Zoom panel on Spiritual Direction for Chiara Chat, with Dan Frachey, Sr. Anna Phiri, Sr. Anita Cleary, Al Keeny, Dave Sandel
Thursday, June 18, 2020 7-8:30 or 9:00 pm
- When someone at a party asks me, “So, what is spiritual direction?” What is my quick answer to keep from allowing all the ice in their glass to melt?
- Why is spiritual direction important today?
- Share some deep gladnesses about being a director?
- How do you know spiritual direction is for you?
After welcoming everyone and explaining how the evening will flow, I’ll ask you each to offer a brief introduction to help people get to know you.
Next, I’m going to pose the four questions and welcome your responses. Even if we all strike a common array of responses, this can serve to underscore the key identity of spiritual direction.
We can take 30-40 minutes so as to not feel rushed while still allowing time afterwards for participants to share their questions, comments or their own experiences.
Please do join the conversation early so I don’t start to panic and lose my spiritual cool!
PLEASE INTRODUCE YOURSELF.
I’m Dave Sandel. I grew up on a dairy farm in Lincoln, Illinois. My family went to a Missouri Synod Lutheran church every Sunday. I graduated from Valpo, lived a relatively wild life in the early 70’s, and joined the Moonies in the late 70’s.
In the later 70’s I left the Moonies and met Margaret, my wife. We had three kids in the 80’s and then moved to Champaign-Urbana, after I was ordained in the Church of Christ. We’ve lived in the same house there since 1989. We are both spiritual directors and counselors, and we meet with folks in our home.
We have two living moms, Angie and Dorothy, in their late 90s, in Lincoln and Evansville, Indiana. And we have four grandkids, Jack, Aly, Miles and Jasper. And we have eight chickens, they are our unnamed backyard friends.
SO, WHAT IS SPIRITUAL DIRECTION?
 I asked three friends this week what they experience in spiritual direction. Here’s our 58-second elevator speech:
It’s a private conversation that might start with prayer and end with prayer, and even sometimes be punctuated by prayer. It’s a time to live out the proverb, “Don’t just do something, sit there!” Silence matters.
So it’s a listening time when you can invite God to speak.
It’s a time for seeking after the poetry of the eternal in a harshly practical world.
On the other hand, it’s a time to talk and say out loud whatever you are thinking, whether anyone else is interested or not.  In fact this talking forces you to put words and sentences on thoughts that might otherwise just keep going in circles.
It’s a time for you to try on new perspectives. Or you might call it a noticing time, especially noticing how you are “surrounded” by God.
And it’s a time for you to know you will always have a cheerleader who believes in you like God believes in you, and who also spurs you on to love and good deeds, like God does.
 And now for the longer version:
- Spur one another on to love and good deeds (Hebrews 12)
- Be loyal to one another, nonjudging, striving to be unconditional (actually, kind of like a pet dog but human!)
- Everybody needs a spiritual cheerleader
- Committing time to one another regularly over a period of time, building up history. There is no substitute for time in a relationship.
- Remind each other of God’s loyalty and be willing to emulate God in calling one another holy, pure, eternal, unique, loved, valued, priceless …
- Provide change in perspective without judgment, not a “better” perspective, but another one (quantity more than quality, so to speak). Three ways to do this:
- Step outside myself, the perspective I’m used to. Turn around, look the other way, answer a question myself I’ve been asking others, etc.
- Conversely, step more deeply inside myself (get some guidance into what Thomas Merton calls “the virgin point,” where God constantly resides)
- Thirdly, when the lights go out, provide a hand to hold when I’m lost inside myself
- Notice your “surroundings.” Recognize together the “connectedness” of God, finding God in all things. “I am washing dishes with the Lord, and I am surrounded … I am rocking in this chair with the Lord, and I am surrounded … I am hitting my thumb while hammering this nail with the Lord, and I am surrounded …”
- Sometimes you just need somebody to tell you what to do. Meister Eckhart, John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila, others model this.
- Always, you need a friend. Aelred of Rievaulx said On Friendship, ““Here we are then, you and I, and I hope a third, Christ, is in our midst.” Aelred delights in the relationship between himself and another, mediated by the presence of God.
- And friends provide confidential, private space for each other. Aelred says it so well: “There is no one now to disturb us; there is no one to break in upon our friendly chat, no man’s prattle or noise of any kind will creep into this pleasant solitude. Come now, beloved, open your heart, and pour into these friendly ears whatsoever you will, and let us accept gracefully the boon of this place, time, and leisure.”
- Provide a listener to what most people just aren’t that interested in: the spiritual threads that weave through your life.
- Force you to put words on your thoughts. Move from circles in your mind to sentences in the air, out loud, committed. This allows your thoughts to get some air, and perhaps some correction as they are shared with another person.
- Spiritual direction encourages a seeking after poetry, and searching for threads of meaning in the midst of living smack dab in the middle of our most pragmatic, down-on-the-earth American world.
WHAT MAKES SPIRITUAL DIRECTION IMPORTANT TODAY?
Politics, personality, and our own personal pandemic need to be balanced with something that matters more, lasts longer, and offers me awareness of how God honors and values me, in the place of uncertain, subjective, senseless comparison.
Television, audio books and podcasts are terrible listening devices. Spiritual direction sessions are wonderful listening devices.
Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever. God is alive and magic is afoot.
My thoughts are finite and temporal and specific to myself, God’s are not.
Low common denominators abound. There are others available, and spiritual direction makes that clear.
What better time than now? If not now, then when?
SHARE SOME DEEP GLADNESSES FROM YOUR DAYS AS SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR AND COMPANION?
My friend gets the chance to shape experience into words, then when she hears herself say those words feel a connection with God and her experience and all-that-is and try to put that into words, and finally just give up, and laugh, and go and walk the labyrinth instead.
Over and over again, it’s wonderful to see my friend learn to discern consolation and desolation in her life, moving toward and away from God.
My friend discovers a whole new way of looking at the benchmarks of his life, re-defining the steps toward Christian or spiritual maturity.
I watch my friend take courageous steps toward relationship again with God and/or with another person.
I feel it and he does to: deep gratitude for the chance to vent, and laugh, and vent, and laugh, maybe be understood but always be accepted.
My friend realizes that this spiritual direction gig is what they would like to do too, and they get started in a class somewhere.
HOW DO YOU KNOW SPIRITUAL DIRECTION IS FOR YOU?
I think a better question is: “How can spiritual direction NOT be for you?”
Because like friendship and love and dignity, it’s for everyone. Everybody, all the time just do it.
Commit to meeting with your friend or your paid director once a month.
When you do that you will increase the felt quality of your life with God, with yourself, and with everyone else.
I hear a great country music line in my head. “If you’ve got the money, honey, I’ve got the time.”
But really, there’s not much need for money. It’s mostly the TIME thing. You and your friend will become spiritual companions when you commit to taking time to listen and pray and to BE THERE.
As one mentor for Margaret and I said many years ago: “JUST SHOW UP, BE ON TIME, AND GOD WILL WORK!”
Who will you talk to? Watch for warmth, empathy and respect in the other person. And of course, watch what happens when you go a little deeper. Ideally, they too will be watching you. You want to do at least a little diving together.
In a counseling class, I learned of a University of Wisconsin researcher who tracked nine core traits for effective helpers. The first three are the most important: warmth, empathy, and respect.
Dr. Carkhuff, his name was, and he said that if an “untrained” helper has those three traits, they will be good helpers, good friends, good partners, good counselors, good spiritual companions and directors.
And of course, conversely, without those traits all the training in the world will never turn an old pig into a pulled pork sandwich. Or however that cliché goes.
NAMEDROPPING
Above:
Thomas Merton
Aelred of Rievaulx
John of the Cross
Teresa of Avila
Meister Eckhart
William Carkhuff
Below, a few quotes from Walt Whitman from Leaves of Grass:
On what is offered:
We convince by our presence. Listen: I will be honest with you, I don’t offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes. Your life consists of the days that must happen to you. You will not heap up what is called riches, or settle yourself to satisfaction before being called by a desire to depart. (Book VII, page 154)
(In other words, don’t come looking for answers, but questions, and learning to live the questions until the answer appear.)
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We are all in this together:
It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall.
Sometimes the best I had done seems to me blank and suspicious
Nor is it you alone who know what it is to be evil.
I too blabb’d, blush’d, resented, lied, stole, grudg’d.
I had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak …
Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, laziness,
None of these wanting. (Book VIII, page 162)
And we are also each responsible for one life, our own:
No one can acquire for another, not one. Not one can grow for another, not one.
The song is for the singer, and comes back most to him.
The love is to the lover, and comes back most to him. It cannot fail.
Original blessing:
Roaming in thought over the universe, I saw the little that is Good steadily hastening toward immortality
And the vast all that is called Evil hastening to merge itself and become lost and dead. (Book XX, page 273)
Seeking after what is most important:
These States need poets! Their Presidents shall not be their common referee so much as their poets shall. Soul of love and tongue of fire! An eye to pierce the deepest deeps and sweep the world. (Book 23, page 343)
Perspective:
As he sees the farthest he has the most faith
His thoughts are hymns of the praise of things
In the disputes on God and eternity he is selent
He sees eternity less like a play with prologue and denouement
But he sees eternity in men and women
He does not see men and women
As dreams, or dots. (Book 23, page 344)
Walt Whitman must have read Julian of Norwich’s Showings:
What will be will be well, for what is well,
To take interest is well, and not to take interest shall be well …
You are not thrown to the winds,
You gather certainly and safely
Around yourself (Book XXIX, page 429)
My brother is never my enemy:
Wait for it …
I shall look again in a score or two of ages,
And I shall meet the real landlord
Perfect and unharmed
Every inch as good as myself
The Lord advances and yet advances
Always the shadow in front
Always the reached back hand
Bringing up the laggards
Out of this haggard face
Emerge banners and horses – o superb!
I see what is coming
I hear victorious drums
Spots or cracks at the windows do not disturb me
Tall and sufficient stand behind and makes signs to me
I read the promise and patiently wait.
This the melodious character of the earth
The finish beyond which philosophy cannot go
(And does not wish to go) –
The justified Mother of men. (Faces, Book XXXII, page 452-456)
