Thomas Merton
We live in a harried time. The ways of God are often pushed aside for issues of narcissism, efficiency and busyness. Waiting on God is a lost art. The Scripture tells us that the Spirit is like the wind. It goes where it will. This metaphor reflects the mystery of God’s revealing and our human inability to contain it. Spiritual direction is the practice of honoring God’s presence and purposely taking great care to “feel the wind” as it were. This honoring is a posture in that it looks like something. Rather than just be a bunch of information in our heads, real faith is constantly and consistently reflected in how we live our lives. We know what we value by how we live. One fruit of spiritual direction is the revelation of our heart’s treasures. We discover what we desire when we intentionally invite the Spirit of God into our lives and conversations to discern and declare His ways.
Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is…All moments are key moments and life itself is grace. Frederick Buechner
Because life is filled with mystery, our engagement with its meaning and purpose are sacred tasks. Our age exalts knowledge, thus deep listening is considered a luxury only for professional spiritual people like ministers, monks, and sages. Unfortunately this acquiescence of our true calling means we live a life unquestioned, untested desires. Spiritual direction is the act of offering up the way our heart is formed.
For nearly a decade I have been involved in a process I have come to call “the work.” It came to be called “the work” as a group of men met consistently and christened their awakening and journey towards Christ likeness as their true spiritual vocation. We concluded that this is our calling in life; to integrate all our desires, our goals, work, dreams, and future and bring them under the Lordship of Christ. We also found, however, that wanting it on a certain level and embodying it on another level were entirely different things. Why was the obedience part so difficult? Why were certain parts of our lives obviously in need of great healing? Why wasn’t our regular “church” attendance filling the bill? Why was deep peace and joy so rare and random?
Many of these questions have been answered over the years as I committed myself to a Christ and His Kingdom rule, a group of men and to “the work.” There was one consistent truth, however, that seemed to hover over all the others as I progressed towards this holy calling. This was the role of what I have come to call “pier mentoring” or “soul friendships.” One man in particular came out of the fog in my life and spoke into my soul on such a consistent basis that my growth was tangible and observable. I had not experienced this kind of transformation in my previous fifteen years of my faith walk.
It is out of this experience and deep conviction that I write a number of my friends who I have journeyed with on some level since coming to Nashville. Some of you have been walking with me for a number of years already. Under the canopy of ORB (Organization for the Restoration of Beauty), I am taking on mentoring relationships with men and women in the greater Nashville area. These relationships are being formed around an ancient practice called “spiritual direction.” These relationships involve intentional spiritually directed engagements that are focused on the activity of God and His voice in the life of the disciple. These relationships involve a concerted effort on my part to come into the time with my heart and my mind prepared to listen, serve and offer up a companioned observer to the process of spiritual growth in the life of the disciple.
These times are being set up on weekly or monthly basis depending on the needs and preferences of the friend. During theses meeting times the soul friend and I enter into prayer, focused dialogue around the perceived activity and voice of God and attempt to strip away any impediments to spiritual growth. These soul friendships consist of walking along side a brother or sister with the primary desire for God to be revealed. Although we have many friends who desire that for us, few if any, commit their lives and a focused period in time to seeing the fullness of God’s revelation manifest in our lives. For those of you who have spent hours with me over coffee, late night rants, or protracted phone conversations that turned to into prayer meetings, you already know of what I speak.
So what is Spiritual Direction?
The whole purpose of spiritual direction is to penetrate beneath the surface of a man’s life, to get beyond the facade of conventional gestures and attitudes which he presents to the world, and to bring out his inner spiritual freedom, his inmost truth, which is what we call the likeness of Christ in his soul.
Thomas Merton
In recent years, my personal journey has become more and more invested in and formed out the formation of spiritual disciplines such as submission, confession, solitude, silence, fasting, prayer, frugality, meditation and contemplation. Out of these disciplines of abstinence and engagement, I have found greater freedom in Christ and a more teachable heart. By intentionally and consistently engaging the disciplines I discovered greater intimacy with God, a keener sense of His activity in my life, a deeper desire to know Him and make Him known, a holy longing to obey God in all my decisions and a gradual but observable change in my heart’s affections.
Spiritual Direction
Here is the vision and some questions.
- Are you hungering for a deeper and fuller sense of God’s activity in your life?
- Do you sense you may need some assistance and some scheduled times set aside intentionally for this purpose?
- Are you facing some daunting decisions and pressures that reveal a deep desire for direction and trust?
I am in the process of scheduling times for spiritual direction. For those who desire ongoing encounters, I am now setting up those times with a short and long term sense of over site. I would love to talk with, set up a time of discussion and inquiry, and hopefully pray about entering into some kind of relationship around the activity of soul friendships. My email is: TheWorkoftheSoul@aol.com and my phone is 847-971-5106.
