Notes on the Search for a Spiritual Director
Part of the discipline of the Rivendell Community is to acquire a spiritual director and meet with him or her as often as necessary. So at Chapter yesterday we were all discussing the process of choosing and relating to one's spiritual director. I was thankful to discover that such things were not regimented: the choosing of a spiritual director is like the choosing of a friend in that it is a mutual, gradual, and contiguous process: and we have to let it be so, without rushing or pushing.
In fact, the spiritual director appears to be similar to the anamchara in medieval Irish Christianity -- a special friend who helps to bear your private spiritual burdens. Since that statement about exhausts my knowledge of the anamchara, I won't go on about it except to say that clearly the spiritual director has a long and distinguished history.
I've had a few spiritual directors over the years, some older than I, some my age -- the ones my age were prayer partners. Time spent with them was mainly time spent voicing my struggles and my everyday vicissitudes, much after the manner of psychological therapy, except with a somewhat different goal in mind. I've also been spiritually directed by authors; the outstanding example, of course, being C.S. Lewis, on whom I cut my intellectual and spiritual teeth. I can point back to my first few years reading Lewis as a time in which I changed radically in the way I apprehended my walk with Christ. Too, I've had friends who possess a great talent for reading me; I can ask these friends to tell me what I am feeling and thinking, and quite often they are very accurate -- sometimes eerily accurate.
We agreed that a good spiritual director would have all of these qualities to a certain degree: a parallel hunger for the things of God, a level of wisdom and insight about spiritual and other matters, and an ability to cut through her directee's crap. Naturally, she would also be trustworthy -- willing to relinquish her own ideas about what her directee should do in favor of God's greater wisdom; able to keep confidences and to resist taking advantage of the vulnerability of the directee.
In the past, I've often hungered for a spiritual director in much the same way that I longed to find a really good doctor: I wanted to sit on the little table with the wax-paper crackling under my backside and let the other do her work -- examining gently, knowing unerringly, making the kindly and wise prognosis. Knowing exactly who I was and focusing on me with the fixity of attention of a Sphinx. Fixing me: or, if not cleaning house herself, telling me where to swipe the broom. Making the prescription that would heal the perpetual wound in my soul.
There are two huge problems with this scenario, however. One of them, obviously, is my longing for ownership of the doctor's full attention and care. I'm an adult, I ought to take responsibility for my own choices and attitudes and even wounds; I can't just lay them passively in the hands of someone else, as spiritually luxurious as that sounds. Secondly, this longing and response -- this scenario -- is precisely (as Foucault argues) what imbalances the transaction of power: this urge of mine has elsewhere been the fulcrum for many a case of exploitation in doctor's, pastor's, and teacher's offices; and the echoes of it ring throughout our society and addle our collective brains.
Thirdly, I have to add: any time I've been near to this scenario that I say I long for, I get increasingly peevish and stubborn and whiny. I don't want to take the advice, I don't want to allow the healing touch, I don't want anyone telling me who I am. Even, and sometimes especially, with God himself. So why the urge to be so passive, when it never works out that that's what I want? I think both the urge and the counter-urge must be symptoms of the same difficulty with trust (faith, confidence) in the other. But I don't know what the answer is. Clearly the illicit dram of dependence is just that. Clearly also I should listen to God and to certain other people. It reminds me of the scene in At the Back of the North Wind in which North Wind takes Diamond to an old church and puts him on a narrow ledge: Diamond protests, frightened, at first, but at her assurances that he is as safe with her as though he were on the ground, he gradually walks across the ledge and is soon marching raucously up and down its length.
I'm also reminded of a passage in Galatians 6, that as I think about it must be directly applicable to the spiritual mentoring relationship: "Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted. Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. Each one should test his own actions. Then he can take pride in himself, without comparing himself to somebody else, for each one should carry his own load. Anyone who receives instruction in the word must share all good things with his instructor." I always used to get irritated at the apparent contradiction of "carry one another's burdens" and "each one should carry his own load"; which one is it? I wanted to scream at Paul. But I figure he was a smart man and knew what he was talking about: it's both. Not that it's not still an irritating paradox, especially if one is trying to figure out what to do in one's life. But like all paradoxes, it does do its work of counterweighting the center.
Knowing this now, I think perhaps I will make a better directee to the director I choose and who chooses me, though I shouldn't think even a successful relationship would be simple and easy. I don't know why I'm so perpetually surprised and disappointed at the complicatedness and difficulty of life; I guess the joke is on me, eh?
Part of the discipline of the Rivendell Community is to acquire a spiritual director and meet with him or her as often as necessary. So at Chapter yesterday we were all discussing the process of choosing and relating to one's spiritual director. I was thankful to discover that such things were not regimented: the choosing of a spiritual director is like the choosing of a friend in that it is a mutual, gradual, and contiguous process: and we have to let it be so, without rushing or pushing.
In fact, the spiritual director appears to be similar to the anamchara in medieval Irish Christianity -- a special friend who helps to bear your private spiritual burdens. Since that statement about exhausts my knowledge of the anamchara, I won't go on about it except to say that clearly the spiritual director has a long and distinguished history.
I've had a few spiritual directors over the years, some older than I, some my age -- the ones my age were prayer partners. Time spent with them was mainly time spent voicing my struggles and my everyday vicissitudes, much after the manner of psychological therapy, except with a somewhat different goal in mind. I've also been spiritually directed by authors; the outstanding example, of course, being C.S. Lewis, on whom I cut my intellectual and spiritual teeth. I can point back to my first few years reading Lewis as a time in which I changed radically in the way I apprehended my walk with Christ. Too, I've had friends who possess a great talent for reading me; I can ask these friends to tell me what I am feeling and thinking, and quite often they are very accurate -- sometimes eerily accurate.
We agreed that a good spiritual director would have all of these qualities to a certain degree: a parallel hunger for the things of God, a level of wisdom and insight about spiritual and other matters, and an ability to cut through her directee's crap. Naturally, she would also be trustworthy -- willing to relinquish her own ideas about what her directee should do in favor of God's greater wisdom; able to keep confidences and to resist taking advantage of the vulnerability of the directee.
In the past, I've often hungered for a spiritual director in much the same way that I longed to find a really good doctor: I wanted to sit on the little table with the wax-paper crackling under my backside and let the other do her work -- examining gently, knowing unerringly, making the kindly and wise prognosis. Knowing exactly who I was and focusing on me with the fixity of attention of a Sphinx. Fixing me: or, if not cleaning house herself, telling me where to swipe the broom. Making the prescription that would heal the perpetual wound in my soul.
There are two huge problems with this scenario, however. One of them, obviously, is my longing for ownership of the doctor's full attention and care. I'm an adult, I ought to take responsibility for my own choices and attitudes and even wounds; I can't just lay them passively in the hands of someone else, as spiritually luxurious as that sounds. Secondly, this longing and response -- this scenario -- is precisely (as Foucault argues) what imbalances the transaction of power: this urge of mine has elsewhere been the fulcrum for many a case of exploitation in doctor's, pastor's, and teacher's offices; and the echoes of it ring throughout our society and addle our collective brains.
Thirdly, I have to add: any time I've been near to this scenario that I say I long for, I get increasingly peevish and stubborn and whiny. I don't want to take the advice, I don't want to allow the healing touch, I don't want anyone telling me who I am. Even, and sometimes especially, with God himself. So why the urge to be so passive, when it never works out that that's what I want? I think both the urge and the counter-urge must be symptoms of the same difficulty with trust (faith, confidence) in the other. But I don't know what the answer is. Clearly the illicit dram of dependence is just that. Clearly also I should listen to God and to certain other people. It reminds me of the scene in At the Back of the North Wind in which North Wind takes Diamond to an old church and puts him on a narrow ledge: Diamond protests, frightened, at first, but at her assurances that he is as safe with her as though he were on the ground, he gradually walks across the ledge and is soon marching raucously up and down its length.
I'm also reminded of a passage in Galatians 6, that as I think about it must be directly applicable to the spiritual mentoring relationship: "Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted. Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. Each one should test his own actions. Then he can take pride in himself, without comparing himself to somebody else, for each one should carry his own load. Anyone who receives instruction in the word must share all good things with his instructor." I always used to get irritated at the apparent contradiction of "carry one another's burdens" and "each one should carry his own load"; which one is it? I wanted to scream at Paul. But I figure he was a smart man and knew what he was talking about: it's both. Not that it's not still an irritating paradox, especially if one is trying to figure out what to do in one's life. But like all paradoxes, it does do its work of counterweighting the center.
Knowing this now, I think perhaps I will make a better directee to the director I choose and who chooses me, though I shouldn't think even a successful relationship would be simple and easy. I don't know why I'm so perpetually surprised and disappointed at the complicatedness and difficulty of life; I guess the joke is on me, eh?
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