What does a spiritual director do?
Just as a mentor helps you grow in your career, or a coach helps you grow in your sports ability, a spiritual director helps you grow in your spiritual life. And yet a spiritual director is neither a mentor nor a coach, but something entirely different, as I’ll explain below!
How do I as a director help you grow spiritually? First, I help to create a space for you to be in the presence of God – a space where the noise and confusion of a busy life is quieted and your soul can find stillness. Within this space of direction, I offer focused, confidential, one-on-one time with you, inviting you to talk about your emotions, your hopes, your desires, your disappointments – anything important to you. As you talk, I listen – both to you and to the Holy Spirit. I ask gentle questions to help you reflect more deeply on your experience and notice what God is doing in your life: what gifts God is giving you; what God loves about you; what God is asking you to learn or do. Sometimes I may invite you to sit in silence so you can listen to God directly, or just be with Jesus without having to do anything at all.
Unlike a coach, who will set you a program of exercise and training, or a mentor who will help you set tasks time frames for accomplishment, my role as a director is not to tell you what to do. I’m here to help you cultivate a mode of being: a posture of grateful and graced awareness to how God is already – and always – with and within you. I will listen to and with you, helping you surface and explore the deep desires and longings that God has planted within you.
Because the role of a spiritual director is to journey with you, not to take control of the journey, some prefer the term “spiritual companion” to “director.” Others use the metaphor of “spiritual midwife” – someone who gently helps you birth God’s new life within you.
My practice of spiritual direction is informed by the insights and practices of St. Ignatius of Loyola. St. Ignatius was the founder of the Jesuits and the author of the Spiritual Exercises. Ignatian spirituality trains us to pay careful, daily attention to the “movements of our spirits” – our emotions, bodily responses, thoughts, desires – so we can feed and reinforce only those movements that come from God. This is a gentle, soul-nourishing process that grows us in faith, hope, love. By paying attention to our spirit, we nurture the ability to discern, in big moments and in small ones, God’s presence in our daily lives.
Do you really need a director? Can’t a good friend or a pastor serve the same role? In theory, yes, definitely! Practically speaking, though, it can be difficult to find someone who will help create time and space for communion with God the way a director will. Or someone who will listen to you the way a spiritual director will – patiently, non-judgmentally, honoring your gifts, and with eyes and ears trained to perceive what God is doing in your life.