Norvene Vest - Still Listening: New Horizons in Spiritual Direction

We welcome you to our volume on new horizons in spiritual direction, for which we have invited directors with special skills and interests to share their thoughts on cutting-edge issues in the field of spiritual direction. Writing about issues that may be surfacing periodically in their ministries, each author shares his or her insights about a challenge that has been the subject of their own deep reflection and prayer. We do not presume to be comprehensive but simply to speak of matters that each has found crucially important in practice. This book is not an overview of the spiritual-direction process, its definition and goals. Rather it is our hunch that new issues are arising frequently in the regular practice of spiritual direction, about which mature directors would appreciate a colleague's wisdom. We seek to address some of those issues fruitfully.

The chapters are divided into three sections. The first section contains reflections on the person who comes for direction. Always we know that the Spirit is embodied in the unique gifts and limitations of a particular person. Yet there are patterns of development that pose special challenges to the director, and these chapters intend to help us listen effectively in such cases. Tom Cashman considers the emerging field of spiritual direction within corporations, discovering how the Spirit is already present and strengthening the role of values at work. Joe Driskill sensitively explores concerns and opportunities in directing people who have been emotionally and physically traumatized. Barry Woodbridge spells out how addictive patterns permeate a directee's life. My own essay looks at the wary seekers who are returning to church through spiritual direction.

The second section speaks to special life issues that intersect with spiritual development. Howard Rice links the results of generational studies with spiritual-direction practice, and Margaret Guenther looks at spiritual direction as it assists on the threshold of death. Both Rich Rossiter and Juan Reed help us explore our own shortcomings in meeting persons who require that we grow in order to hear them into authentic speech: the marginalized and more specifically the sexually marginalized, the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered communities.

The third section locates the practice of spiritual direction within the environment around us. The section is titled The Social Context as a way of pointing toward broader, communal dimensions affecting the moment of direction. Kenneth Leech reminds us about the essential connection between spiritual direction and justice. Betsy Caprio Hedberg considers the dimensions beyond words that shape our spiritual lives, and how the senses, especially the visual, can be brought explicitly into the direction experience. Janet Ruffing emphasizes that a theology of incarnation must include a place for the passions of sexuality, and shows how that need can be honored in spiritual direction. Sandra Lommasson shows concretely how we can transcend our cultural bias toward individualism by tending the communal soul of a congregation. Finally, Steven Charleston asks where have we been and where we are going in this journey of the Spirit as a new century opens ahead.

The essays do not speak with a single voice, but with a diversity that emphasizes the unity of our lives in God's Spirit. Yet unity never means homogeneity, and we welcome authentic experiences of God emerging from a variety of perspectives. Taken together, the essays invite us as directors to look more deeply and to pray more earnestly about our ministry: in direction, do we seek primarily to follow the lead of the directee or to challenge the directee to new ways of being? Stated another way, is direction primarily contemplative or prophetic? When dealing with matters of righteous passion in ourselves and our directees, to what extent is it appropriate to rein in those passions by logic and system? When we become aware of issues that make us uncomfortable, do we avoid directing persons with those issues, or can we invite God and our directees to teach us new opportunities for conversion? As always, generalizations are often inadequate in the search for fidelity to the Mystery called God, but a genuine effort to struggle with difficult questions always helps to break us open more fully to Divine Love.