“I arrived at an understanding of faith that had far more to do with trust than with certainty. I trusted God to be God even if I could not say who God was for sure. I trusted God to sustain the world although I could not say for sure how that happened. I trusted God to hold me and those I loved, in life and in death, without giving me one shred of conclusive evidence that it was so. …This understanding had the welcome effect of changing faith from a noun to a verb for me.”
Barbara Brown Taylor, Leaving Church, p. 170
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
As a Spiritual Director
I've been thinking (and praying) a lot about my vocation as a spiritual director the past few months. I have wanted to be a spiritual director since I was 26, although the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation (http://www.shalem.org/) doesn't accept people into their Spiritual Guidance Program until they are at least 30, so I didn't start the training until I was 32. I'm now 54 and the journey has been amazing. Looking back, I know there were a lot of things in me that needed to be cleared away, including the wounds of an abusive childhood, addictive coping strategies, a lot of anger (and poor ways of dealing with it), distractability, and (probably most important) lack of healthy spiritual disciplines. I have spent a lot of time in therapy, healing prayer, inner work related to dealing with "issues."
Through the healing process combined with training, praying, meeting with spiritual directors, doing spiritual direction, reading and thinking and writing (journaling and now blogging) about spiritual direction, I know that God has transformed me into a very different person than that 26-year-old who saw something she wanted but didn't realize how much change would be needed. I think vocations are often like that, we start to get a clear sense of who we are and where we are going, and then there's all the work, both inner work and practical steps, to live fully into that vocation as part of our very being.
I have learned over these years that in order for me to be ready to be present to those I encounter throughout the day and to my directees, my relationship with God and my spiritual disciplines (which are flexible but consistent over time) of prayer, journaling, scripture, and reading books about spirituality and religion, must be my first priority (hence, this practice of centering in God daily and now writing about it here). I still need to be alert for distractions and choices that are not consistent with my priority, and I am most definitely dependent on God for drawing my attention always back to God, but by God's grace I am more and more consistent in staying closer to the center. I am so grateful to God and awed by the opportunities in front of me as I move more fully into this vocation.
I shared some of this thinking with my spiritual director this morning, and her response was that I am a spiritual director everywhere I go, it has become who I am and how I function. I can't wait to see where God is going to take me as I keep walking this path!
Through the healing process combined with training, praying, meeting with spiritual directors, doing spiritual direction, reading and thinking and writing (journaling and now blogging) about spiritual direction, I know that God has transformed me into a very different person than that 26-year-old who saw something she wanted but didn't realize how much change would be needed. I think vocations are often like that, we start to get a clear sense of who we are and where we are going, and then there's all the work, both inner work and practical steps, to live fully into that vocation as part of our very being.
I have learned over these years that in order for me to be ready to be present to those I encounter throughout the day and to my directees, my relationship with God and my spiritual disciplines (which are flexible but consistent over time) of prayer, journaling, scripture, and reading books about spirituality and religion, must be my first priority (hence, this practice of centering in God daily and now writing about it here). I still need to be alert for distractions and choices that are not consistent with my priority, and I am most definitely dependent on God for drawing my attention always back to God, but by God's grace I am more and more consistent in staying closer to the center. I am so grateful to God and awed by the opportunities in front of me as I move more fully into this vocation.
I shared some of this thinking with my spiritual director this morning, and her response was that I am a spiritual director everywhere I go, it has become who I am and how I function. I can't wait to see where God is going to take me as I keep walking this path!
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