Saturday, October 31, 1998

Lay spiritual directors offer a new alternative in the search for meaning

By Connie Lauerman

Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO -- Signe Gleeson is not someone who goes to church regularly.

"I haven't found that particularly life-giving," says Gleeson, a geriatric nurse in Naperville, Ill., a Chicago suburb.

After a series of personal losses and difficulties, Gleeson says she wanted to have "a relationship with somebody whereby I could just sort out life issues from a spiritual base, somebody who could travel my path with me."

So Gleeson turned to a spiritual director, but not a minister, priest or nun. It was Mary B. Doolen, a lay woman with a Roman Catholic background and an ecumenical point of view.

Doolen is one of an increasing number of lay people who are offering spiritual direction to those who want help in discerning God's presence in their lives, deepening their spiritual side or even talking through their doubts.

They are helping to feed the same existential hunger that has catapulted so many spiritual books, like Thomas Moore's "Care of the Soul" and Sarah Ban Breathnach's "Simple Abundance," onto best-seller lists.

Seekers come from all walks of life and religious backgrounds. Even President Clinton recently turned to several spiritual advisers as scandal imperiled his office.

"Spiritual direction has been around since the first two human beings were on the planet and one person told the other they experienced something beyond themselves, what we call God," says Jeffrey Gaines, a Presbyterian minister and executive director of Spiritual Directors International in San Francisco, an ecumenical association of spiritual directors and those who train them.

"People have been acting as spiritual directors for a long time, and what's happening as we reach the millennium is that folks who are not 'religious professionals' but have continually (attracted) people who want to talk about their experience of the divine and prayer are now seeing that this is a calling and are seeking training to become spiritual directors."

That description fits Mary Doolen perfectly.

"I guess I was awfully interested in a deeper purpose and meaning in life and finding God in all places," says Doolen, a former caseworker, mother of four and co-owner of a business that affords her a flexible schedule.

"I found a spiritual director myself and went to her for quite a while. It was really helpful in my life. And I found that people would seek me out to talk."

Eventually, Doolen, who works out of her suburban Chicago home, went through a formal training program at the Institute of Spiritual Companionship, which holds classes at Evanston's First Presbyterian Church, and also earned a master's degree in pastoral studies.

A spiritual director is neither therapist nor pastoral counselor, more a provider of a safe place to talk. Some spiritual directors even prefer a gentler term for their work -- spiritual companion.

"It's not a fixing job," Doolen says. "It's listening with the person. It's helping them hear themselves. It's kind of being a mirror for them and helping them reflect on their life experiences."

Elizabeth Stout, a spiritual director based in Evanston, Ill., says she does not necessarily even use the term God.

"For someone in a recovery program, I could say your higher power," says Stout, a seminary graduate who considers spiritual direction a way to have a ministry without being ordained. "Or I could say the holy one, Allah, the Other, the Ultimate. I adapt my language to the vocabulary they are going to use for this relationship with the divine."

In some ways, Stout says, the term spiritual director is a misnomer. "Modern spiritual directors do not tell you what to do. Even 'spiritual' is in a way a misnomer because everything is discussed. Your spirituality encompasses your whole life. The purpose is to reflect. OK, you're having marital difficulties or job difficulties or many things are just going fine, but what does this have to do with your practice of your faith, your view of how God is acting in your life?"

Pat Traver, a dietitian in a suburban hospital, describes sessions with her spiritual director as being akin to peeling layers of an onion. "It's a comfortable, non-threatening, non-judgmental, low-stress atmosphere with unconditional love. Each session unpeels you a little bit more. There's a whole spiritual momentum.

"After a spiritual guide meeting, I sleep so deep and soundly, there must be something right about it."

Gleeson says an hour with a spiritual guide is "an antidote to all the things that would distract you from seeing God in your daily life. There's a lot of unhealthy stuff out there -- consumerism. Our society is full of false idols."

M. Grace Grzanek, a spiritual director in Innermission, a Batavia, Ill., group practice, notes that people often seek spiritual guidance "because they're at a crisis of some sort in their lives and they don't know where to turn.

"Very frequently I hear people say, 'I feel disconnected,' meaning their whole life feels fragmented. A few come because they can name (their desire) as seeking God. Others come because they feel blocked in their relationship with God.

"In all cases, the stress is on spirituality, not religion. We're all the same spiritual beings whether we're Catholic, or Unity or Methodist."

Grzanek estimates that 20 percent of the people who seek her out have no affiliation with a church, or at least don't attend it if they do.

"We're picking up people that churches aren't picking up,' she says. "It's a place for people to talk about their deepest spiritual experiences that doesn't look as scary as a church. It's rather universal that churches get hung up on rules, dogmas and bureaucracies."

Spiritual direction has roots in both Catholic and Buddhist monasticism.

In Christianity, it dates to the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries, according to Kathleen Dolphin, director of the master's degree pastoral studies program at Loyola University.

"When Christianity became more acceptable and martyrdom was not as prevalent, a different kind of intense asceticism came (to the fore) with the fathers of the desert, and now what we're calling mothers of the desert, who would live alone with God in the wilderness.

"And then people from the villages would go and seek guidance and advice on spiritual life from these holy men and women. But there always was a distinction between the spiritual father or mother and the confessor in the Catholic tradition, although sometimes the same person might be both a confessor and spiritual director."

Dolphin cautions that "there's a difference between spiritual direction and just a kind of self-improvement course or personality development course, which are important, but what's missing from that is the Christian notion of grace and that we need companions (in the process of) integrating life and faith and to do this not in terms of self-absorption but in terms of self-transcendence."

Richard Poole, co-director of the spiritual-director internship program at the Claret Center in Chicago, says, "People are discovering some difficulties, some struggles with institutional religion, and within the political-economic climate right now, a whole question around values and meaning and direction is up in the air for a lot of folks. People are really wanting to find something that makes sense for them."

For many years spiritual direction was reserved for and provided by clergy members. It is still part of the training for Catholic and Episcopal seminarians.

Now more lay people are entering training programs such as the Claret Center's, but unless they attended divinity school like Stout did, they're likely to be well into middle age.

"In terms of spiritual companioning, it's pretty important for people to have a fair amount of life experience," Poole says. "In our internship we rarely admit anyone under the age of 30 or even 35. This year our youngest person is in their mid-40s."

Those seeking spiritual directors generally find them through word of mouth, spiritual retreats or organizations that provide training.

Donald E. Miller, professor of religion at the University of Southern California, views the increase in lay spiritual directors as part of "a kind of shift occurring in a much larger sense in the religious economy towards a democratization of the faith.

"By that I'm referring to the fact that the churches (that) are growing the fastest are those where the priesthood has really been returned to the people. There is a huge movement of a sort of postdenominational church, independent churches that are not under particular denominational structure.

"This same democratization is occurring in the area of spiritual direction where you don't need to be ordained in order to be a guide to others who are seeking, in a very personal way, some experience of the transcendent."

Typically, sessions with a spiritual director will consist of conversation, with the directee doing most of the talking. The director listens and may ask some questions. He or she may suggest some reading materials or even pray with or for the directee. There may be periods of silence or meditation. Directees may be asked to keep a journal.

"The focus is always how (your experiences) demonstrate what God is doing in your life, how you see divine activity in this," says Stout. "You may think nothing is happening and then you begin to explore where you find beauty, where you find a lot of other qualities like this. That may be where divine activity is occurring."

Because lay spiritual directors are not supported by a religious organization, they generally charge fees, a practice that is somewhat controversial. Those fees, usually negotiable, may range from $25 to $90 an hour.

Whatever the cost, those seeking spiritual direction may get something a little different than they bargained for.

"Usually when people seek spiritual direction, they have an idea what they're looking for," Stout notes, "but that may not be what they find when I tell them, 'I don't answer direct questions.' "

Says Doolen: "Even if (directees) talk about God, God is a mystery. So it's a process of having them accept that they can't know all the answers. The poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in 'Letters to a Young Poet' that the point is to 'live the questions now.' I love that statement, but I still want answers too."