

Today, Shane Claiborne shared a wonderful primer on St. Francis that is well worth reading.

And if you haven't read about Francis's encounter with the Wolf Of Gubbio, I would recommend you spend some time reading and meditating on what God was doing through Francis, through the wolf, and, perhaps, through the wolves in your own life.

Time for Taize

“Since my youth, I think that I have never lost the intuition that community life could be a sign that God is love, and love alone. Gradually the conviction took shape in me that it was essential to create a community with men determined to give their whole life and who would always try to understand one another and be reconciled, a community where kindness of heart and simplicity would be at the centre of everything.”

Brother Roger: “God is love alone”

In a small town on the border of France sits a once sleepy town called Taizé. The home of an ecumencial Christian community dedicated to simple prayer and song, the word Taizé has also come to represent a way of being with God in community that has attracted hundreds of thousands of pilgrims (most of them under the age of 30) over more than 70 years.

Taizé is a way of prayer that finds its foundation in meditative prayer and song. Taizé music is simple; usually no more than four phrases long, with sparse, easily memorized melodies. The point of Taizé is not to get to the end of the song or prayer, but for the song or prayer to get to the end of you. It is a method of moving the truths of the prayers from the head down to the heart.

Every few weeks or so, I find myself craving some Taizé music. So, I find a quiet place, center myself on God and let the musical prayers wash over me. Sometimes I sing, sometimes I sit and let the songs sing me.

If you've never experienced Taizé, I encourage you to find some of their music (also on iTunes), and explore their website. If there's a Taizé service somewhere in your town (and there may well be*), I encourage  you to make an effort to experience what it is like to practice silence, Scripture and song in community. I know that it will refresh your soul.

 

*If you live in Colorado Springs, Colorado College runs a Taizé service once a block at Shove Chapel. The next Taizé service with be on Monday, October 10 at 9 pm at Shove.

A New Year

Sunset tonight, September 28, begins a new year in Jewish tradition. It is the start of Rosh Hashanah, a celebration of things being created by God, and the names of His people being written in the book of life. Whatever your faith tradition, tonight can seen as a thin place, a threshold between old and new. I love the mystery of the sunset and the sunrise, and the promises of the sweetness that is to come.

Sunset
The sunset over Mt. Princeton, Colorado, on September 28, 2011 taken by nearby resident, Brad Rohrich.

A Place for Spiritual Direction

Over at Pastors.com Jamin Goggin is beginning a series on spiritual direction and its place in the church. I'm always excited about spiritual direction getting greater exposure and explanation—the practice is often such a fuzzy concept for people used to really defined roles that an exploration of what spiritual direction is from different perspective is always helpful. Check it out

Little Toes

A good friend of mine recently gave birth to a little boy with whom I’m totally in love. Although I don’t get to see him as often as I’d like, given our schedules, this little guy has quickly become one of the favorite men in my life.

On a recent visit with him and his parents, I was holding and talking to him while he’s continuingly growing eyes attempted to focus first on me, then on the light streaming in from their big bay windows. I just marveled at how he was learning and experiencing the world for the first time—everything is fresh. He wiggled and wondered, and I grinned and wondered at his beautiful little body, his soon-to-be-discovered personality and his ten perfect toes that he insisted on poking out from his swaddling.

A few days later, I was sitting on the chair in my office, cross-legged. I don’t remember if I was reading or writing, but God gently turned my attention to my own toes. Slightly calloused and ragged, my toes are much flatter than the toes that I tickled earlier in the week, toes that have yet to press earth and bear the weight of his own life and, eventually, those he loves.

As I asked God why He’d turned my attention to the differences and similarities between my toes and those little toes I’d held preciously, I felt Him smile. He was inviting me to give my attention to something that I don’t normally think about, and in that attention-giving He was reminding me of His immense love. 

I sat with God in the silence and noticed that I don’t pay my attention to my feet, but they bear a lot of things. My toes allow balance and dexterity, they create stability and grounding for me in a literal physical way. I also noticed that my toes aren’t that different from baby Brandt’s toes—we each have ten toes that contract when we’re tickled and reach out when we stretch. There was a day once when my toes were held in the hands of those who wondered and awed over them, loving family who cooed over the miracle of a new life so fearfully and wonderfully made.

I was also reminded that God marvels and delights over me like a new parent each morning, that His new mercies also mean His new delight. That even a part of my body that take totally for granted—as one day this baby turned young man will take for granted his running, walking, dancing feet—is a part that God created deliberately and with love. And it’s a part of me that He holds tenderly, just as He holds the rest of me, each moment of each day.

It made me wonder wistfully if one of the reasons God asked Moses—and asks each of us—to take off our shoes when we are on holy ground isn’t so much to acknowledge His holiness, but so that He can have a good look at those little toes He made and loves.

 

Poetry for the Soul

When You Are Old

by William Butler Yeats

When you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

with thanks to Jenni Simmons who posted this originally

 

The Rest of Simplicity

Weavings is a wonderful publication whose blog recently reminded me how easy it is to be allured away from simplicity into a life of discontent and restlessness. It's both easy and difficult to do—to choose the things that are needed, not those that are wanted. To choose for less, instead of more. To choose for enough, and trust God's provision. The struggle for simplicity is one of choosing for your interior peace, over exterior impulses.

Where are you invited to simplicity today?

From The Center

Two weekends ago, I taught and led a weekend retreat for the beloved, holy mess that is my spiritual home. The verses that wrapped our time were these, quoted here from The Message, Romans 12:9-19:

 9-10Love from the center of who you are; don't fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply; practice playing second fiddle.

 11-13Don't burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don't quit in hard times; pray all the harder. Help needy Christians; be inventive in hospitality.

 14-16Bless your enemies; no cursing under your breath. Laugh with your happy friends when they're happy; share tears when they're down. Get along with each other; don't be stuck-up. Make friends with nobodies; don't be the great somebody.

 17-19Don't hit back; discover beauty in everyone. If you've got it in you, get along with everybody. Don't insist on getting even; that's not for you to do. "I'll do the judging," says God. "I'll take care of it."

There are quite a few lines that resonate here, for me and for those I journey alongside. But the first one still catches me up short, causes me to think, to breathe, to remember myself and my God.

"Love from the center of who you are; don't fake it."

How many of us fake it on a regular basis? Pretend in order to get someone to like us, or, alternately, pretend to like someone else in order to feel better about ourselves?

Loving from the center means finding that center and not just loving from there, but living there. That's a journey that only God can take me on, take you on. That center won't hold (apologies to Yeats) if we look for it anywhere else. We'll find ourselves spinning off, pulled by gravities that suck us toward orbits of insecurity, worthlessness and loneliness. It's in finding who is in the center of ourselves that we find who we are, and begin to live from that place truly, whole-heartedly.

I wonder what it would look like if, each day, we let go of the faking it a little more and received the gift of being ourselves just a little more fully.

What would it look like if you, if I, loved from the center of who we are just a little more tomorrow?