"Supervision as Widening the Horizons" is an excerpt from a recent book edited by two of the DASD staff that is entitled Supervision of Spiritual Directors: Engaging in Holy Mystery. The author of the chapter I read is Elizabeth Liebert, and I've heard from a number of sources that she is one of driving-forces and wisdom figures behind the DASD program. I look forward to getting to know her better and being formed by her as a spiritual director. I have printed out some of her lectures from her website as well as purchased one of her books (Changing Life Patterns: Adult Development in Spiritual Direction), and I plan to read these after I complete my assigned reading for the January intensive.

Her thesis in this chapter is that "There is so much more we could 'see' in spiritual direction than we often recognize. There are so many levels and complexities, so much richness in the ways God reveals God's own self to us." As is implied by the title, she suggests that spiritual directors need supervisors ("a relatively more experienced spiritual director") to help us "widen the horizons of our spiritual direction."

Most significantly, Liebert improves upon the work of The Center for Spirituality and Concernn in the Bronx and The Center for Concern in Washington, D.C. in what she called "The Experience Circle" (which is related to an earlier posted about James Keegan's article adapting Steve Wirth's "Grid Arenas" and "The Experience Cycle"):

"The center of the diagram, labeled Mystery...suggests the unitive experience.... It is divided into three mutually interlocking sections representing God, Self, and Nature.... Placing Mystery at the center graphically represents the 'location' of Holy Mystery in the depth of reality, at the center of our being and as the 'ground' of our experience...."

"The four-fold dimensionality of human experience is expressed by the four quadrants of the circle."

(1) The intrapersonal Arena - the self ("interior dynamics")

(2) The interpersonal Arena - the self with other individuals ("face to face groups")

(3) Systems and Structures Arena - self-in-systems ("roles and relationships between roles")

(4) Nature Arena - self as continuous with and discontinuous from the whole universe ("interdependence").

In reflecting on the little spiritual direction I have done, I can already see the benefit of evaluating spiritual direction (both during and after a session) using these four arenas -- with the "expectation that God is working all arenas of the directee's life" to see which arenas are being neglected by myself, the directee, or both.

Liebert also includes some helpful examples of verbatims, like the kind I should have done more frequently as a chaplain intern. I will consider using this technique with my own spiritual director -- and will probably be required to do so as part of my training.

In "Spirituality as the Performance of Desire: Calvin on the World as a Theatre of God's Glory," we have another premier essay (the first article in Spiritus, vol. 1, no. 1) as well as a second essay centering on Calvin.

Lane explores "[Calvin's] favorite metaphor in speaking of the natural world and its beauty," which is, "as a theatre of God's glory." Calvin speaks of God revealing God's self "in the visible splendor of [God's] apparel" -- which is the created world all around us. The image that comes to mind is that the emperor has clothes! That is, we can get a better understanding of God ("the emperor"...or "empress") through attention to nature ("God's garment").

We are accustomed to the opposite effect with "emperors" (read: politicians on both sides of the aisle who use spin to mask reality). For a recent example, see Frank Rich's The Greatest War Ever Sold: the Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina ("Mission Accomplished," "Heckuva Job, Brownie," "Shock and Awe," "Slam Dunk," "Dead or Alive," "Bring 'Em On!" "Last Throes," "The Smoking Gun Is a Mushroom Cloud," "Uranium from Africa," "As the Iraqis Stand Up, We'll Stand Down"). We can add in recent days, "until the job is done." Democrats also have their share of what Thank You for Smoking called "great moments in spin" (think Clinton's "It depends on your definition of what 'is' is," "But I didn't inhale," or "I did not have sex with that woman"). To summarize this worldview, "truth is fungible" (that is, "being of such nature or kind as to be freely exchangeable or replaceable, in whole or in part, for another of like nature or kind.")

In contrast to the rampant deception and demagoguery in the politics, it is a relief to consider an invitation to contemplate the depth of reality as revealed through nature -- what John Scotus Erugena called, "the other sacred book."

To take a larger view of Lane's essay, it was overall rather underwhelming, verbose, and tendentious (forcing Calvin into his desired mold). However, my previous exposure to Lane's work was extremely positive. I loved his book The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality.

There were also four other points in Lane's essay that I appreciated:

(1) The potential to read Calvin as a process theologian: "To make God a momentary Creator who once for all finished his work, would be cold and barren, and we must differ from profane men [the Epicureans] especially in that we see the presence of divine power shining as much in the continuing state of the universe as in its inception" (Institutes I.16.1).

(2) Redemption of the famous first line of the Westminster Catechism: "the enjoyment of God's glory is the chief end of creation" -- what Lane characterizes in another place as "deliberative practice of delight."

(3) Piquing my curiosity to read Calvin's commentary on the Psalms, where "the poet takes precedence over the dialectician...[where] he is driven by the exuberance of praise, admittedly speaking metaphorically."

(4) Calvin's sacramentalism: "in his [E]ucharistic theology, he saw the believer to be taken up into heaven to feed on the very flesh of Christ.... He similarly understood the actual voice of God to be heard in the words of the sermon." That's a high view, but it challenges me to be more attentive to God's presence in my congregation's weekly celebration of communion. As for the voice of God, that happening in a sermon (mine or otherwise) would only be grace -- a point with which I'm sure Calvin would agree.

In "Live Welcoming to All," Sue Monk Kidd describes a woman she saw riding MARTA on the way from the Atlanta airport: "She's crying. As she wipes tears with the back of her hand, her gaze lingers on my face. A look full of ache and searching."

I agree in part with Kidd's eventual conclusion: "it wasn't necessary to 'fix' the woman's pain, but simply to be available and present with my heart." She describes this as a practice of "receiving each person with the whole of my heart, being fully present to them with a singularly attentive mind, or what might be called mindful availability."

Henri Nouwen similarly says, "We cannot change people by our convictions...advice and proposals, but we can offer a space where people are encouraged to disarm themselves...to listen with attention and care to the voices speaking in their own century."

This is certainly a welcome change from many encounters, which, in Kidd's vivid image are "like a silent collision of egos." But I have more faith in the efficacy of convictions, advice, and proposals than Nouwen suggests. They can effect change. However, I feel called to become a spiritual director because I deeply believe that being fully present to another human being is a powerful gift that can change hearts and minds as well.

So, I hope increasingly to practice the hospitality of presence that Kidd calls "radical availabilty," although I feel it is equally important to practice hospitality/welcoming of a physical kind: offering a spare bedroom to evacuees from disasters like Hurricanes Rita and Katrina or inviting your immediate neighbors to eat. After all, how can we be welcoming, hospitable, or fully present to our neighbors (much less love our neighbors) if we don't know them.

In "To Bring All Things Together: Spiritual Direction as Action for Justice," (the lead article in volume one, number one of Presence: An International Journal of Spiritual Directors, launched in 1995), James Keegan notes in his first paragraph that spiritual directors tend to be "intuitive feelers." In Myers-Briggs terms, many of my classmates at SFTS will likely be INFPs. I am an ENTJ -- although I am less severe (especially in the Thinking-Judging area) that I used to be.

On another note, one of the most helpful parts of his essay is his use of Steve Wirth's "Grid Arenas" and "The Experience Cycle," which details a four-part matrix for evaluating spiritual direction:

(1) The Individual Arena - our relationship with ourselves. This is just one of four total arenas; so, for example, it is insufficient to concentrate exclusively in spiritual direction on integrating, "head, heart, gut, mind, spirit, and body" while neglecting the other three arenas.

(2) The Interpersonal Arena - friendships, at home, and other places, where we find ourselves mutually aware of one another, where we are focused on "being with."

(3) The Structural Arena - families, jobs, faith communities, clubs, professional organizations. Many of us spend eight or more hours a day in these structures; therefore, they are as important a concern for spiritual director as learning to accept ourselves. It may not be the case that we can "transform the structures of [our] life," but we can "explore more contemplatively what God may be doing" in the various structures.

(4) The Environmental Arena - examples include racism, sexism, classism, ageism, and heterosexism.

Spiritual Direction, as its best, periodically evaluates whether the director or directee is neglecting one or more of these arenas. We need to help our directees, "look in the place where God's activity [is] most accessible to them." Supervisors (our own spiritual directors) can "help us notice the ways we habitually perceive and interpret reality. Does my actual practice of direction indicate that I value one or two of these arenas over the others." In light of the answer, we must, "develop skills needed to be contemplative in arenas where [we are] less naturally inclined.

In chapter six of She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse, Elizabeth Johnson argues that feminists can use the work of classical theology to expose the limits of patriarchal language about God as well as to undergird the need for a mulitiplicity of God images. I'm not Johnson's target audience, which seems to be male, Roman Catholic theologians, whom she presumably hopes to convince by proving that she can write in dense theological jargon just like them. I'm not impressed, but if she has won some converts, then I applaud her effort.

The crux of her argument concerns the ultimate ineffibility of God (often represented in spirituality by the cloud -- as in The Cloud of Unknowing). In Augustine's words, "Se comprehendis, non est Deus" ("if you have understood, then what you have understood is not God").

I appreciate her invocation of the apophatic tradition, but I remain unconvinced of her use of the Fourth Lateran Council's maxim (from 1215) that "between Creator and creature no similarity can be expressed without implying that the dissimilarity between them is even greater."

I am supportive of her effort to dethrone patriarchal language for God, but her emphasis on the unknowability of God is too extreme, grounded in classical theology though it may be. Classical theology can be wrong, after all, which is ironically central to her whole methodology: using one strand of classical theology (the apophatic tradition) to expose the limitations of another strand (patriarchal language).

One issue is that my theology is so grounded in the Incarnation, especially through those who continue to incarnate the way of God in their own times and places: Clarence Jordan, Dorothy Day -- Shane Clairborne to name a living example. Although knowing the way of God is different than knowing the essence of God, I still fear that too strong an emphasis on how God's unknowability undercuts, for example, the solidity of liberation theology's claim that God has a preferential option for the poor -- or even the claim (central to many spiritual directors) that God is love, which also calls into question our own belovedness by God.

To take a different tack, many strands of mysticism (including Judaism -- see Bee Season for a fun example...the book, not the film) hold that you can experience unity with God. This is much more experiential knowledge than rational knowledge, but, some claim, it is at least one way that creatures can penetrate (or become part of) the cloud of unknowing to know their Creator.

In a chapter on "Spiritual Direction with Women," Kathleen Fischer writes from what appears to be the perspective of a white, middle-class, North American, Christian feminist. A strength of her essay is that it offers concrete approaches for empowering women through spiritual direction (at least other white, middle-class, North American, Christian women). But she is not trying to address every conceivable socio-economic group; among other reasons, it's only a brief essay.

I liked her quote from theologian Wendy Wright, who emphasizes that in a tradition dominated by the experience of "celebate" men, we need to include, for instance, the experience of "a married woman with children." Says Wright, "Where is there talk of the holy ground of intimacy and embodiment -- the powerful self-transcendence found in sexual intercourse, pregnancy, lactation, and birth? ... Finally, where was the language of home-making, of dwelling, of allowing the place and people with whom you dwell to initiate you into deeper and richer perceptions of the sacred?"

I also appreciated Fischer's suggestion to ask questions like:

"What do I most fully know, but feel afraid to honor?" and

"What is my own deepest desire?"

She also recommends using "indirect forms of communication such as dreams, poetry, painting, drawing, and movement. These frequently reveal layers of the self concealed by ordinary speech."

Given the female tendency towards the sin of self-abnegation (that is, lack of self -- the opposite of the male proclivity to selfishness and pride), Fischer suggests offering women models of "Jesus' self-care," because the last example many women need is more encouragement to self-sacrifice (for instance, see "Mark 1:35-36 where Jesus leave[s] the crowds to spend time alone in prayer" or "Mark 6:31, Jesus' invitation to his apostles to 'come away and rest for a while").

Ethicist Beverly Harrison reflects theologically from this perspective saying, "Jesus' paradigmatic role in the story of our salvation rests not in his willingness to sacrifice himself, but in his passionate love of right-relations and his refusal to cease to embody the power-of-relation in the face of that which would thwart it."

Along these lines, another helpful idea is to ask, "How can I best love both myself and the other person well in this situation."

So, as a white, middle-class, North American, Christian MALE, who is being trained as a spiritual director, this essay is a reminder that there may be women that I can only accompany to a certain point on their spiritual journey. There may be times when I need to refer a female directee to a female director -- or to a women's group -- either in addition to or instead of our work together. One of the strongest reasons for this is the haunting statistics about the terribly high percentage of women who have been abused -- whether physically, sexually, or emotionally -- by men.

The “Conclusion” to Egan Harvey’s book Karl Rahner: The Mystic of Everyday Life brings to mind at least two thoughts:

(1) I may be attending a Presbyterian Seminary, but there is a Roman Catholic or two influencing the curriculum (not that there’s anything wrong with that...in fact, it's encouraged) and

(2) I am reminded of a Transfiguration Day sermon I once thought about a preaching tentatively-titled “Do You Worship Jesus?”

Ultimately, what is most important for me is the way of Jesus. What some have called following Jesus’ religion (the religion Jesus practiced that gave precedence to loving God and loving neighbor) – as opposed to a religion about Jesus (where Jesus himself is worshipped instead of imitating the way that Jesus lived). Or, put another way, “Christianity not about 20 impossible things to believe before breakfast”; it is set of practices (love, mercy, forgiveness, truth-telling, etc.) that form a community called the church that witnesses to the way of God as revealed in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Put yet another way, followers of Jesus are challenged to incarnate the way of God (the reign of God, the kingdom of God) in their time and place, just as Jesus incarnated the way of God in first-century Galilee.

There have, of course, always been minority reports to orthodox Christianity, even back when orthodoxy was proto-orthodoxy (just one more group in the 2nd century competing for the right to interpret the meaning of Jesus’ life and teachings). For more on that, see Bart Ehrman’s Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew.

Nevertheless, the Trinity (which presumably implies some sort of Jesus-worship) is a powerful was to understand the inner life of God as community (see Eastern Orthodoxy’s understanding of perichorisis). But I am not locked into the traditional names of Father, Son, Holy Spirit by any means.

Some of the best I’ve heard are “Lover, Beloved, Bond of Love” and (from the Presbyterian Church!) “Mother, Child, Womb.”

So, yes, I do worship Jesus – or, better, I pray to Christ. (As some have said, “One Jesus, Many Christs"). Then again, I also pray to Mary, the mother of Jesus:

Hail Mary,
Full of Grace,
The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit
of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary,
Mother of God,
pray for us sinners now,
and at the hour of death.
Amen.

In “Discerning through the Senses,” Thomas E. Clarke makes a case for employing all five senses in the spiritual practice of discernment. I agree with him, but the larger point (to which he makes brief reference) is that perhaps all spirituality functions at its best when it is embodied ... incarnated, if you will.

I also appreciate Clarke reminding me of the passage in Augustine’s Confessions, where he asks, “What is it that I love when I love [my God]?” Augustine answers himself partially by saying we know God through our experience of the material world (specifically through our five senses as I note in brackets below), although God’s self ultimately transcends that experience.

Says Augustine: “In a sense, I do love light [sight] and melody [hearing] and fragrance [smell] and food [taste] and embrace [touch] when I love my God…
When that LIGHT shines upon my soul which no place can contain,
That VOICE sounds which no time can take from me,
I BREATHE that fragrance which no wind scatters,
I EAT the food which is not lessened by eating,
And I LIE in the embrace which satiety never comes to sunder.”

Incorporating (yes, I realize the Latin pun with corpus) the five senses into contemplation means being attentive to “savoring [the] immediacy” of the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touches that are present before you.

Welton actually wrote a book about worship with the former Minister of the Arts here at Northminster entitled Worship: A Symphony for the Senses. We regularly practice some of that vision of stimulating all five senses in worship: sight (liturgical banners and paraments), hearing (sacred music), and taste (weekly communion with a common cup and loaf). We infrequently use smell (I’d love to have more incense!) or touch (I also wish we did weekly passing of the peace – although we did have a powerful footwashing service last Maundy Thursday).

The challenge is to do more, but irrespective of what innovations happen (or don’t happen) in corporate worship, I can make my personal practice more embodied by being more intentional about contemplatively receiving my surroundings: the sights (the view out the window, the icon on the wall, the flame flickering on the votive candle), sounds (whether silence, traffic, or my cat purring beside me), smell (even the occasional paper mill odor of Monroe), taste (usually green tea in the morning), and touch (the feel of the chair bracing against my back, the blanket around me, the air filling my lungs).

I was raised in a large, Southern Baptist Church in the midlands of South Carolina. I earned my Masters of Divinity from Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, Texas, a mainline seminary affiliated with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) . I am currently serving as the Associate Pastor of a progressive congregation in Northeast Louisiana that is affiliated with the Alliance of Baptists. Now, I am enrolled as a three-weeks-a-year student at San Francisco Theological Seminary, which is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) -- in short, the more progressive wing of Presbyterianism in this country.

I have been formed by the each of these places in different ways. Being Baptist taught me the value of autonomous individuals and congregations, responsible for discerning their own theology and practices (although this has certainly led to unhealthy extremes in some cases). One of the most valuable lessons I learned from the Disciples was weekly communion. Some folks call the Disciples, "Jesus-people" or "Unitarians to the 2nd person of the Trinity."

I am curious to see how I am formed amongst Presbyterians at SFTS. To that end, I wasn't surprised that the third essay in my coursepack is chapter one of John Calvin's The
Institutes of the Christian Relgion, "The Knowledge of God the Creator." If you're going to a Presbyterian school, I guess reading Calvin comes with the package.

In his essay, “Learning to See: Epiphany in the Ordinary,” Douglas Burton-Christie tells the story of learning to ask his three-year-old, not “What did you do today,” but “What did you notice today?” Because she demanded that he answer as well, he also, “found [him]self noticing a lot more.”

A similar practice that I have found significant is the awareness examen. The examen was first described by Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the 16th century founder of the Jesuits, in his book Spiritual Exercises. I haven’t read Ignatius’version of the examen (and actually hear it is better to wait to read his book until after you have undergone a 30-day Ignatian Retreat since the text is meant for those facilitating such a retreat), but the essence of the examen has been distilled into a wonderful book by Dennis, Sheila and Matthew Linn called Sleeping with Bread: Holding What Gives You Life.

In short, the examen encourages you to ask two questions at the end of each day:

• "What was my moment of greatest consolation (when I felt most connected to God and those around me)?" and
• "What was my moment of greatest desolation (when I felt least connected to God and those around me)?"

Or, put more simply, “What am I most grateful for today?” and “What am I least grateful for today?”

At the end of most days, I pause before going to sleep to practice the examen, asking God to reflect with me on the past day to help me discern the my moments of consolation and desolation. As with the practice of asking “What did you notice today,” over time, it becomes easier to identify moments of consolation and desolation – those times and people and places for which you are most and least grateful.

One of the most powerful gifts of this practice is that it can allow you to find ways of doing more frequently those things that bring you consolation – and doing less frequently those things that bring you desolation:

• Do you repeatedly notice that a certain person, place, or activity is energizing and life-affirming to you? Then try to find ways to cultivate that or a similar activity more often.
• Do you repeatedly notice that a certain person, place, or activity is draining and life-negating to you? Then try to find ways to alter or avoid that or a similar activity as much as possible.
  

To name just a few examples of lives that I have seen changed as a result of a regular discernment of gratitude, I have had friends start a more life-giving job, commit to practicing yoga five days a week instead of one day a week, and change diets to be healthier.

Personally, this practice has led me to commit more firmly to practices like daily contemplative prayer each morning, exercising for shorter periods five days a week instead of longer periods three days a week, and a weekly Sabbath on Saturdays. I have a greater attitude of gratefulness in general and I am more connected to God and those around me when I practice Sabbath and contemplation, eat well and exercise regularly.

In addition, we practice a variation of the examen during each Sunday night children’s ministry time and youth group as well as during the Thursday night Spiritual Formation Group for adults. Lighting a candle and reflecting on the past week helps us transition into our meeting time. More importantly, it provides a space for all of us to listen to one another and build community by sharing our moments of consolation and desolation.

I've begun the assigned reading that I am supposed to complete before arriving in San Francisco for the January intensive. My plan is to blog about the readings from time to time as a way of processing and recording my reactions to the readings.

The first essay is Walter J. Burghardt's "Contemplation: a long loving look at the real." First, I love the description of contemplation in his title. As he says, "Each word is crucial: real...look...long...loving." Contemplation is the opposite of what we are generally taught in school, which is "to abstract; we are not taught loving awareness."

I am fairly committed to twenty minutes of contemplation every morning as well as keeping the hours (Lauds, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline) -- currently using the Benedictine Daily Prayer: A Shorter Breviary. However, I wish I had more time to make, especially that twenty minutes, and ideally every hour, "wonderfully unhurried, gloriously unharried." But it is a start to STOP, to PAUSE at 9:00 a.m., at Noon, at 3:00 p.m., at 6:00 p.m., and before bed to rehearse the liturgy, to chant the psalms, to practive the presence of God. To take a long, loving look at the real.

I do not know if not setting an alarm for those twenty minutes would allow me to take a longer, more loving look at the real or not, but I appreciate Burghardt's point that "You do not time the Philadelphia Symphony; you do not clock the Last Supper.... To contemplate is to be in love" -- to be "captivate[d]," to be "delight[ed]."

Finally, Burghardt is right to encourage those raised in Western Christianity to dig deep into the tradition of Western Christianity. Dialogue with other traditions is vital as well, but we should not do so at the expense of exploring the treasures of our own tradition: Jesus himself, the early Church Fathers and Mothers, the desert Ammas and Abbas, the medieval mystics.

In January I will begin the Diploma in the Art of Spiritual Direction program at San Francisco Theological Seminary. I will attend a three-week intensive on-campus every January for three years.

Spiritual Direction is an ancient practice of the church for, as the name implies, learning to direct the spiritual lives of others.

For example, I hope to become better equipped to give spiritual guidance to others — better able to respond to questions like “How should I pray?” Many people have been taught simple, childhood prayers like “Now I lay me down to sleep,” but, it is also important to learn to pray as an adult in order to face the many challenges life brings.

Spiritual Direction also focuses on practices and experiences for living out what Jesus calls the Greatest Commandment: to love God with one’s whole heart, soul, mind, and strength.

One quote about spiritual direction that has stuck with me is from Sallie McFague's Life Abundant: "After years of talking about God (what theologians are paid to do!), I am becoming acquainted with God. This conversion has occurred quite deliberately: I engaged a spiritual director and have undertaken a daily pattern of meditation. I am meeting God and God is love. How outrageous as well as platitudinous that sounds! I can scarcely believe I am writing it, let alone intending to publish it. Why am I doing so? Simply because it is true; it is what has happened, is happening, to me."

In short, I feel called to become a spiritual director to share the good news of God’s Loving Presence that is always around us and the gift of our belovedness by God. I also feel called to teach contemplative prayer to others and to model life-giving practices like Sabbath-keeping, hospitality, and solidarity with the marginalized.