Spiritual Directors International launched an educational series of videos aimed at the general public to tell the story of spiritual direction.

Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI is originally from Canada, and he currently serves as the President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas. He is the author of many books, including Holy Longing, which he mentions in this interview. Sister Mary Ann Scofield, RSM is a founding member of Spiritual Directors International and has been involved in the Mercy Center Art of Spiritual Direction internship in Burlingame, California, as well as forming spiritual directors all over the world for decades.

To be the first to view new educational videos, add your name to the YouTube subscription service for sdiworld videos.

Kudos to Tara Owens from Colorado, USA and Pegge Bernecker from Alaska, USA for spear-heading this educational outreach program! 

 

Ring. Pause. Ring. Pause. Ring. Pause. During a retreat at Thich Nhat Hahn’s Plum Village in France, I learned how to use everyday sounds to practice returning my attention to the present moment. When the telephone would ring during a community meal, everyone on retreat stopped whatever we were doing – we held our forks in mid-bite and ended conversation mid-sentence. The dining hall became silent while the telephone rang three times. On the fourth ring, a Vietnamese Buddhist nun on staff would pick up the telephone, “Bonjour,” and then everyone would start chatting and eating again. The telephone rang frequently, and randomly, so we had plenty of opportunity to learn the rhythm of being in silence together for short, sweet moments of rest.

The simple spiritual practice of using a sound to gently return focus to God’s presence in our lives has more than spiritual advantages. Our minds benefit from a discipline of taking regular breaks from thinking. My shoulders and neck relax when I intentionally practice resting for a minute before resuming whatever tasks compete for my next action.

I recently installed a FREE meditation timer for the computer that also serves as a reminder to return to restful, centered silence. The ability to set the meditation timer with a random chime allows me to spiritually, mentally, and bodily practice resting during the many hours I spend online. The random chime announces it’s time to stop typing, breathe, relax my shoulders, readjust my posture, and thank God for the present moment.

To download the meditation timer, visit the FREE Download page of the Web site in the Resource section, or simply click on the image. Follow the installation instructions based on whether you have a PC or Mac.

What sounds do you find spiritually, mentally, and bodily renewing throughout your day?

In 2008, several participants in the annual Spiritual Directors International events in Washington, DC, convened the first meeting of the Spiritual Directors of Color Network. The network has continued to grow, and now includes people of color from throughout the African diaspora, including the United States, Nigeria, Cameroon, and South Africa, as well as Latin America, India, and Korea. The network is hosting its first international teleconference on Saturday, July 11, 2009, at 10 AM EDST. If you are a person of color in the ministry and practice of spiritual direction and would like to be on the call, contact Therese Taylor-Stinson at taylorstinson[at]earthlink[dot]net.

 

The Rev. Dr. Rebecca Smith Ritchey wrote in response to the June Membership Moments:

My dissertation is finished and approved! Graduation was held at San Francisco Theological Seminary, San Anselmo, California, USA, on May 23, 2009 and it helped make the completion of the Doctor of Ministry Degree officially real! Also there was a graduate receiving his PhD in Spirituality at SFTS, who is from Korea. We discovered that we were together and chatted at the Spiritual Directors International annual events in Washington, DC last year. Talk about "syncronicity"

Congratulations to Rebecca and to all the people graduating from ministry programs and receiving certificates of completion from spiritual director formation programs.

“Are you laughing enough?” my doctor asked me during my annual physical exam. After feeling my pulse and listening to my lungs, she continued, “People in helping roles need to laugh a lot, especially ministers.” She looked me straight in the eyes, “So I am giving you a prescription to laugh at least fifteen minutes every day. It’s what you need to stay healthy.” I smiled in agreement before opening my mouth to say, “Ahhh.”

When I told Sister Anna Rourke, CSJP my doctor’s prescription, Anna laughed aloud with delight. In her cheerful Irish brogue Anna said, “It is God’s greatest blessing to laugh. It’s a way of giving it all to God, a way of trusting deeply.” As spiritual directors, we need to nurture a light heartedness in ourselves and in each other, particularly during difficult times. Perhaps we also need to encourage the people we spiritually companion to laugh more often. 

Knock, knock. Who’s there? Anna. Anna who? Anna body know some more jokes?

The Global Day of Prayer is celebrated by millions of Christians every year on Pentecost Sunday. This year, GOD TV will broadcast the marathon events from locations around the world.

Hosted by GOD TV founders Rory & Wendy Alec in the network’s studio in the US capital, the three-part programme will air on GOD EUROPE on Sunday 31 May with live satellite crossings to Hong Kong at 8.00 BST and Abidjan in the Ivory Coast live at 16.00. The day’s coverage concludes at 22.00 with a final programme from the city of Bela Horizonte in Brazil, recorded earlier in the day.

Click here to read the entire story on the Christian Today Web site.

On May 24, 2009, we invite everyone to reflect upon the gifts and challenges inherent in new technologies and relationships as Roman Catholics celebrate the 43rd World Communications Day. As our world becomes increasingly connected, we realize the ministry of spiritual direction receives gifts and challenges through technology and new relationships fostered by technology. This is important in our own story, in the lives of those we companion, for communities, and everyone on the margins.

The 2009 theme for the 43rd World Communications Day provides valuable reflection and challenge: "New Technologies, New Relationships. Promoting a Culture of Respect, Dialogue and Friendship." Pope Benedict XVI writes:

World Communications Day, I would like to address to you some reflections on the theme chosen for this year—New Technologies, New Relationships: Promoting a culture of Respect, Dialogue and Friendship. The new digital technologies are, indeed, bringing about fundamental shifts in patterns of communication and human relationships. These changes are particularly evident among those young people who have grown up with the new technologies and are at home in a digital world that often seems quite foreign to those of us who, as adults, have had to learn to understand and appreciate the opportunities it has to offer for communications. In this year’s message, I am conscious of those who constitute the so-called digital generation and I would like to share with them, in particular, some ideas concerning the extraordinary potential of the new technologies, if they are used to promote human understanding and solidarity. These technologies are truly a gift to humanity and we must endeavour to ensure that the benefits they offer are put at the service of all human individuals and communities, especially those who are most disadvantaged and vulnerable.

 

Growing numbers of Jews are choosing to express their spiritual values through culinary consciousness, according to an article by Mary MacVean and Duke Helfand in the Los Angeles Times.

The movement has become so popular in recent years that synagogues increasingly are forging relationships with farmers, farm education programs are starting up and Jewish "sustainability" conferences are attracting sold-out crowds. At a three-day gathering in Northern California in December, volunteers even learned how to kill, pluck, salt and rinse their own turkeys.

"Food is the most intimate relationship we have to the nonhuman world," said Zelig Golden, a San Francisco lawyer who co-chaired that gathering. It was the third food conference sponsored by Hazon, a New York-based environmental organization that in 2004 branched out into food issues. It has since become the primary force behind many programs in the sustainability movement—an effort to use natural resources responsibly to avoid depleting them.

To read the entire article, click here.

Want to build a better brain? Ramp up your spiritual practice, says Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania. Meditation and prayer can improve your physical, intellectual, and emotional well-being and may even slow the brain's aging process.

Read the rest of this article by David Ian Miller in the San Francisco Chronicle about how one's view of God affects the brain. Click here.

Sacred Is the Call: The Transformational Work of Spiritual Direction Programs for Personal and Professional Growth is now available in Korean. Presented by Mercy Center, a leading spiritual direction program in the U.S., this handbook addresses how spiritual direction leaders can present key topics and also provides wise guidance for individual seekers. Contributors include such luminaries as Mary Ann Scofield, RSM, Jim Neafsey, and Don Bisson. Topics include contemplative listening, discernment, sexuality, and others. Each contribution features reflection questions and suggestions for further reading.

On the Walking the Rite Way blog from England, Ken O. writes about his experience of the Holy Fire Ceremonies in Jerusalem in 1988:

 

 

I came down to find the church packed with people. There was a real sense of carnival singing, dancing, drum-beating. Each one present carrying bunches of candles, often in carrier bags to be brought back home and distributed to friends and neighbours alike. When the official chant began a deep silence descended on the crowd. The Patriarchs entered the Tomb and the door of the tomb was closed. Everyone stretched out their hands, full of candles, towards the tomb of Christ. The silence was pregnant with expectation and profoundly moving – one of those extended moments which lasted, in reality for three or four minutes, but stretched into eternity and like Jacob’s ladder of old moved between heaven and earth. Then the door of the tomb opened and the Greek Patriarch emerged with a lighted torch and the words CHRIST IS RISEN. Words taken up by the whole group shouting Christ is Risen. The light passed to runners who circled the church three times, everyone trying to stop them to have their own candles lit – and within moments the interior of the church which was in darkness became bright with the light of Christ. Eventually the doors of the Holy Sepulchre were opened and the light entered the square. The shout went up even higher ‘Christ is Risen’.

To read the entire post, click here.

Thank you Rabbi Shawn Zevit who reminds us to be thankful of the sun today, Wednesday, April 8, in a special way as Passover begins. Here’s more from Newsday:

As observant Jews prepare for the beginning of the eight-day Passover celebration tonight, some will pause this morning to recite the least frequently spoken prayer in Judaism. It is a ritual that comes around only once every 28 years, one that commemorates the sun's return to the place in the firmament where, according to the Book of Genesis, God created it on the fourth day.

This year's confluence of Passover and the sun's commemoration is particularly rare - marking only the 12th occurrence in the 5,769-year-old Jewish calendar.

"There is something special about celebrating the beginning of the Jewish people coming out of Egypt and the Wednesday of the sun's creation," said Rabbi Anchelle Perl, of Congregation Beth Shalom Chabad, in Mineola.

To read more

And more from Rabbi Zevit who prayed with the sunrise from Ohio, USA today:

“We had about 70 or more people join us in the dark at 6:30am in snow-covered Cleveland, the clouds were there, and just at 6:58am, the local time for the actual blessing moment, the clouds lifted in the horizon to reveal a bright orange/yellow swatch of sun- the first time in 3 days anyone had seen it here- it was fantastic and now the skies are clear! May this continue to be the way we move through the dark into the light, embracing the dark with the light.”

For more resources about this special Jewish year

A fool sees not the same tree

that a wise man sees.

                          -- William Blake

Happy April Fool’s Day!

Did you know that being a fool for God is what brands us as spiritual directors? We are foolish enough to ask repeatedly,
“Where is God in this situation?”
“What is the sacred aspect of what is happening?”
“From a spiritual perspective, what’s going on?”
We are so foolish that even when we cannot easily see God, we keep looking for God’s fingerprints.

When the people we companion suffer from illness, lose their jobs, or find they are suddenly homeless – even when they don’t see how God could possibly be in their state of affairs – we don’t give up. We foolishly trust that God is present. Blindly sometimes, we compassionately encourage the people we companion to keep feeling around in the dark. Or to start sniffing around until they whiff God’s scent. We foolishly believe God’s presence will be palpable, knowable, and recognizable – if only a fleeting glimpse or scant scent. With foolish patience and sacred searching, we dare our spiritual companions to keep their eyes and hearts open for a peek at grace. With foolhardy ears, we keep listening.

Not only does this foolishness brand us as spiritual directors, it binds us. Together we foolishly trust that seeking God makes a difference not only in our own lives, but also in the lives of the people we serve. Boldly we believe that being fools for God contributes to peace and justice in our world, not only among people, but also for all creation. Humbly and gratefully we admit that God is in charge and worthy of our trust. How foolish is that!  

Liz Ellmann, MDiv 

Watch a video interview of Richard Rohr, OFM, as he discusses how spiritual direction contributes to peace. He also answers questions about who the next generation of spiritual directors will be. Thank you to Spiritual Directors International member Tara Owens for creating the interview.

"The developing of spiritual directors is at the heart of the renewal of Christianity and all religions. Keep doing it!”     

     --Richard Rohr, OFM

Judy Romero-Oak and Rhoda Parker

Spiritual direction is usually considered an ancient practice. Today, it is being rediscovered in the emerging culture that is changing every religion, including the church. According to speakers and church leaders at the Emerging Church conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, a deeper spiritual consciousness is springing up. According to author and speaker Brian McLaren:

We need to restore contemplation to “know” God. We need to bring back the contemplative practices of spiritual formation and social justice. It’s been amazing for me in my travels to meet so many pastors and other leaders for whom spiritual direction has become an important part of their spiritual lives. I think we need a growing corps (and core) of trained people for whom spiritual direction is a primary vocation.

Shane Claiborne, who is helping organize emerging communities around the world, said the young generation of emergents are recognizing their need for deeper spiritual training. “We are recognizing that we need help,” said Claiborne. “We need some seventy-year-olds living in our communities for spiritual direction, spiritual disciplines.”

The emerging church is part of the Great Emergence which is the cultural, technological, global, economic and spiritual movement that is affecting all of civilization. No one started it, but we are all part of it.

 “We have been set up for the contemplative mind,” said Fr. Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest who founded the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque. “We have, however, become the dualistic mind. We have left to will power what should be out of the flow of non-dualistic thinking.” The Center for Action and Contemplation sponsored the conference March 20-22.

New Mexico spiritual directors hosted a table of information on spiritual direction, and the Seek and Find Guide for people seeking a director. Questions included, what is spiritual direction, and how do I find someone who can help me understand and develop my spiritual life? Many were interested in becoming a spiritual director.

This listening ministry of spiritual direction must be ready to hear what is emerging wherever and in whoever it appears.