On Spiritual Direction:
The concept of spiritual direction (also called spiritual friendships or other things) has been on my mind for a while now – my imagination captivated by the experiences of a spiritual direction relationship.
Our call as Christians is to spread the lifestyle of discipleship – the lifestyle of living by faith in Jesus, the Way, Truth and Life. Permeated by God’s grace, we move and breathe. But, what does this lifestyle look like? Who will show us in tangible ways what it might look like to walk and follow after Jesus? Who will ask us the questions that open new doors of insight and help us see God’s promises in Scripture even more clearly?
In informality, I think we’ve all had a spiritual director or two in our lives – a person who has asked us questions that really affected who we are. A person who listened far more than they spoke and was a gift of God to us in a time in life. A person who we seemed drawn to, looking forward to our next conversation because with them, Jesus and everything of God seemed to become quite tangible, thanks to God at work in the relationship.
Thomas Merton’s book gets at spiritual direction, what it means, and why it’s needed. His book is written for both the “professional religious (monks)” and everyone who isn’t a monk or nun.
From the book:
The whole purpose of spiritual direction is to penetrate beneath the surface of a man’s life, to get behind the facade of conventional gestures and attitudes which he presents to the world, and to bring out his inner spiritual freedom, his inmost truth, which is what we call the likeness of Christ in his soul. (p.16)
In essence, the direction relationship is about listening and walking together to be encouraged to walk like Christ. Having someone present with you, acting as a second pair of eyes, is so helpful, so needed. It’s hard to see so much of what we need to see in order to turn and walk with Jesus, like Jesus.
Yet, as you might imagine here, there’s a great deal of humility that needs to surround this relationship and relationships like it. It takes a lot of gusto to drop the pretenses or to allow someone to probe into our inner lives and challenge us where we perhaps thought we had things figured out. It’s not always about being comforted but also about transformation, which takes us to the greater comforts – the love of God.
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