What is Spiritual Direction?

With Abby Stamelman Hocky joining the Middleton Counseling Center staff as a third spiritual director, BMPC member and spiritual director Paul Burgmayer offers an introduction to a practice that may be unfamiliar to many: spiritual direction. Drawing on his fifteen years of experience and his book, The Making of Modern Spiritual Direction: A 20th Century History, Paul explores the many ways spiritual direction can help us pay attention to what is stirring within us—and to the ways we might grow, heal, discern, and more fully engage with the world around us.

“What do you do now that you’ve retired from teaching?”

“I’m enjoying our garden and our grandchildren.
And I work part-time as a spiritual director.” 

“Spiritual director? What’s that?”

It’s a fair question. And you’d think after fifteen years, I’d have a pithy response. Yet each time I’m asked, I stumble. A two-minute elevator spiel always feels inadequate. What happens in a session varies so widely with each directee who comes through the door. 

There is the conventional answer of deepening your relationship with God the Father, Mother, Spirit, Jesus Christ—however the Divine is named. That is helpful for some who were raised in a tradition that fostered this relational, sometimes mystical, work. These directees (that’s what we call our clients) are grateful for the opportunity because (as many have told me), “There’s no place else I can talk about this; I’m glad I can come here.”

But for many, that either evokes a blank stare or even fear. For some of them, God is Other, transcendental, beyond comprehension. For others, God is just a word said in worship, with whom the idea of a relationship feels completely foreign. Or—for an increasing number of people—for whom there is no God, that approach can be off-putting. 

There are other approaches taken in the last fifty years that I discovered in writing my book on the history of spiritual direction in the 20th century. These side-step the relational approach. Some SBNRs (spiritual but not religious) meet with me to grow spiritually. They might seek to learn new practices, to share with someone knowledgeable what has happened in that practice, or to tend to and refine what they find valuable in seeking to live a Spirit-filled life.

Others come seeking to become more fully and freely themselves. Some call this “personal becoming,” while others describe it as pursuing their unique calling or vocation. Often this entails becoming “unstuck,” seeking more freedom to follow what they feel drawn to do. Just as often, it means exploring something that is stirring: a new chapter, a new gift, a new sense of call. 

While this can resemble therapy, we directors try very hard to not slip into that groove. Instead, we walk alongside therapy on the spiritual side of the path, honoring both. As Richard Rohr, echoing Thomas Aquinas, put it in a 1991 paper, “grace always builds on nature,” a pithy way of saying the spiritual doesn’t replace the psychological but grows from it.

Sometimes our role as directors is simply to remind people that grace, a gift freely given, is present in their lives, though finding it often requires looking beyond themselves. Mary Anona Stoops, a professor at Columbia Theological Seminary, captured this well when she recently wrote me, saying there is a desperate need today for “a common, shared story under which our individual stories are written… a transcendent referent, a larger significance, a universal and shared meaning.”

Moving a bit closer to therapy, some directees come seeking healing of past wounds so they can find wholeness and integration in their inner lives. These wounds may begin as physical or psychological, but in spiritual direction we help directees recognize that they also contain a spiritual component, often buried very deep, and that this spiritual work is needed before they can move outward in service to others. Father John Veltri, SJ, one of the founders of the Guelph training program begun in the late 1960s, called these two stages “healing mode” and “call mode.” In my experience, healing work requires a light touch: often just presence and reflecting back what the directee has said, trusting God to do the bulk of the work. I also insist that directees in this mode see a therapist.

The last role of a director that I’ve identified, both in my practice and in history, should feel very comfortable to BMPC members. This is supporting the movement from the inner journey toward engagement with others, including family and community, and with the larger world through social justice. This congregation has a strong collective focus on being for others through outreach and mission, along with a deep draw to communal worship (see the recently issued Mission Study Report). For many members, service is the very first step they take when they join. As a result, the practice often works the other way, helping those already serving reconnect with their inner lives. 

Gene Bay preached long ago, “You don’t need to be all healed in order to serve others.” Yet other spiritual directors and I have observed that serving without ways to recharge leads to serving “while running on fumes.” Directees in this situation have used up their reserves of spiritual energy and either don’t know how to replenish them or find that the traditional Presbyterian practice of Sunday worship is not enough. Spiritual direction can help the directee seek and possibly find the (S)ource of their life and energy to continue serving. Others come not depleted but overflowing, wanting to discern where to direct their energy, or simply to give thanks for it. In the Ignatian tradition that shaped Veltri and many spiritual directors today, directors attend as carefully to moments of consolation, of joy, gratitude, and aliveness, as they do to moments of desolation.

Take a minute to stop and look inward. Do you recognize yourself in one or more (or all?) of these descriptions? You don’t need to be struggling to seek direction; many directees come simply to savor and understand what is going well in their lives. Since the Middleton Center’s founding in 1999, spiritual direction has been an integral part of its ministry, and you might consider exploring it with one of the center’s three directors right here at BMPC. 

If you feel a tug, reach out to Kiki McKendrick, director of the Middleton Counseling Center, at KikiMcKendrick@bmpc.org. Don’t feel embarrassed if you can’t name a specific reason to talk. “I can’t tell you why I’m here; I just know I need to be here” is a wonderful place to start your explorations. Often, this sort of work begins with just a hint of “dis-ease.” This may be a director’s final and most important job: to listen carefully enough that a vague sense of unease (or a hint of joy) can finally be put into words. 

Which may be why I still stumble when someone asks, “Spiritual director? What’s that?” Like many who come through my door, I sense more than I can easily name. Maybe next time I’ll borrow from my garden: a director doesn’t make anything grow. We help people notice what is already growing, tend it, and make room for more.