This past May I started a 2-year program to become trained to become a spiritual director. The circumstances of me starting in May were definitely not what I expected. I had applied the October before and went through all the application and interview process. The director, Susan, was in the process of discerning if they were going to keep the group smaller or expand to a larger group. I received word in January that they had decided to keep the group smaller and I was at the top of the waitlist for the next cohort which would start the following May. About four days before the first residency started in May I got an email from Susan asking if there was any chance I would like to do this years program and if there was any way I could make it to the residency in North Carolina in four days. I could not believe it. I had made my peace with having to wait but I deeply longed to do this program now and not have to wait. Tears came immediately and I asked out loud, God, what are you doing?
We rearranged as much as we could and I was able to drive to North Carolina (and my hotel experience is a whole other story!) and make it to the residency the morning after it started. I was able to meet my lovely cohort and sit under teaching that deeply resonated.
I drove to North Carolina again for the second residency a couple weeks ago. I was excited and apprehensive leading up to it. The theme was releasing and God had already been showing me some things He wanted me to release. He had even pointed some things out a little more bluntly than I had experienced before. I also just experience such an intense loving presence there that is unlike anything I have ever experienced before that is so wonderful, but also I want to run away! Every day that I was there I wanted to run away but I had to keep bringing that to God. I had to keep asking Him to help me, to meet me, to provide for me. I also just had some social anxiety about talking with people. But every time I was nervous God led me in incredible ways. He allowed me to talk to some wonderful people in some wonderful conversations. He met me in my anxiety even when I was in situations I wouldn’t have chosen and He showed me through others how good He is and how much He loves me, how much his presence is with me, and how much my presence matters.
My favorite part was our group spiritual direction that we would do in the afternoon after lunch. I was in a group of four with a supervisor and two of us shared each day. We would share something that we’re struggling with or working through or that is going on in our life with God. And after a couple moments of silence others would offer back a word or phrase that they heard us say as they were prayerfully listening. It was powerful and beautiful as we shared vulnerably and were met there. And as the Spirit of God moved in each of our hearts and spoke to us. And then the one who shared could respond to what each person said if they wanted. And then we had another couple moments of silence. And then each person prayed a short prayer on the one who shared. Both afternoons were just a beautiful time of listening and hearing and responding. Gods presence and his working was so evident.
As God met me in that space of group spiritual direction and as He met me in every conversation and interaction and every time alone with Him, I think I realized that loving attentive presence can happen, can be given in any situation, any conversation, any interaction. In spiritual direction we hold a specific space and time in a ministry of prayer with the directee, listening to their words and Gods words at the same time, and facilitating a way for them to pay closer attention, to lean in to what God might be saying by asking evocative questions. But this posture, though not as formal in regular settings, can be held in any place, in any sphere, with any person. That is what is so powerful about presence, as we pay attention to the presence of God with us. It takes all the pressure off of us, to do the right thing, to say the right thing, to be something to that person, and instead we can just be a conduit of the love of God. As we relax into the presence of God, we give up our control of the situation. We can let God direct it, we can let God take it where it should go. This is really helpful for me as someone who often has social anxiety in different situations and often has a plan for my next step in a conversation.
It doesn’t mean that we won’t still make mistakes, it doesn’t mean that we won’t sometimes make something about us that is not about us, or we won’t shrink back from offering something true and good in the effort to not make it about us. We will still show up flawed. But we can bring those things lightly to God and we can let Him help us carry them or actually we can just dump them on Him. We can know He loves us and He holds us and He continues to refine us and make us.
I think I am realizing that spiritual direction is not just a way of being with someone in loving attentive prayer in a formal scheduled setting, but it is a way of life. And it is a way of life that is so freeing, and so whole, and so healing. It is a way of life that calls us back to the way it was in the beginning in the garden when Adam and Eve walked and talked with God in complete freedom and innocence.
And I don’t think we can offer this loving attentive presence to others without regularly and often sitting in and walking in and being in the loving attentive presence of God.
I was listening to Annie F. Downs podcast the other day with Strahan Coleman and he was saying, “We are made to be loved and longed for and then reciprocate that with God. God is not the needy lover who’s depending on us and needs us for self-fulfillment. He’s the secure lover who wakes up and loves being in our presence, and wants to have a morning coffee, and wants to be on the commute with us to work. That’s communion. It’s not so much the passing of ideas and thoughts and words between us and God. Communion is being in God. Prayer is just being in God.
I’m going to wake up in the acknowledgment and stillness of Gods love and that’s enough.”
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