Tag: spiritual direction

Divinity in Daily Life: Busy Times as Spiritual Practice

by Rev. Teresa Blythe

To get better at something we consider challenging, we have to practice. You know what’s hard for me in spiritual direction? Exploring with a client ways to deepen in relationship with God when they are truly and unavoidably busy. Spiritual directors are not “fixers,” yet I’m always tempted to suggest ways to squeeze more time out of a packed person’s day. Never, ever have my suggestions on this when I gave them worked. I’m especially cautious about doing this to caregivers of people who are ill, elderly, disabled or who have young children in their lives.

As I was reading Mirabai Starr’s amazing book, Wild Mercy: Living the Fierce and Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics, I came across her beautiful reflection on this. She tells the story of her friend Asha, mother to four girls, who came to the conclusion that “unless she focused on parenting as a spiritual practice, she would have no spiritual life.” (p 122) Overworked people could substitute any number of responsibilities for the word “parenting” in that statement.

That’s the reality! If we say that all of life is spiritual, then the practice of daily life is a good part of our spiritual practice. For caregivers, the act of giving unconditional love to your loved one has to connect you to God. It just has to! Especially since those of us who are Christians constantly refer to God as Comforter, Restorer, Father and Mother.

What part of your life do you need to begin to see and experience as spiritual practice? Is it cooking a healthy meal? Taking an afternoon walk? Sharing tea with a friend? Or maybe even staring at the wall when you are too tired to do anything but.

I have always loved how spiritual director and storyteller Mark Yaconelli looks at it. He is fond of asking people what daily activities really get them excited? Then when they name it, he says, “go and do that.” Do it with all the exuberance and life you have.

I’m convinced that’s the kind of practice that makes the Divine One happy.

Contemplative Practice in UCC: Becoming Still to Encounter the Still-Speaking God

by Rev. Teresa Blythe

The denomination I am ordained in–United Church of Christ—has a catchphrase “God is still speaking,” which means God continues, throughout all of time, to reveal Godself to us, just as God did to the people of Israel in the ancient near east and in the time of Jesus.

For a long time, the motto was mostly used to counter those brands of Christianity that tried to say the Bible is the inerrant and infallible word of God and it is all we need to know from God and about God. And, because we don’t take everything in scripture as the last word, my denomination is known for its social justice “firsts.” [i]

The UCC’s social action bona fides are not in question. However, our commitment to contemplative spiritual practices has not been as robust. Which is why this week’s news that delegates of the UCC’s General Synod (our big convention that occurs every 2 years) approved a resolution calling on the wider church to base its activism on a life of foundational spiritual practices.

Spiritual directors and spiritual formation teachers in the UCC are ecstatic. We’ve been talking about this for a long time! One part of the resolution reads, “Contemplation without action fuels narcissism, and action without contemplation is a recipe for bitterness and spiritual depletion.” The resolution asks churches to follow the example of Jesus and provide times of silence, meditation and solitude to foster “intimate relationship with God.”

The resolution was brought forward by two young UCC leaders—Rev. Matt Carriker and Denson Staples, a member in discernment, both from the Southern New England Conference. Carriker told delegates about a conversation he had with a woman who had tried to bring an awareness of contemplative practice into the life of her church, but found people resisted for one reason for another. Carriker asked, “How can our churches live out both the contemplative and activist dimensions of our faith?”

The resolution is already creating ripples of interest. This past Sunday, the pastor at First UCC Phoenix, Rev. Susan Valiquette opened her sermon with the news of the resolution and encouraged the congregation to balance its activist work with a look inward, suggesting that members consider prayer, meditation, chanting, fasting, tithing, meditative reading of scripture and…..spiritual direction.

To embrace that “God is still speaking” is to also ask the question “How are we listening and responding?” Before we can adequately respond, we need to carefully listen and discern what what work this Still-Speaking God is inviting each of us to.

Rev. Teresa Blythe is a spiritual director, educator and author based in Phoenix. To learn more about spiritual direction, visit her website at www.teresablythe.net.

[1] First act of civil disobedience in the colonies—a protest against an unjust tax on tea; first ordained African American pastor by a Protestant denomination—Lemuel Haynes in 1785; first integrated anti-slavery society in 1846 when Lewis Tappan of the Amistad movement organized the American Missionary Association; first woman pastor in 1853—Antoinette Brown; ordination of the first openly gay minister, Rev. William R. Johnson, in 1972; and the first Christian denomination to support gay marriage on July 4, 2005.

Works Without Faith Can be Deadening, Too

by Teresa Blythe

Within the Christian context, most of us know the passage in James that says “faith without works is dead.” And that is certainly true. But what I observe in many churches (especially progressive liberal ones) is that “works without faith are deadening.”

Both are true — they are two sides of the same coin. We are over the age-old conflict that pits contemplation and action against one another (activists complaining that contemplatives need to get off their meditation cushions and get to work, and contemplatives complaining that activists need to get on their meditation cushions, slow down and listen to what God may be saying for a change).

Where do you fit?
As much as those of us who hate dualism want the two sides to learn from one another, it appears that each of us leans toward one end of the spectrum.

Are you the action-oriented person of faith?

Or are you the faith-oriented person of action?

We need each other
The denomination I’m ordained into — the United Church of Christ (UCC) — leans toward action-oriented people of faith. I’m drawn to this denomination because it’s inclusive, compassionate, and seeks to follow Jesus as he “overturns the tables of injustice” wherever they are found.

These injustice-fighters are fiercely wholehearted and necessary to the body of Christ.

They are also exhausted. Because works that are not balanced with attention to faith, inner spirit and listening to God tend to become compulsive and can easily lose their focus.

Key question #1
Is what I am doing ultimately giving me life and renewal within or is it draining me of life?

While my contemplative struggle is to find where and how I plug into social activism with integrity and energy, the activists’ struggle is to find time to stop and take spiritual inventory.

This is a very hard question for activist Christians to ask themselves. The first reaction from them is “it’s not about me, it’s about the cause.” Problem is, we can’t take on every cause. Energy is finite and choices have to be made. So maybe it is a little bit about you!

Key question #2
To those who are exhausted from works that have become disengaged with faith and spiritual practice I usually have one question: What exactly has God called you to do right now?

If you’ve spent considerable time in prayer and reflection and if you find you have the energy to continue the work, great. It’s probably in alignment with what God is asking you to do. If you have not spent time in prayer and discernment and you are losing energy, working compulsively and ignoring your own inner needs, then maybe it’s time to take a short sabbatical and find renewal.

You don’t have to do it alone
These kinds of questions are what I love about being in a spiritual direction relationship. When we become unbalanced, our spiritual directors can help us find out where the imbalance is. And once we are aware of it, we can make changes so that our faith has works and our works have faith.

Laying Out the Napkins

by Karen Richter

There are a couple of questions that have captured my imagination in adulthood. The first one is “Do I want a contemplative life?” This question came to me in the midst of training as a spiritual director at Hesychia. The program (it’s awesome, by the way) assumes that participants are approaching maturity in their spiritual practice. My Hesychia cohort and my own spiritual director have been immense help in wrestling with this question… which remains open for me and serves as a guidepost.

The second question is “What does contemplation during the season of raising children look like?” This too is an open question, but I will share with you one answer that I’ve discovered.

Contemplation is laying out the napkins.

My children are older (22, 17, and 13 yikes) but most nights we still sit down together to a meal that I’ve prepared. Often evenings feel hurried. People have places to be and things they want do be doing. Yet there’s a moment – the microwave has beeped and the pasta has drained. The carrots are cut and the sauce has thickened. Everything is ready. But I pause. I lay out napkins and fill water glasses. I pause and I breathe before I call everyone to dinner.

It’s nothing, really. Just seconds, a mere moment of being present and grateful. Silent retreats and long sessions of prayer might be a larger part of my life in another season. For now, I’ll continue laying out the napkins.

Pastors Cover the Who, What and Why; Spiritual Directors cover the How

by Teresa Blythe

As the last great generalists in our increasingly niche economy, pastors do a lot and they do it well. They preach the good news; advocate for a more just society; cast a vision for their congregation; and encourage Christians to live and work in community.

Pastors cover the “who, what and why” of the Christian faith. But where it breaks down for so many in the pews is the “how.” People want to know what it means in this 21st century world to be a Jesus follower. People want to know how to pray in their daily lives and how to apply their faith to complicated and important situations they face.

How do I do what the pastor is talking about?

The question of “how do I live out this faith I’m hearing about at church?” is the terrain of the trained and experienced spiritual director. Which is why I am encouraging church leaders—pastors, Christian educators, council moderators, church musicians and worship planners—to warm up to a local spiritual director for support, encouragement and help with discernment. Church leaders and spiritual directors can work together to fill in gaps between theology and practice.

Sermons only go so far

I remember once hearing a beautiful sermon in a progressive church about the importance of being in close, personal relationship with Jesus. (Yes the preacher defied the convention of the day by actually talking about getting to know Jesus personally). It was inspiring but she failed to address how this relationship is built. But she’s not the only one guilty. I recall as a child in a conservative Christian church that the only “how” we were given was one prayer we needed to pray to be close to Jesus.

How does a thinking person in the 21st century get to know a spiritual figure from the first century? Spiritual directors will tell you it’s by finding inner stillness within yourself (meditation), spending time in a prayer practice that fits for your personality, dialoguing with Jesus (or another spiritual figure) in your journal, putting yourself imaginatively in a scripture setting, walking a labyrinth, spending time in nature, paying attention to your dreams, figuring out who Jesus is for you, and …..well the list goes on and on. It’s different for every person because we are all made so differently.

Bridging the Gap

Some churches understand this gap between what is taught and what is practiced. They are the ones who have incorporated spiritual formation training for adult members so that this bridge can be built in community. If this is something your church would like to explore, a spiritual director would be the perfect consultant, educator or assistant to get a program going.

There are times, also, that individuals need private and confidential assistance. Pastors know who these people are because they come to their offices frequently for counseling. When the questions are of a spiritual nature or hover around practical theology, a referral to spiritual direction can be helpful. While most spiritual directors are fee-based, churches can usually work out arrangements where people who cannot pay may still receive at least a few sessions of spiritual direction.

Getting down to business

So find a spiritual director in your area and start the conversation! How can we help our people find the spiritual practice that will sustain them beyond Sunday worship? How can we assist our members in discerning where God is leading them in their everyday lives? How can we become more in touch with the movement of the Spirit within this congregation?

Let’s make sure we give the “how” of faithful living as much energy as the who, what and why.

Contact information

To find a spiritual director in the Southwest Conference of the UCC, check out this webpage. There are listings of spiritual directors at the website for Spiritual Directors International. For more about spiritual direction as I practice it, please check out my website and the Phoenix Center for Spiritual Direction.

Teresa Blythe is the founder of the Phoenix Center for Spiritual Direction at First UCC in Phoenix. She is a longtime spiritual director for individuals, groups and organizations and is Director of the Hesychia School of Spiritual Direction at the Redemptorist Renewal Center in Tucson. Teresa is author of the book 50 Ways to Pray and the Patheos blog Spiritual Direction 101. 

Why We Need a Spiritual Guide

by Teresa Blythe

While going it alone can be peaceful, even then there are times we need a spiritual guide.

Last week I intended to use the sacred spiral at the Steele Indian School Park in Phoenix as a labyrinth. I entered and began to walk the spiral clockwise because a native friend of mine convinced me that clockwise was the way of nature. My goal was to shed worries and fears moving into the depths of the spiral and feel empowered as I walked out. I didn’t want to offend nature so I veered to the left to work the spiral.

I began in good faith, but instead of deepening along the path to the center, I kept returning to the same starting point, which was frustrating. Surely this was a metaphor for my life. I seem to keep circling around to my same old worries and fears and staying on the surface instead of finding that deeper core where my spirit communes with God’s spirit.

How does this thing work?

Unsure whether I was “doing it wrong” or whether I had entered a spiritual twilight zone, I paused to ask a Native American family at the center of the spiral for directions.

“How many miles have you been walking?” asked the elder. “I don’t know, but I’m puzzled because I’m trying to circle down into the center but I keep returning to the same spot.” They just looked at me and smiled.

“What am I doing wrong? A friend of mine told me always to walk clockwise, as it’s the way of nature.”

A younger member of the family decided to let me in on the secret.

“Well, clockwise may be the way of nature, but this path winds counterclockwise.”

And that, my friends, is why we need guides along the path.

A guide sees what you have not yet seen or are too stubborn to see. (I was sure that spiral would be curling clockwise — big assumption.)

Good guides do not point your faults out until you ask them to. (I’m sure they figured out what was happening long before I asked.)

Listening to your guides and correcting your course rather than beating yourself up for not paying attention or being stubborn is how we grow in awareness. (After all I did round that spiral clockwise at least 3 times before I asked for help.)

Thank you, gracious family at the sacred spiral last week. Whether you realize it or not, you offered me a wonderful spiritual lesson.

Spiritual Direction and a Rejection of the Nashville Statement

by Teresa Blythe

Evangelical Christian leaders who refuse to accept LBGTQIA+ persons as they are recently released their treatise on sexuality and gender, called The Nashville Statement (and did so during the worst hurricane in the nation’s history for who-knows-what reason). I’m not linking to this hurtful document—if you want to read it you can google it—and I have a few points to make about why I believe spiritual direction should always be a place of radical welcome to gender and sexual minorities (GSM).

Some spiritual directors shy away from taking a stand on controversial issues that divide left-wing from right-wing Christians. They contend it’s a political subject and they want to stay non-partisan.

I choose, however, to stand with all GSM people and offer my thoughts on why a statement such as this Nashville manifesto is worth countering.

As a Christian spiritual director, I take my cues from Jesus and one of his teachings that has always guided how I treat others—whether they are like me or different from me—is “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

How would I like to be treated? Then that’s at the very least how I will treat others and I believe it would be Christ-like to go even farther and treat people as they would like to be treated.

I would never want to be referred to in the angry, hurtful, heterosexist language used in the Nashville Statement. In fact, in one way, I was mentioned and I felt the burn. This statement links marriage primarily to procreation. I have no children, so I guess I’m in need of repentance in their eyes.

It also speaks of male and female as the only genders around. What does this mean for people who are Intersex and born with both male and female characteristics?

But mostly the statement employs the usual anti-gay rhetoric that has been driving the gay community away from church for the past 50 or so years.

OK, so I’ve made my point. I reject the Nashville Statement wholeheartedly. As an ally of the GSM community and as a spiritual director who loves working with a diverse and wonderfully created clientele, I stand with Jesus in loving neighbors as I want to be loved and accepted.

And I’m asking all spiritual directors to be open and affirming of gender and sexual minorities. In fact, I would say that if you only want to work with cisgender (look it up) and heterosexual people, you should really not be a spiritual director. If you fall in that category, I would encourage you to get to know some people who are different from you. Many progressive churches (UCC, some UMC, PCUSA, Episcopal, ELCA and others) are open and affirming and in those churches you will come to know people who are GSM and their loved ones. I think you will find that to know them is to love them.

Arguments about homosexuality and church teachings used to seem so complicated. But after doing spiritual direction for over 20 years now, there is no argument for me.

It’s all about the Great Commandment and the Golden Rule.

reprinted with permission from the author from Spiritual Direction 101 on Patheos

Discernment as a Visioning Tool

by Teresa Blythe

Many churches and faith based organizations do good work in the present but have difficulty catching a vision for the next chapter in life, be that the next three months or the next three years. Change takes them by surprise, the congregation or group’s anxiety ratchets up, and fear about the future begins to drive decision-making. It feels like a crisis, but is actually an opportunity to rediscover the spiritual practice of discernment.

What Usually Happens

When the crisis-of-change hits, the church or organization sometimes rushes to hire a business consultant for strategic planning only to find the business approach doesn’t quite fit for a group that is—at its core—a faithful gathering of volunteers who want and need to know how to participate in what God is already doing in their midst.

Communities of faith don’t work like businesses, and rarely even work like traditional non-profits.

For visioning in faith communities, I recommend a spiritual director experienced in communal discernment — a guided process involving a group making decisions as one body rather than a group of individuals with strongly held opinions about the future. Faith communities have a lot of experience with the latter! It’s the usual mode for their boards–everyone puts their ideas on the table, pushes for their solutions and then votes so that “winner takes all.”

 What is Discernment?

Time-honored principles of discernment help us catch God’s vision. We’re talking about a vision broad enough to allow the community to be agile and move through change with relative ease while also being clear enough to be helpful.

Simply put, discernment is faithful choices. It always centers around a question facing your organization or church. Usually, it is something like, “Where is God leading us in the coming days?”

For that you need a process:

  • Steeped in prayer and contemplative reflection.
  • One that considers as much data and information about your history, your present condition and the gifts within your organization,
  • Weighs the pros and cons,
  • Listens to the deep desires and intuition of the group, and
  • Honors the mystical notion of “call” – What do we, at our deepest core as an organization, believe God is inviting us to be or do? The Spirit uses prayer and discernment to ignite the vision.

 Process Matters

The discernment process is ideally designed to help you unearth what God is up to in your corner of the world because you want your vision to be in alignment with God’s activity. If you are not clear about what alignment feels like, look at how much energy your organization has for the work it is now doing. If energy is flagging, you probably are not in alignment with what God is already doing and you need some time and reflection on how to recalibrate.

To be honest, this work will be more ambiguous than the standard business practice of strategic planning.

Visioning through discernment involves living with the mystery of not knowing what the outcome will be. A willingness to be surprised at where the community goes as it discerns together is imperative.

Although discernment involves mystery, it is also grounded and concrete, designed to move you through to a conclusion. It is neither “woo-woo” magic nor is it a road to pinpointing, with certainty, the “perfect will of God.” It’s simply your work—it’s how you get to know God better by praying, listening to the still small voice within, listening to others’ experiences and questions and paying attention to intuition.

One of the beauties of this process is that when you gather your visioning group, you will have tasks that everyone can relate to in one way or another. Your artists and prayer warriors will be delighted with the amount of time spent intentionally connecting with God. Your engineers, accountants and business-minded people will feel comfortable with the practical aspects. You will have gathered many different types of intelligence and will have used a variety of spiritual and practical tools to reach unity.

Why bring in an outsider?

Anyone can initiate visioning through discernment, however a spiritual director trained in discernment would make an excellent guide. Spiritual directors have studied discernment processes and worked with people and groups in discernment over time.

Spiritual directors stay out of the way of your work. We have no agenda other than to guide you through the process. When stuck, we encourage you. When sidetracked, we redirect. There may be times in the process where you feel “in the weeds” and nowhere near a vision. The spiritual director’s job is to trust and know that God is faithful. You will get there!

Once you feel unity around a vision, you will develop a short statement that can serve as a guidepost for all the projects, programs and efforts you keep; those you release; and any activity you consider in the future. An example comes from the gospels. “We are fishers of people” would be the disciples’ vision statement and “We follow Jesus” would be their mission.

Much like that example, an image may accompany the short vision statement (a net of fish!). This statement and image becomes a benchmark for all you do as you go forward. You have the tools to determine if proposed programs really fit with the vision, asking, “Are we being faithful to the vision here?” (“Is this what fishers of people do?”)

Your vision statement and image are the groundwork for determining your mission statement–what you do in the world right now–and for any longer statements you may create about your life together, things like organizational profiles, search and call documents, and marketing materials.

 Long term benefits

Visioning through discernment has benefits even after the process is complete.

Participating in the process helps individuals learn how to use discernment in their daily lives. They will likely find their relationship with God deepens as a result of doing this communal spiritual work.

The faith community learns what it is like to transform business into an opportunity to live out the faith more intentionally. Once an organization learns how to look at an important question from many different angles and spends time with it in ways they may not have considered before, there is no more “business as usual.”

Discernment will be the only way you will want to work from that point on.

 Learn more about it

To learn more about visioning through discernment, a process I use with organizations, contact me at teresa@teresablythe.net. In fact, if you are interested in any aspect of spiritual direction, I’d like to help.

Visit www.teresablythe.net or the Phoenix Center for Spiritual Direction for more information.

What Pastors Need to Know about Spiritual Directors

by Teresa Blythe

There was a time when ordained ministers served mostly as local church pastors. That is no longer the case. As churches shrink, specialized ministry becomes the first choice for many of us.

Although specialized ministry encompasses a wide range of “outside the church” professions such as chaplaincy and non-profit work, I am writing today about spiritual direction. At a recent convocation of specialized ministers of the Southwest Conference UCC we talked at length about how local pastors and specialized ministers could better understand one another.

I am aware that many local pastors are familiar with spiritual direction from either having a director of their own or feeling guilty because they haven’t gotten around to finding one! But pastors may not know all you need to know about the care and education of the spiritual director. Here are five things I think you should know:

  1. We are educated for this ministry.  Anyone who does spiritual direction for a living or as a “side hustle” should have graduated from a training program. (I say should have because the profession is not regulated nor does it have any standard certification process that all spiritual directors must complete.) If we are ordained to the ministry of spiritual direction, as I am, we have the requisite M.Div. plus the extra training it takes to learn how to do the most highly regarded form of spiritual direction—the evocative method (you share, we mostly listen and draw your attention to where the Spirit may be at work in you). If we are ordained you can be sure we have gone through our denomination’s sometimes rigorous process of becoming ordained to specialized ministry with all the accountability and standard of ethics that goes along with that. One does not have to be ordained to be an excellent spiritual director, but training is essential. I will go out on a limb and say that unless you are a quite elderly religious professional who became a director before there were training programs, you must go through a training program to be any good at the ministry. These programs vary greatly, and frankly that is a problem for the profession, but a certificate of completion usually guarantees that the person has learned the basics. By the way, lots of local pastors attend these training programs and become spiritual directors. They find it gives them a new and helpful lens in which to work pastorally with their congregation.

  1. We are usually contemplatives by nature. While pastors vary widely in temperament—from the jolly extrovert to the pensive thinker-types—most spiritual directors are gentle, quiet and contemplative. The practice of spiritual direction demands patience and stillness of heart in the director. We spend a considerable amount of time listening to our directees share their sacred stories. Good spiritual directors always listen more than they talk. Because of our contemplative nature, we are good at helping activist pastors and churches calm down and savor the slow work of God. If you have a spiritual director in your midst, I hope you are calling on their special gifts for pastoral care, education and showing up as the “non-anxious presence” in times of conflict.

  1. We want to have a collegial relationship with you. Spiritual directors suffer when we live and work in isolation. We need contact with you for fellowship and camaraderie. We can offer you a listening ear when you need to share about a confidential matter (even if you are not one of our directees—we usually don’t mind informally putting on the director hat for you now and then). We are especially aware of issues of boundaries in ministry. Because the spiritual direction relationship is unique and highly confidential, we are usually pretty strict about boundaries. Many pastors have appreciated bouncing ideas concerning the personal limits they set with parishioners off me. And I’m glad to help.

  1. We sometimes need your help. Since many of us are introverts and contemplatives, we are (as a group) not great at marketing ourselves and our work. Any marketing we do is of the “soft sell” variety. If you respect our work, then please talk about it with your clergy friends, parishioners and staff. Encourage us to contribute to your church newsletters, offer classes or show up at some business meetings to observe and reflect what we notice. I know I have benefitted greatly from the support I get from the local church where I now am on staff part-time. In fact, if you need help with pastoral care and visitation you might consider hiring a spiritual director. It’s not exactly the same work we do in direction sessions but it translates well.

Another way you can help us is by understanding the nature of the work we do. Spiritual directors are responsible for staying deeply in touch with the Spirit so that we can be of service in our one-hour sessions.  So if we don’t take you up on all those great suggestions I just mentioned, it’s because spiritual direction work can be emotionally taxing. And we are taught to know our limits and not become overwhelmed with busywork, so we guard our work time carefully. It’s nothing personal. Pastors could learn some things from us about taking charge of one’s work schedule.

The best way you can help a spiritual director that you know and like is by finding out if we are taking on new directees and if we want referrals from you. Most of the clients we receive are from word-of-mouth. Let us drop off a set of brochures or business cards with our contact information so that when you encounter someone who wants or needs spiritual direction, you can offer them a name.

  1. We want to be your spiritual director. Provided we are not working for you or are close friends with you (or your family), we’d like to work with you in direction. Religious professionals make up a lot of our clientele and they tell us it’s the best $60 – $80 dollars a month they spend. We know your special needs and have heard a lot of stories about life as an employee for a volunteer organization! We hold a great deal of compassion for pastors and the peaks and valleys you encounter. If you are not in spiritual direction, I highly recommend you check it out. The history of spiritual direction dates back over 1500 years when it began in Catholic religious orders. For hundreds of years it was a practice that priests enjoyed. It’s now a practice for all, but especially for clergy!

These are just a few thoughts about how the specialized ministry of spiritual direction can work hand-in-hand with traditional parish ministry. You may have questions or some creative ideas of your own to share. I’d love to hear from you. Contact me at teresa@teresablythe.net and let’s talk.