Offerings

What is Spiritual Direction? ​

Spiritual direction is not a new thing. It has been practiced for millennia. Spiritual direction is time spent on the sacred ground of your soul with another person who is able to listen deeply, present both to you and to God with you. A spiritual director has been trained to hold space for your story, your emotions, your experience (or lack thereof) with God. In spiritual direction, you may simply find a much-needed listening ear for all things related to your spiritual life. You may discover new ways of being with God in silence or imaginative prayer or creative play. You may explore pieces of your story that have left you feeling “stuck”. Your entire self is welcome in spiritual direction: your body, intellect, emotions, imagination, memory, relationships, culture may come into the process -- things you might not usually think of as “spiritual.” 

What is Supervision? ​

Supervision for spiritual directors is a contemplative, evocative, and compassionate process intended to enhance your growth as a director, so that both you and your directees can flourish. "Supervision helps spiritual directors look deeply into their interior life as spiritual directors and as persons. The contemplative and evocative process enables hidden feelings and areas of unfreedom to come into the light. The more keenly spiritual directors notice their own interior movements, feel their own feelings, become aware of their areas of unfreedom and struggle, and savor their experiences of God, the more freely they will be able to offer these gifts to their directees. Supervision then, focuses primarily on a part of the direction conversation where you as director experience strong negative or positive feelings in which you moved away emotionally from the directee, yourself and God"

Maureen Conroy, Looking Into the Well

Contemplative Groups, like Group Spiritual Direction, are a wonderful process for nurturing values such as mutuality, reverence, deep listening and compassion.

• Mutuality speaks of a circle model, in which everyone participates. No one is an expert or the dominant one. Each person shows up fully and offers their openness, availability, and acceptance and listens for the wisdom and guidance of the Spirit.

• Reverence is the quality of honoring the other person as unique spark of the Divine. The participants are not comparing or competing, but appreciating the goodness within each person. There are no expectations of certain beliefs or certain behavior, but a willingness to receive the other as they are.

• Deep listening recognizes that the Spirit is the true leader and the one to whom we all listen— connected in our hearts and inner being. This listening provides a container in which everyone can feel safe to utter that which is true within and can be received without judgment.

• And compassion is flowing throughout this process, as the group members recognize that each one is on a journey, alone yet in community. All are wounded in some way and in need of healing. Each person needs tenderness and care and to be held in this compassionate flow with one another.