Holy Listening

I feel my kinship with Abraham when he lifted up his eyes and beheld three strangers standing in front of him. My guest, like his, has paused on a journey. Do I really want to stop what I am doing and invite him to wash his feet and rest under the tree before he passes on? Geographically, the journey is rarely impressive—a subway ride from uptown, a commuter train trip from New Jersey, a five-minute walk through the seminary close. The person standing at my office door is rarely disheveled or dust-covered and would resist any attempt of mine to wash his feet. But spiritually, he has come a great distance and is still far from home.

Yet those strangers upon whom we depend are not really strangers, but our sisters and brothers in Christ. They are the hosts, the givers of hospitality, who sustain us on the journey, our spiritual friends and directors.

the first step in being a good host, for dinner or for spiritual direction, is to get ready, to have the preparation done so that the scurrying may cease and the guest be greeted graciously. Guests provide a helpful discipline. Left on our own, we can walk endlessly around disorder and uncleanness, vowing to do something about the state of our house some time, but not now.

the first step for any director is, with help, to become self-aware. Spiritually, the house must be kept in order, at least to the degree that it offers a wholesome and not a dangerous environment to those who shelter there. Trusting in my own director, I must be willing to leave my own safe place and seek hospitality with another, to ask for help and let myself be guided.

Once I decided that no one would read it or, if they did, it wouldn’t matter since I would be dead, I have been able to write candidly. In the journal, you can be as repetitive as you wish; it is a place to wrestle with angels and struggle with demons.

In most religious houses there is “nothing to do”—no games, no distractions, no loud noises, no TV, no busyness. Instead, there is silence, simple food, adequate space, and the security of being surrounded by a praying community. For those of us who get trapped in crowded schedules and fall into the dangerous and sinful delusion that we, the administrative assistants of a well-meaning but inefficient CEO God, are really the ones who hold up the world, even a brief retreat is a powerful corrective. When we have slowed down, we are able to look at ourselves and smile at our pitiful little constructs.

Blessed are those who find God’s hand in the aesthetic: music, literature, and art keep us joyful and proportionate. And blessed are those who enjoy good, hard work. There is nothing like sawing through a log or mowing a lawn, scrubbing a very dirty floor or kneading a loaf of bread to make us rejoice in our physicality and bring us close to the earth. A spiritual director who becomes too “spiritual” is more than a little frightening.

I have learned to trust the little prayers that come into my mind, having long ago given up the idea that there is one correct way of gathering the silence together and moving out if it. Now I catch myself wondering what will pop into my head. Not too long ago, I was surprised to hear inwardly a German table blessing that I had learned as a very small child. I resisted it, because we were not sitting at a table and it seemed so inappropriate, But it wouldn’t go away, and so I broke the silence with it: “Come, Lord Jesus, and be our guest, and bless everything that you have given us.” Only upon reflection did I realize that it was a nearly perfect prayer of hospitality, a prayer about the mysterious reversal of host and guest that lies at the heart of spiritual direction.

We must have a discerning eye, but we are not diagnosticians in a clinical sense, for we risk diminishing our spiritual guests if we reduce them to symptoms and measurements. The person sitting opposite me is always a mystery. When I label, I limit.

As someone who likes to talk and who enjoys human company, one of my hardest lessons in spiritual direction has been that less is frequently more. Unrestrained empathy can lead us to appropriation of the other person’s experience, by posture and by facial expression if not by words. I guard myself (not always successfully) by two means. First, I use the Jesus Prayer, my “egg-timer” prayer. When

About ten minutes before the time is up, I manage to interject, “We’ll have to stop in a few minutes.” These words almost always result in a sharpened focus, and the most important material of the session may be introduced at this point. It is tempting to extend the time when these “doorknob manifestations” occur, but I try to resist the temptation. The directee needs to value our time together and make optimum use of it. So I usually say something like, “That seems significant. Let’s start with that next time.”

Storytelling is also a dialogue, and sometimes the listener-director must become active in helping shape the story. So I might say to Mildred, “This is your time, not David’s. What about you?” And I must be prepared for her response: “I want only what’s best for him. I want to help him.” She is resistant. I cannot let her go on avoiding her own inner exploration, but neither can I become impatient. She must be willing to focus on herself, not because she fears my displeasure, but because she acknowledges her own worth, or because she knows that nothing in her own story, however shameful it might seem, is unsayable here. Jane is easier. A kind woman, who loves to take care of people now that her children have left the nest, she needs only a gentle reminder that her rector can look after himself, and this is the time and place to look after Jane.

Not long ago he said to me, “I think I trust you. There are more things I want to talk about someday.” I have no idea what these “things” might be and feel no particular curiosity about them. As his host, I respect his privacy and say only, “I’m here when you want me. You’ll know when the time is right.” Trust must be allowed to build. I discover that it forms in strata: just when I think we are hopelessly stuck in banalities or stranded on a plateau, there is a sudden new openness.

When all the layers have been stripped away, God is what the directee wants. There may be other legitimate, laudable wants—physical and mental health, meaningful work, sound and stable relationships—as well as other, less laudable loves and desires masked as pious yearnings—the desire to manipulate and control, the avoidance of responsible engagement, spiritual posturing rooted in a catalytic mixture of pride and self-hatred—to name just a few.

burden? There is a cheapness and spiritual dishonesty in opening oneself to another’s story while keeping one’s fingers crossed—“I’ll let it touch me, even touch me deeply, but not for long.” On the other hand, I accept the burden, not to hoard and cherish it as mine but rather to pass it on immediately. As Williams observes, “the carrying of the cross may be light because it is not to the crucifixion.”8

In our culture it often seems a mark of professionalism to be impervious to others’ pain. Sometimes this is a good thing: I would prefer that my surgeon operate with eyes not blurred with tears!

“Why, if I was you,” said Mr. Dick, considering, and looking vacantly at me, “I should—” The contemplation of me seemed to inspire him with a sudden idea, and he added briskly, “I should wash him!”9 Similarly, when the child becomes a permanent member of this unlikely household, Mr. Dick does not borrow trouble by speculating about possible courses of action far in the future, but suggests with great practicality, “Have him measured for a suit of clothes directly.” Our directees rarely need to be provided with literal scrubbing or garments, but their next steps, to be taken in hope, are often as small and simple as those offered by Mr. Dick. The journey is not to be completed in a day, and the path leading to its end is twisted and invisible, but we can help them see the next small, often deceptively simple steps.

Tacitly I have given permission to be challenged and probed to the degree that such sharing of experience is helpful to the directee. It is a delicate and dangerous business, for I can use the directee to feed my ego. For example, I have to be especially careful with Jo, who is eager to attribute to me wisdom and compassion beyond my most extravagant dreams. But I know that I am in danger of seduction, however loving and unwitting its intent; and so I resist her invitation to talk very much about myself. However I join in the storytelling, whether by invitation or my own intuition, our sense of solidarity is increased. We are united in our sinfulness, our baptism, and the commonalities of our journeys.

So what does the spiritual director teach? In the simplest and also most profound terms, the spiritual director is simultaneously a learner and a teacher of discernment. What is happening? Where is God in this person’s life? What is the story? Where does this person’s story fit in our common Christian story? How is the Holy Spirit at work in this person’s life? What is missing? The first step in discernment is perception. The director is deeply attentive to the person sitting across the holy space, open and permeable to all that is said and unsaid, revealed and hidden. More importantly, by example and by judicious interpretation, she helps the directee toward equal openness and attentiveness. Together they look, listen, and wait.

This marks one of the major differences between spiritual direction and psychotherapy: the director must be willing to be known—not just by her credentials, affiliations, and titles, but known in her vulnerability and limitations as a child of God.

I had failed to recognize her. My day and my energies had been spent with people who take showers and keep appointments. It had been a good day—at the least, I had probably done no harm. But in retrospect I know that the woman on the subway was thirsty, not for drugs or alcohol, but for a sip of the water that would become in her a spring welling up to eternal life. I had responded with amiable platitudes, but in-spite of that she was able to discern Christ in our midst. There was life in her gift to me, and I felt that she “knew everything I ever did” and that it was all right.

In awareness of the mystery at the heart of spiritual direction, the good teacher also encourages directees to discover and embrace their own questions. The poet Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, while ostensibly about the creative process, is equally valuable as a spiritual classic. It is a deceptively simply book about discernment and self-knowledge. In the fourth letter, Rilke urges his reader to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.

“This book spoke to me; you might find it helpful too. But don’t feel you have to stick with it if it doesn’t feel right.”

While the symptoms of spiritual malaise and imbalance bear careful attention, not everyone is “pregnant”—not everyone is a candidate for spiritual direction, at least not at every stage of life. There are those who are religiously observant and content with their spiritual lives as part of a worshipping community. It would not occur to them to enter into the intense, one-on-one relationship of traditional direction, nor even to become part of a “spiritual friends” group. This is perhaps a matter of temperament as well as generation and life experience. Then there are those whose spirituality is directed outward. They encounter God in service, in action, in outreach. Spiritual rhythms are like bodily rhythms: respiration requires both inhaling and exhaling, taking in and letting go. Frequently, but not always, those who are turning outward—exhaling, as it were—are not in the right place for spiritual direction. Later, perhaps, but not right now.

sought. Sometimes they come filled with surprise and joy: after years, perhaps decades, of faithful observance, they have experienced a sudden awareness of God’s presence and grace. They feel fruitful, joyous, and expectant—and they don’t know what to do about it.

truth. Spiritual directors are not social workers, however, nor are they physicians or community planners. We cannot and should not try to replace the professionals, programs, and agencies that work to alleviate suffering and promote individual and community wholeness. But we can offer what is inevitably absent from the best-intentioned activism: a willingness to wait with others in the face of their powerlessness, “to sit still, even amid these rocks.”5

In the birth process, the dark, seemingly chaotic period of transition is the time of greatest discomfort and—at least from the birthgiver’s viewpoint—greatest need for the supportive presence of the midwife. In our spiritual lives, too, it is a pivotal time. The old ways no longer serve. The comfortable rhythms of worship and solitary prayer feel empty and sterile. Gone is the image of a loving, immanent God, the God who asks: Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. See I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands… (Isa. 49:15-16).

The lonely times of transition can be terrible, for they are times of spiritual homelessness.

moments when something new has entered into us, something unknown; our feelings grow mute in shy perplexity, everything in us withdraws, a stillness comes, and the new, which no one knows, stands in the midst of it and is silent… I believe that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension that we find paralyzing because we no longer hear our surprised feelings living. Because we are alone with the alien thing that has entered our self; because everything intimate and accustomed is for an instant taken away; because we stand in the middle of a transition where we cannot remain standing.

Instead of the expected smooth sailing, the directee experiences spiritual chaos; everything seems to break down just at the time that he “has it all together.”