Category Archives: spiritual guidance

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Looking Back: Marks of a Good Spiritual Director


On this day after Thanksgiving, our family will be driving up into the foothills above Sacramento (near Placerville) for our annual visit to a Christmas tree farm. Gem’s allergic, so we won’t be buying a tree, but we’ll enjoy the crisp mountain air, hot chocolate/cider/coffee, fresh baked goodies, walking through the forest and almost always having the surprise of seeing an old Sacramento area friend or two. It’s a tradition I love. (And my brother, Dan, and his family are there with us in spirit since they started the tradition. It would be a long commute from Beijing, China).

Today, I’m pointing you back to a post from two years ago about five marks of a wise, trustworthy spiritual mentor. It is my prayer that we are becoming these sort of people.

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Spiritual Direction: Unassertiveness Training


Eugene Peterson, in his book Under the Unpredictable Plant, offers this insight into the practiced ministry of spiritual direction (and this way of life):

“Direction carries an obvious connotation of taking charge and showing the way. But spiritual direction is more likely to be quiet and gentle, unassertive and reticent. One of the characteristics of spiritual direction is to ‘get out of the way,’ to be un-important, to be un-influential to a person. A paradox is in operation here: the goal is to be (really) present without being (obtrusively) present.” (p. 188)

The “direction” part of spiritual direction can be misleading. It isn’t direction as in “I am the director of your life with God.” It is the kind of direction a sign gives to a traveler. The sign isn’t telling you what to do. The sign is making you aware of how keep on track in your journey, helping you stay on the good path.

As you reflect on your own faith relationships, in what ways are you tempted to tell other people what they should do, rather than helping them relate intimately with God and be faithful to this relationship? How is God inviting you to be really present without being obtrusively present in their lives?

Buy a copy of Under the Unpredictable Plant: An Exploration in Vocational Holiness on Amazon.com

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Holy Stillness Or Unholy Stuckness?


IMG_7331The writings of Thomas Merton encourage me. I don’t always agree with him, but whom in the world do I always agree with…even if they are right? Yesterday, I shared an excerpt from his letters to other writers, Courage For Truth. Here is another treasure I dug up.

“I fear nothing as much as conventionalism and inertia, which for me is fatal. Yet there is that all-important stillness, and listening to God, which seems to be inertia, and yet is the highest action. One must always be awake to tell the difference between action and inaction, when appearances are so often deceiving…” (Thomas Merton. Courage For Truth: The Letters Of Thomas Merton To Writers. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1993, p. 187)

Unholy inertia and holy stillness are obvious opposites. I want to live in that stillness that is actually the place of highest action. As I look out my window this morning, I see a vast expanse of green. Palm trees. The Asian hibiscus in the corner of my yard. Thousands of other trees blanketing South Orange County. They are all growing, but I don’t hear them make one sound. None of them are grunting or straining or forcing anything. They just grow—slowly, steadily, and imperceptibly. Actual growth is rarely dramatic but gradual.

Merton suggests that conventionalism and inertia are his greatest spiritual concerns. Conventionalism is the one word summary of, “We’ve always done it this way” and “We’ve never done it that way.” Conventionalism makes my world feel safer by making it predictable, but it also makes my world smaller, stifling creativity and eliminating adventure.

As for unholy inertia versus holy stillness, I have to continually discern where I am. Am I letting stillness and silence become a breeding ground for spiritual laziness? Or, am I allowing life, work and ministry busyness to do the very same thing?

Being still and attentive, and being stuck and idle is not the same thing. Spiritual growth thrives in the fertile soil of embraced mystery and a walking pace of life.

Buy a copy of Courage For Truth: The Letters Of Thomas Merton To Writers on Amazon.com

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Ministries That Help or Hinder Spiritual Formation


IMG_7321Pastors, missionary leader, heads of campus ministries and other vocational leaders want to create organizations that encourage spiritual growth. The reality is that sometimes, the very structures within which we live and minister can begin to get in the way.

I read the quotation below from Thomas Merton a few years ago. It comes from a letter he wrote in 1959 to an emerging Latin American leader. He had been in the monastery at Gethsemani then for nearly twenty years. As you read his perspective on the monastic environment in which he had lived nearly two decades of life, think about the church, ministry and mission setting in which you have lived yours. Where are there echoes? Where are there differences?

“the peculiar circumstances of this monastery prevent real spiritual growth. Underneath the superficial and somewhat good humor, with its façade of juvenile [casualness], lie the deep fear and anxiety that come from a lack of real interior life. We have the words, the slogans, and the notions. We cultivate the pageantry of the monastic life. We go in for singing, ritual, and all the external. And ceremonies are very useful in dazzling the newcomer, and keeping him happy for a while. But there seems to be a growing realization that for a great many in the community this is all a surface of piety which overlies a fake mysticism and a complete [emptiness] of soul. Hence the growing restlessness, the rebellions, the strange departures of priests, the hopelessness which only the very stubborn can resist, with the aid of their self-fabricated methods of reassurance.” (Thomas Merton. The Courage for Truth. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1993, p. 112)

What is it in particular that Merton suggests is preventing spiritual growth in his monastery? It seems to be a failure to attend to the deep resistances of fear and anxiety underneath the outward appearance of spiritual vitality. There is a difference between emotional excitement and spiritual life. Exciting music and energized preaching may or may not touch these deeper places that keep us from really engaging God.

What do you think?

Buy a copy of Courage For Truth: The Letters Of Thomas Merton To Writers on Amazon.com

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Spiritual Direction: Learning by Doing


I love these lines from John Chapman (1865-1933), an English Benedictine abbot known especially for his work in retreat leading:

“…the only way to pray is to pray; and the way to pray well is to pray much. If one has no time for this, then one must at least pray regularly. But the less one prays, the worse it goes. And if circumstances do not permit even regularity, then one must put up with the fact that when one does try to pray, one can’t pray—and our prayer will probably consist of telling this to God.” (Dom John Chapman. The Spiritual Letters. London: Sheed & Ward Ltd., 1935, 1969, p. 53.)

Continual prayer is best. Regular prayer is good. Without regularity, our prayers may well be honesty about our struggle to pray! I find this encouraging and challenging.

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Spiritual Direction: Allow God to Love You


IMG_6072I shared the quotation below with the Streams of Grace retreat group yesterday morning. It comes from Abbé Henri de Tourville (1842-1903), who was ordained as a French priest in 1873. His two most noteworthy proteges were Baron Friedrich Von Hügel and Charles de Foucauld (spiritual father of the “Little Brothers of Jesus,” and order that Brennan Manning was part of earlier in his ministry). I love the simple bold counsel to allow God to love us:

“Go bankrupt! Let our Lord love you without justice! Say frankly, ‘He loves me because I do not deserve it; that is the wonderful thing about Him; and that is why I, in my turn, love Him as well as I can without worrying whether I deserve to be allowed to love Him. He loves me although I am not worthy; I love Him without being worthy to love.’” (Abbé Henri de Tourville. Letters of Direction. Harrisburg: Morehouse Publishing, p. 63.)

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Looking Back: A Fruitful Use of Anger


All of us struggle with wayward human passions–pride, envy, gluttony, lust, greed and the like. Some time back, I read a classic Orthodox book by Theophan the Recluse (Sounds like an interesting guy to have as a neighbor). He had some intriguing things to say about the place of anger in overcoming such apart-from-God drives in our lives. Below is a link to an earlier post, as well as an Amazon link to get a copy for yourself if you find it helpful.

LINK: “A Fruitful Use of Anger“

Buy a copy of Theophan’s The Spiritual Life: And How to Be Attuned to It from Amazon.com

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A Good Word: Soul-Honest Prayer


IMG_6121“Meantime, however, we want to know not how we should pray if we were perfect but how we should pray being as we now are. And if my idea of prayer as ‘unveiling’ is accepted, we have already answered this. It is no use to ask God with factitious earnestness for A when our whole mind is in reality filled with the desire for B. We must lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us.” (C. S. Lewis. Letter to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1963, p. 22)

Do you sometimes find yourself praying words that aren’t very true to your actual thoughts or feelings in the moment? How is God inviting to pray more honestly before Him?

Buy Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer
on Amazon.com