The Place of God in Spiritual Direction

written by Brother David

In my previous articles on Spiritual direction, we considered the nature of spiritual direction itself: how it is essentially a telling of one’s continuing story with special emphasis on one’s relationship with God; how this continuous exercise in self-revelation can be likened to the directee showing the director through the directee’s garden and giving the director the authority to question and challenge the directee concerning said garden; and how spiritual direction is not therapy, even as it is therapeutic and uses many of the same tools.

We looked at the qualities and skills of the directee: that the directee strives to grow in the courage and openness it takes to reveal accurately what is going on in her/his life; that the directee “does the work” of reflection and prayer; and that s/he comes to each meeting having reflected on what has happened since the last meeting.

We also looked at some of the qualities of a good spiritual director: that the director should be compassionate and courageous, and have a sense of humor, among other qualities.  That the director should have had some training and be in ongoing supervision if possible, and that the director should have a spiritual director of his/her own.  We also noted that, while not every director is suited for every directee, it is necessary to distinguish a “bad fit” from the discomfort of being challenged concerning one’s “growth edges.”

Perhaps the most perilous topic, in discussing spiritual direction, concerns the place of God in the process.  The immediate urge is to put God at the center of everything.  After all, isn’t God the “ultimate” subject of the discussion?  Isn’t God is the “ultimate” director? Isn’t this relationship being fostered with God the "ultimate” relationship?  Well, yeah.  Kind of.  Don’t get me wrong: God is the ne plus ultra, the One who is beyond everything.  And yet…

As we grow in the life of prayer, we slowly come to a place of utter confrontation with the self.  A directee of mine once told me that she had never realized how much was unresolved in her life until she entered into the prayer of silence.  Others have described this silence as frightening but liberating, dark but full of hope.  So at certain points in our life of prayer, we find that the center of prayer is not so much God as the awareness of self—but a self intent on reaching out to others and to the Totally Other.

This self-awareness, indeed self-awareness in general, always has the danger of falling into solipsism, which can manifest as selfishness and self-centeredness as opposed to reasonable self-care, self-concern, and being centered in oneself.  As we move further into the life of prayer we find that it is in relationships that solipsism is broken—that the self is freed from the bonds of self.  The core relationship for human beings, then, is with one who transcends the self, one who is so far beyond and so different from the self that there is no possibility of entering into mere identification wherein we presume to know and understand exactly what is going on in the other person.  At the same time, this relationship is with one who is so utterly immediate to the self that authentic knowledge of oneself is tantamount to knowledge of this other.  This is indeed the mystery of Jesus the Christ—truly God and truly human—who says both “The Father and I are One” and “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  So here in prayer we find that God is not the center; it is rather the relationship with God that is central.  God is not the sun around which we revolve so much as the partner with whom we dance. 

In my experience (and in my conversations with other spiritual directors, this seems to be a common experience), God (in particular, Jesus the Anointed of God) is always present during direction.  At times I have asked a trenchant question or made a fortuitous comment to a directee, and have wondered later, “Where did that come from?”  And while I’d like to throw that onto God, I have also had the experience of saying exactly the wrong thing, to the real detriment of the directee.  To say that the good is from God and the bad is from me seems a bit simplistic.  There is a lot of experience behind each comment and question I make.  There is study.  There is—most certainly—prayer.  So at least some of what happens, good and bad, in a given session depends on my skill to listen to and truly see and hear the directee’s story and struggles.  In coming to that awareness, I’ve had to learn to own both my failures and successes.  (Sometimes it’s harder to own the success—but that’s something for me to take up with my support.)  And yet, I cannot deny that this is something more than two people talking in a room.  There is someone else to whom the directee is talking and to whom the director is listening—an interested third party: the Beloved.

 So God is there.  Even in the disastrous moment, God is there.  God is there in the person of Jesus, and because of that, the directee and director are never far from the Beloved.  The Holy Spirit is there so that the director can be witness to the directee’s process and not get in the way of growth.  Jesus the Crucified is there in the struggle through fear and doubt and awareness and lack of awareness on both sides.  Jesus, the Physician of our souls and the Lover of humankind, is there with the directee because spiritual direction is about healing relationships with self and Other, So Jesus, truly human, is the directee’s traveling companion on this journey, and Jesus, truly God, is the source of healing and the goal toward which the directee wends her/his way.

And in the end, it is the God who said, “Let us make the human being in our own image and likeness,” who calls us, through knowledge, wisdom, and grace, to this infinite Trinity of Love that is the mystery of God.  We talk and listen.  We share pain and fear and longing and hear encouragement and gain insight.  And slowly or suddenly, we wake up from the dream of self into the awareness of the Beloved, who is more intimate to us than our own souls, who is so other from us that we can only stand, awestruck and filled with wonder, stammering in our attempts to say the unsayable. 

And God smiles, extends a hand, and invites us to dance.