Spiritual Direction, Spiritual Companionship, God With Us
Each month she arrives to my office and has been doing so for years.[1] This time, we take most of the hour to unearth the “it.” The source of the vague tingly jitters. In this recent conversation my spiritual companion reports that a discomfort bubbles up right around her heart or sometimes flits in her abdomen. She feels a quivering which reminds her of the stomach butterflies in childhood while waiting for the school bus. I ask about any recent conversations with her family doctor, her Primary Care Provider. I know from our spiritual direction history that this companion has struggled with anxiety and depression off and on over the years. She doesn’t believe the fix is in an SSRI[2] this time.
During our next encounter my spiritual companion unpacks a dream in which she watches an unexpected tide sweep in and carry off shoes, sunscreen, even the dog while her bare toes desperately curl into the sand. She closes her eyes to recount the dream. She says now, even in my office, that she can feel the loose and slippery grains that undermine sure footing. She remembers the frightening anticipation of slipping while watching the looming and dark waves roll in. Together we ponder this dream. She notes a current sense of feeling adrift in her waking life. She says that she is glad for this monthly time to reflect and to feel grounded.
As we track bodily jitters and nighttime dreams I realize that something important is happening within my companion. Throughout our decade of work together, she has inspired me with a quest for authenticity. This daughter of Christian clergy remembers a love awakened in childhood for organ-led hymns in a sundrenched sanctuary. She has recalled a kind and gentle team of second grade Sunday School teachers forty years ago, a middle-aged married couple who helped her make finger puppets of Jesus and twelve disciples. And yet, for all of the warmth and comfort of that childhood religious home, the plush reading rug in the church library and the oversized robes worn in children’s choir, this particular religious setting eventually became too small for my companion’s expanding questions. College bible faculty freed her to read the text in more than one way. Regular travel to National Parks stirred within her a conversation about ecology and green space. Throughout the past ten years of her own middle-age I have witnessed my companion’s slow exit from institutional church - cutting back on volunteer work, distancing the weeks between worship encounters, and filling her sanctuary moments instead with sitting meditation. Forays into a pagan community. Occasional sweat lodges. For nearly a decade, my companion and I have been documenting this unfolding adventure in our monthly conversations and I am now curious about her recent and anxious experience of groundlessness.
These conversations are the fuel of what we call spiritual companionship. With my companion (or directee) I am not functioning in the role of a spiritual teacher or a guru. My job is not to evaluate her fitness for spiritual leadership within an institution. Instead, my task is to listen. To provide a soft and gentle context where my companion might name aloud the questions. I don’t judge right or wrong. I am not worried about a heaven-or-hell trajectory of her life. Instead I hold space, listen, reflect, wonder aloud, name what I see in her story, and allow what she calls God to guide the conversation and her life.
Our politically polarized world often finds it difficult to let questions “simply be,” to trust that our companions are finding their way. Our culture pushes us towards definitive answers where needs have a quick fix (such as commercial products, fashion trends, political parties, or quippy sound bytes). However, spiritual companionship promises no sure-fire answer. Only the promise of Presence in the middle of mystery. My favorite biblical name for God’s Healing Hope is Emmanuel, which, in the Hebrew scriptures means “God with Us.” And I realize that spiritual direction or companionship is really an acknowledgment that Presence, being “with” someone is the greatest gift we can give. We become “God-with” for each other. With the gift of Presence, a companion might experience a little more courage when the sand seems to slip.
I am very grateful for a connection to a world-wide group of listeners. Spiritual Directors International is my “home club,” my connection to other trained persons who listen to Mystery (https://www.sdicompanions.org/). I recently was encouraged when SDI Creative Director, Matt Whitney, offered this reflection on spiritual direction (or companionship) in the July 2023 issue of the SDI publication Listen: “…though a partner or friend might mean well, they are likely not attuned to the deep listening that would be most helpful to us. They may want to correct us, solve our problems, and make us feel better. The intentions are good, but these responses can be awkward, even harmful, to understanding our unique journeys.”[3] Matt concludes his essay by lauding the efforts of a spiritual companion, one who “can give us uninhibited safe space to untangle and declutter the surface of our lives, such that the depths within us can be excavated. Much like clearing weeds from a garden, these depths are given air to breathe and light to reveal.”
I visit the home of my own spiritual director/companion on a regular basis. This last month I showed up on my bicycle, car out of commission, sweaty from the summer ride. She greeted me with an embrace, a cool glass of water, and she ushered me to a seat in the shade. For an hour we discussed some worries I have about vocation. I admitted feeling on edge and untethered with some some changing circumstances and relationships. She asked what grounds me when ground shifts. I thought of my own spiritual directee and her shifting sands. I recognized a pattern of my life over five decades: Behold, there calls a path unknown, a road encumbered with fog. And I must step.
My director has no platitudes or quick assurances. Only a quiet smile and a gentle gaze that mirror the Divine Presence I know as God. And for that hour I am encouraged to get back on my bicycle and pedal. I am ready for the next session when a companion comes again to my office. I am spiritual director. I am spiritual companion. We are spiritual friends, holding hands with each other and trusting the Presence.
[1] In order to preserve confidentiality, the details from this opening example are a compilation of many encounters with many spiritual companions.
[2] SSRI is Selective Seratonin Uptake Inhibitor, a standard medication used to treat depression and sometimes anxiety.
[3] Matt Whitney, “Henri Nouwen and Spiritual Companionship,” Listen: a Resource for Spiritual Directors & Companions. July 2023. v.17, Issue 3.
