ver.: 13 March 2003
I know what my own reaction was when I was first taught about seeking the help of specific others in my spiritual journey. "Why? It's my inner quest, my problems, my decisions, my place before the Lord of Hosts."
Things happened in my life which taught me that the traditional American
message of self-reliance, when pushed as far as most people push it, is
a barrier to any real spiritual progress. 'I','Me'
and 'my' is how we spiritually die. I have to get rid of the
notion that I am the master of my destiny, or for that matter, of anything
else. There is only one God, and that God has hard lessons for us - the
biggest of which is that any progress is made by the grace of God. And sometimes
it realy helps to have someone taking us through some of the steps of the
spiritual journey. We can't go it alone, and even if we could, it would
miss the point. The relationship with God wasn't meant to be done alone.
You can't escape its links to God's gift of each other.
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A mentor is someone you deliberately choose to model your Christian life or behavior on. It sounds like too submissive an approach, but sometimes that's exactly what we need. You may be young, and you realize that you have so much to learn, especially about how to live a Christian life. Or you may be an addict, and need to rebuild your life from the ground up. Or maybe you're getting a new and important responsibility, and don't have a clue about the practical and spiritual demands of that task. A mentor serves not just as a guide but as a model : "This is what the New Life is like; it's like Joe/Janet".
The key to all of these is that they are not you, but are not far from you. In our era, people are often told to find their spirituality from within themselves. But we have a fatal flaw in that effort : we can't see our spiritual backside. Others can see that side of us, but most of them have no desire or knowledge to help us take care of it. Most people are also too busy with their own stumblings to teach you what you need to learn. But there are a few who have trod down some of those same spiritual pathways you're heading for. It helps to learn what's beyond the next bend in the road. The guidance of a specific person committed to your spiritual growth can help you through it.
A sponsor is more of an equal or peer, but still someone who has
already been dealing with the situations that are a burden to your spiritual
growth. The term is most often used in Twelve-Step or group-psychological
settings. It can be an especially helpful way of being a follower.
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Can friends or colleagues serve this way? Well, sometimes they do, but not often. Many deeply spiritual people have never really had one. An anamchara relationship is revealed by daily living. They just simply start doing director kinds of stuff in just living a relationship with you. At some point, both people discover that spiritual direction has become part of the relationship. That is the somewhat more informal direction of an anamchara or soul friend; they are more directly involved in sharing their life with you, inside and outside of just spiritual stuff. Generally, one does not take one's director to dinner or a concert, one doesn't do hobby stuff with them. The anamchara is there as a person, but in the capacity of spiritual directoring, he or she is more of a window : someone through whom God and you can make contact.
Most of those seeking deep spiritual guidance find they have to be more
decisive and formal about having someone else to walk with.
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Having a spiritual director is a deliberate matter. Someone seeks out a spiritual director to help guide them through their spiritual walk.
Sometimes, monasteries and convents have people availble for formalized director roles. In the convent or monastery, the monks and nuns often act as each other's directors, and are very familiar with spiritual disciplines and practices, since they spend much of their day doing them.
Don't even think of using your spouse or your pastor as a formal director. They're too close, too dangerous. It would draw them away from their other important roles in your life. One role would tend to get in the way of the other role.
A director is not a shrink. (If you're a psychologist : sure, you can
be in this kind of relationship, but you'll have to set most psychological
ways of thinking aside.) A director is a fellow traveler. They're not there
to help you get your life smoothed out (it may happen anyway), but to lead
you into a closer relationship with God (which is a fine way to really
mess up your life...).
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When people start having spiritual direction, they often expect it will be about matters that are supposed to be 'spiritual' -- God-talk stuff. Sure, we need to work on spiritual disciplines and practices such as fasting, praying, moral inventories, quiet times, worship, Bible study, and the Christian church seasons. These are part of the picture, for they help build in us spiritual sensitivity, openness, and awareness. Yet God is there not just when we do 'spiritual' stuff, but in work, in love, in play, in socializing, in fulfilling responsibilities, in giving gifts, and in taking notice of what is happening within you and around you. If we can't find God there, how can we obey, how can God be the source of how we live our life? The role of the 'other' is to help us see where God is at work in the world we live in and the things that happen to us.
Too often, people expect that the 'other' will come in and start slicing and dicing, cutting at all the crap you've suckered yourself into believing about yourself. But that's not their job; that's your job. A spiritual director, especially in the more formal methods, is there to direct your discovery of God in your life, and by way of that, to get you to see these things yourself and say, 'this has got to go'.
Too often, people expect the focus to be on the 'other' and a triangular relationship with God. But the truth is much simpler : the core relationship is between you and God, not you and the 'other'. That role of that 'other' is simply someone who helps ease or guide that relationship, someone who helps you find God and God's purposes in your life, someone who helps you uncover the stuff you haven't given over to God. If the 'other' is getting in the way of that, then the relationship no longer belongs in this category, and must either end or become a different kind of relationship.
Sometimes, people take on a spiritual relationship thinking that this will unlock it all. You say to yourself, "This 'me and God' stuff hasn't worked, it's not enough, so I'll bring in someone else to guide me through, and that will be enough". Nope. That's not enough, either. That's why the Spirit came at Pentecost and created the church, and why the Spirit gave each of us gifts. Each believer has the task of helping to spiritually direct and spiritually grow every other believer. The church builds up its members, who in turn build up the church. It helps to think of Christian institutions (church and parachurch) as being, in part at least, vehicles for this work of the church. You'll fail just as badly if you go with just a 'spiritual director' as you would by yourself. No matter how hard it may be to put up with a sometimes weird, sometimes wrong church, your spiritual life depends on sticking with other believers.
Once you get started, it needs to be regular. It's a discipline : much of
the gain comes from the regular rhythm of doing it, whether you feel like
it or not. Commitment is a great virtue in matters of the spirit.The regular
pattern also helps to keep it tied to your life -- you end up relating what
you've learned to what you do in between meetings.
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More spiritual stuff to look into :
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