MY GRANDEST JOURNEY
I have a spiritual director that I meet with every month at the blissful and picturesque Mater Dolorosa Passionist Retreat Center in Sierra Madre…along the sloping hills of the San Gabriel mountains. On clear days, I can see a sliver of the glittering ray of the Pacific Ocean on the far horizon. Up close, I’m often greeted by a herd of placid deers against the backdrop of rugged and handsome mountains. The landscape of my soul is not as blissful, though. I feel more like an explorer excavating deep and dark crevices of desert canyons. My sessions with him require a lot of inner excavating work. It requires vulnerability and no falsity while practicing gentleness and self-compassion toward my soul. I am driven toward inner spiritual freedom which is no different from discovering the likeness of Christ in my soul. Who I am in my innermost being without ego’s distraction and falsity IS Christ that is in me. That is my grandest journey.
One of the appreciative qualities of my spiritual director is that he has respect for my unique soul. The role of a spiritual director is not to “direct,” so the title spiritual director is a misnomer (my wife, who is a spiritual director, shared this misnomer with me). He lets me fumble around in the dark, gives me the freedom to chase a few rabbit trails, and ultimately discover my own answers to the questions I have, which is essentially about listening to the work of the Spirit.
He also gives me space, a safe space. It is being a relaying instrument of God who is safe and always loves.
“A director is not a superior.”
—Thomas Merton
Dom Augustine Baker, a 17th century Benedictine mystic who stood his ground against autocratic spiritual rulers, said, “The director is not to teach his own way, nor indeed any determinate way of prayer, but to instruct his disciples how they may themselves find out the way proper for them. . . ”
Contrast the above postures with this story I am remembering now.
Years ago, in a large group setting, my wife shared a bible passage that impacted her. This required great courage on her part since she is a flaming introvert. After the meeting was over, a leader (globally renowned missions leader who will remain nameless) made a beeline to my wife and basically told my wife she had interpreted the passage inadequately. He went on to correct my wife’s interpretation using Greek words and all. I must have been busy talking to others while standing next to my wife, wondering what was taking place. I found out later what transpired and it made me very upset. The fact that I am still remembering the incident and feeling the anger tells me how violated I felt from the incident. It was a violation against soul’s self-discovery process. My soul knew it was simply wrong.
Imperialism in missions is still rampant, I am sorry to admit. Anytime we operate out of right from wrong [which is mostly about perceptions and which stems from what Gregory Boyd and Peter Enns respectively call “idols or sins of certainty”], teaching and dictating, and having prescribed questions and answers, we run the great risk of a new spiritual (or religious) imperialism.
I am not a spiritual director, but I aspire to the qualities I see in my spiritual director as well as in my wife’s spiritual directorship. I want to maintain genuine respect for all souls, all fearfully and wonderfully made by God. I want to create and fearlessly defend safe space. I want to be God’s instrument embodying self-discovery for others.
Foundationally, I desire inner spiritual freedom for all. The inner spiritual freedom is a mother to all external freedom proper to their time and contexts.