C. Birth of First Child (male, joyful)

Note: This is one of five hypothetical direction scenarios. All actual direction sessions are confidential.

My first spiritual direction session with Chip was a few weeks after the birth of his first child, Angela. He was filled with joy. After talking through some of the preliminary matters concerning the spiritual direction covenant we were forming, I lit a candle, and invited Chip into a time of silence to mark the transition into the direction session itself. I said, “You can speak out of the silence whenever you feel ready.” I had barely said one Jesus prayer to myself (as a form of self-preparation for “listening the other into speech”) when Chip blurted, “I’m just so happy. (Don’t get me wrong. I’m also exhausted from getting up all the time in the middle of the night to feed Angela – not to mention all the diaper changing.) But I’m just happy. I’ve never been this filled with joy before.”

One challenge for me as the director in this situation is that I do not have children, nor have I ever cared for an infant for any great length of time. However, I do not have to have had the same experience as a directee in order to attempt, as much as possible, to be fully present to another’s experience. An additional challenge in this situation is the speed and exuberance with which the directee is sharing.

In light of these challenges, I would hope to keep in mind that one of the invitations of spiritual direction is to offer a balance to the frenetic pace of many people’s lives and to allow them to become more fully aware what they are experiencing each moment. To accomplish this, it might at first seem easy to reflect his words: “You’re filled with joy” – but this might keep him in the interpretive dimension, potentially inviting another torrent of words. Instead, to invite him to enter the nonthematic, I might notice his body language: “You have such a huge smile on your face” (to help him be aware of what his body is speaking to him – beyond his thoughts and feelings). I would also hope to introduce some times of silence in the session, when he would be invited to savor some of the many recent moments of consolation– to more deeply enter all the facets of those experiences in order to increase his capacity for experiencing future moments of joy, especially related to his child.

I would also want to give Chip a copy of Sleeping with Bread: Holding What Gives You Life.[1] I would invite him and his partner to do the examen together each evening as way of regularly sharing their consolations and desolations related to their daughter’s birth. This could also initiate a ritual that all three of them could eventually do as a family.

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[1] Dennis Linn, Sheila Fabricant Linn, and Matthew Linn, Sleeping with Bread: Holding What Gives You Life (Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1995).