Rosh Hashanah blessings!

To celebrate Rosh Hashanah, Spiritual Directors International announces the newest SDI You Tube video in the "Spiritual Directors International Learns From ..." series!

Rabbi Ted Falcon offers guidance to everyone in this new YouTube video about Jewish Spiritual Direction.

Rabbi Falcon talks about Torah as a paradigm for spiritual awakening, and spiritual direction as a place for doubts and questions to be explored. "The real challenge is to become peace."

Rabbi Ted Falcon has been a teacher and student of Jewish meditation for over thirty years.

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

View additional YouTube videos in the SDI learns from ... series.

September 16, 2009:
Spiritual Directors International is featured in The New York Times magazine article, "The Right Way to Pray?" by Zev Chafets!

Read Chafets' experience of spiritual direction, four ways to pray- "Gimme!" "Thanks!" "Oops!" and "Wow!", along with insightful interviews and reflections.

Article quotes to tickle your interest:

• Quoting Joy Carol, an Anglican spiritual director, Chafets writes: “I would hope that you would find yourself moving to a deeper level of questions, insights, spiritual growth, and with that a yearning for the Presence of the Divine. Prayer would naturally be a part of the process — and we would work out a way for you to pray that would fit your style of life and your unique spiritual journey."

• “People once learned to pray from priests and ministers and rabbis,” Liz Ellmann, executive director of Spiritual Directors International, told me.

• "After 90 minutes of spiritual discussion, the sun was sinking over Broadway, a sure sign that my time was almost up. “What do I do now?” I asked. “Just ask yourself: ‘What is really meaningful to me in my life? Is there something I’m longing for?’ Let it roll around in your brain. If you would like to come back, you’re very welcome to.”

• “I’m saying that techniques can make a difference,” Rabbi Gellman said. “Like wrapping yourself in a prayer shawl if you want to shut out the world. But really, when you come right down to it, there are only four basic prayers. Gimme! Thanks! Oops! and Wow!”

• “What about adults who want to learn to pray?”

• “Prayer is like other activities,” the Rev. Daniel Henderson told me when we met at the tabernacle the week before Easter. He was visiting Brooklyn with a group of seminary students from Virginia. “You learn from people who are already good at it,” he went on."

• "Catholic prayer has not only become more accessible to the laity, it seems; it has also become more private and personal. Janet Ruffing, a member of the Sisters of Mercy, is the director of Fordham’s program on spirituality and spiritual direction. “In America, among Roman Catholics, roughly 80 percent of those doing pastoral ministry in Catholic parishes are women,” she says. “Women religious have been very active in promoting deeper contemplative, mystical prayer. Until Vatican II, that was reserved for the very few. Now it is becoming the ordinary expectation for people with a regular prayer life.”"

• "There are some 300,000 churches in America, and I could have picked any one to attend on Easter morning, but I liked being in this one. Especially the kids. They didn’t need Reverend Henderson’s prayer techniques, or the high-tech mantras of the Brooklyn Tabernacle. Their prayers weren’t Rabbi Gellman’s suburban Jewish prayers of Thanks! offered to whom it may concern. They didn’t pray to de-center their egos or find transcendence or to set off on a lifelong therapeutic spiritual journey. They prayed to a God with whom they were on a first-name basis, and they believed their prayers gave them power, which they used on behalf of their asthmatic sisters and infirm grandparents and a kid they knew with burns on his body."

Click here to read The New York Times magazine article, "The Right Way to Pray?" by Zev Chafets.

Please share your comments in the SDI blog.

The Shack
by Wm. Paul Young in collaboration with Wayne Jacobsen and Brad Cummings
Windblown Media, 2007 252 pages

When I read The Shack this summer I felt affectionately connected to God—in myself, in creation, in other people, and on high. Not new feelings but renewed feelings. I’d resisted reading it in part because it was all the rage and I’m cynical about the tastes of the masses, and in part because I’d heard it was evangelical propaganda full of biblical literalism and not for sophisticated progressives who take the bible seriously but not literally, like my image of myself. And in part because a one of my favorite parishioners, an African American who grew up in Sierra Leone wasn't sure about it and asked me to read it. The lovely irony of this will become clear when you read the book.

The Shack is a parable, a wisdom tale designed to startle and reveal something new. The story is about a father’s spiritual trip, and I say trip, because it is not a steadfast faith journey that evolves and matures over time with trust and prayer. It’s a crisis trip, an internal psychological and spiritual conversion of soul and mood: from a life of grim plodding, possessed by grief, laden with a habit of gloom larger than Eeyore’s to a life full of joy grounded in wisdom not rapture. Isn't that what everyone who prays desires? The plot isn’t complicated. It’s a reiteration of the story of the biblical Job, the good guy who is struck by more personal tragedy than anyone should have to bear and asks, Why? Job is far more dramatic in his impatient refusal to let go of the besetting question about why bad things happen to good people than is Mackenzie Alan Phillips in The Shack who has sunken into a faith of empty duty and spiritual deadness—until he gets an odd invitation in the mail.

Isn't this essentially the plot of everyone who seeks divine consolation in prayer and come for guidance into spiritual direction?

The ideas in this book aren’t new: God in three persons, God who meets us and loves us at the center of our pain, Jesus in living color. It’s evangelical Christian propaganda as I’d feared. What is new is that the theological ideas are wrapped, often not too tightly, in personal narrative, someone’s experience filled with characters you can fall in love with, identify with, care about. You keep reading even though you think you can guess what might happen. To Christian's the story is the one we hear in Church every Sunday and then some—with a twist. One of the novel’s central characters is God-relating-to-God. Hey, don’t you have inner dialogues? But are yours all filled with mutual respect and love—and good boundaries? The gift of his book is that it gives readers a new image of God, not an abstraction or doctrine but as characters in a novel, drawn with sympathy and color, characters that sustain the narrative, characters you want to know. That’s new and it is charming. Here is a God-image easy to see and to trust in prayer. What makes The Shack not really a good novel is that its plot is weak, the writing not very creative, the dramatic action not suspenseful but forced into the service of an agenda, the solutions contrived, the wisdom un-nuanced. The plot quickly takes second place to the agenda of the author and collaborators with just enough change of scene to keep you going. What starts as a story turns into a sermon, embarrassingly preachy in spots, especially near the end when a clear Christian refrain shows up uninvited. I cringed.

My Jewish blood also curdled in a couple of places that were unnecessarily anti-semitic and insulting to the Hebrew scriptures. The story doesn’t carry its own weight throughout. As I’d feared it is also biblical literalism thinly disguised. Why am I not in a rant? Disgusted? I don’t know. I just got into the scene, the relationships, corny but alluring, often followed up with a tidbit of irresistible wisdom like the Eden myth question: “Rumors of glory are often hidden inside what many consider myths and tales.” Or the human soul as a living fractal—wild, messy always in process, patterns emerging, alive, growing and needing constant tending. Jesus takes Mack on a walk across the water. I giggled with them as they stepped off the dock, carrying their socks and shoes and rolling up their pants just in case. This and other biblical scenarios are simply portrayed without fanfare. They’re just acted out in character. Who cares if they actually happened? It is not fact that inspires faith but warmth. Do we spiritual directors at our best not risk walking on the water with our directees?

The Shack is vulnerable, open to all kinds of scholarly nitpicking, literary scorn, religious defensiveness, much of it justified. But does it work anyway? I think it does for one reason only: the characters are loveable, charming, their voices convincing. You want more. You fall in love. You want this kind of love, this kind of God. I wonder if that is why this book is so popular. It allows us to fall in love, to be as a child, to let go of proofs, to enjoy a story that touches our humanity at its most vulnerable and presents an ancient Christian insight in new garb.

The Shack is also fragile because it is a bridge, a string bridge to be sure, but a bridge nevertheless between wherever evangelical Christianity on the "right" and wherever liberal or progressive Christianity is on the "left". To cross this bridge will take more than reading one book. But The Shack invites us to start. Coming together will take courage and trust in the long slow work of God as we traverse with care, holding hands and watching where we place our feet.

Is this not the ministry of spiritual direction? Is this not the vulnerability that happens in prayer? If this book does nothing else it give us fresh dynamic language and imagery for divinity and goes a long way to balance transcendent and immanent, love and freedom, revelation and psychology. This is evangelical Christianity in its loveliest form.

Reviewer: Lyn G. Brakeman is an Episcopal priest and the author of two books Spiritual Lemons and The God Between Us, and a blog.

The day after tragedy strikes, we awaken to a new world and begin to deal with the aftermath. Last weekend, I visited friends in New York City. I worked with one of them on Wall Street during my twenties, and she still works in the financial markets. I was moved by the resiliency in my friends and in the city.

We all have the capacity to respond with peace. Meeting regularly with a spiritual director helps us learn how to respond with a grateful, peaceful heart, even when tragedy strikes. We learn to appreciate the opportunity to practice becoming a peacemaker every day. No matter what happens, we can develop the capacity to pray for peace, and to respond with peace. The greater act is peace.
 
May these prayers of peace help us become people of peace, one step at a time.

AFRICAN NATIVE PRAYER FOR PEACE
Almighty God, the Great Thumb we cannot evade to tie any knot; the Roaring Thunder that splits mighty trees; the all-seeing Lord up on high who sees even the footprints of an antelope on a rock mass here on Earth. You are the one who does not hesitate to respond to our call. You are the cornerstone of peace.
 
BAHAI' PRAYER FOR PEACE
Be generous in prosperity, and thankful in adversity. Be fair in they judgment, and guarded in thy speech. Be a lamp unto those who walk in darkness, and a home to the stranger. Be eyes to the blind, and a guiding light unto the feet of the erring. Be a breath of life to the body of humankind, a dew to the soil of the human heart, and a fruit upon the tree of humility.
 
BUDDHIST PRAYER FOR PEACE
May all beings everywhere plagued with sufferings of body and mind quickly be free from their illnesses. May those frightened cease to be afraid, and may those bound be free. May the powerless find power, and may people think of befriending one another. May those who find themselves in trackless, fearful wildernesses--the children, the aged, the unprotected--be guarded by beneficent celestials, and may they swiftly attain Buddhahood.

CHRISTIAN PRAYER FOR PEACE
Blessed are the PEACEMAKERS, for they shall be known as the Children of God. But I say to you that hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To those who strike you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from those who take away your cloak, do not withhold your coat as well. Give to everyone who begs from you, and of those who take away your goods, do not ask them again. And as you wish that others would do to you do, do so to them."

FIRST NATIONS NATIVE AMERICAN PRAYER FOR PEACE
Oh Great Spirit of our Ancestors, I raise my pipe to you. To your messengers the four winds, and to Mother Earth who provides for your children. Give us the wisdom to teach our children to love, to respect, and to be kind to each other so that they may grow with peace in mind. Let us learn to share all the good things that you provide for us on this Earth.

HINDU PRAYER FOR PEACE
Oh God, lead us from the unreal to the Real. Oh God, lead us from darkness to light. Oh God, lead us from death to immortality. Shanti, Shanti, Shanti unto all. Oh Lord God almighty, may there be peace in celestial regions. May there be peace on earth. May the waters be appeasing, May herbs be wholesome, and may trees and plants bring peace to all. May all beneficent beings bring peace to us. May thy Vedic Law propagate peace all through the world. May all things be a source of peace to us. And may thy peace itself bestow peace on all, and may that peace come to me also.

JAINIST PRAYER FOR PEACE
Peace and Universal Love is the essence of the Gospel preached by all the Enlightened Ones. The Lord has preached that equanimity is the Dharma. Forgive do I creatures all, and let all creatures forgive me. Unto all have I amity, and unto none enmity. Know that violence is the root cause of all miseries in the world. Violence, in fact, is the knot of bondage. "Do not injure any living being." This is the eternal, perennial, and unalterable way of spiritual life. A weapon howsoever powerful it may be, can always be superseded by a superior one; but no weapon can, however, be superior to non-violence and love.

JEWISH PRAYER FOR PEACE
Come let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, that we may walk the paths of the Most High. And we shall beat our swords into ploughshares and our spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation--neither shall they learn war any more. And none shall be afraid, for the mouth of the Lord of Hosts has spoken.

MUSLIM PRAYER FOR PEACE
In the name of Allah, the beneficent, the merciful. Praise be to the Lord of the Universe who has created us and made us into tribes and nations, that we may know each other, not that we may despise each other. If the enemy incline toward peace, do thou also incline toward peace, and trust in God, for the Lord is the one that heareth and knoweth all things. And the servants of God, Most Gracious are those who walk on the Earth in humility, and when we address, them, we say "PEACE."
 
SHINTO PRAYER FOR PEACE
"Although the people living across the ocean surrounding us, I believe, are all our brothers and sisters, why are there constant troubles in this world? Why do winds and waves rise in the ocean surrounding us? I only earnestly wish that the wind will soon puff away all the clouds which are hanging over the tops of the mountains."

SIKH PRAYER FOR PEACE
"God adjudges us according to our deeds, not the coat that we wear: that Truth is above everything, but higher still is truthful living." Know that we attaineth God when we loveth, and only that victory endures in consequence of which no one is defeated.
 
ZOROASTRIAN PRAYER FOR PEACE
We pray to God to eradicate all the misery in the world: that understanding triumph over ignorance, that generosity triumph over indifference, that trust triumph over contempt, and that truth triumph over falsehood.

To learn more:
PEACE SEEDS
Peace Seeds represent the 12 prayers for peace prayed in Assisi, Italy, on the Day of Prayer for World Peace during the United Nations International Year of Peace, 1986. Distribution of the prayers is encouraged.

If you have a favorite prayer for peace or hope for peace, please add it to the Reply section below.

Many thanks to the hard work and deep prayer that was offered by the volunteer servant leaders of Spiritual Directors International, known as the Coordinating Council.

To learn more about the people in the picture, Jinks Hoffmann, David Liedl, TOR; Miriam Frey; Christopher McCauley; Sally Taylor; and Terry Moran, CSSR; visit the servant leadership pages of Spiritual Directors International.

Please pray in gratitude for the members of the Coordinating Council. If you would like to offer your gratefulness for their service by writing a note, you are welcome to add a comment.

In a world hungry for prayer and peace, do you seek spiritual direction or a compassionate listener?

Learn how to use the online Seek and Find: A Worldwide Resource Guide of Available Spiritual Directors in just one hour! It’s simple!

RSVP for the September 15, 2009 Teleconference.

From the ease of your own telephone, discover practical steps to locate and interview a spiritual director. Learn good questions to ask yourself as you begin this process.

A Spiritual Directors International FREE Teleconference
September 15, 2009 12:00-1:00 EDT; 4:00-5:00 GMT/UTC
Topic: “How to Seek and Find a Spiritual Director”

WHO: Everyone interested in learning how to seek and find a spiritual director or guide.
WHAT: A one hour FREE teleconference. Your only cost is the telephone call.
WHEN: September 15, 2009 12:00-1:00 EDT; 4:00-5:00 GMT/UTC (To calculate 12:00 EDT; 4:00 GTU  in your time zone click here: www.timeanddate.com)
WHERE: Location of your choice, using your telephone.
WHY: Discover practical steps to locate and interview a spiritual director. Learn good questions to ask yourself as you begin this process. Find out about new and updated features in Seek and Find: A Worldwide Resource Guide of Available Spiritual Directors - the first-ever comprehensive, global listing of available spiritual directors.

RSVP for the September 15, 2009 Teleconference.

Future Teleconference Dates
September 15, 2009 12:00 EDT; 4:00 GMT/UTC
November 10, 2009 12:00 EST; 5:00 GMT/UTC
January 12, 2010 12:00 EST; 5:00 GMT/UTC
May 11, 2010 12:00 EDT; 4:00 GMT/UTC 

I discovered two new things during my annual silent retreat: a little bit of anchovy on pizza tastes great, and joy lives in the heart of God.  

As I was driving to the Whidbey Institute for the retreat, I stopped for dinner. “Would you like anchovies on your pizza?” the waiter asked. I paused. Seated at a table by myself, no family member or friend was there to hold their nose and say, “Heck no. Hold the anchovies.” In that instance, my retreat began. Do I want to go with the familiar, or move into the new? Stepping out of my comfort zone, I answered, “Yes, please. Include some anchovies.” And you know what? I liked the salty, savory, slightly fishy taste. Even more importantly, I enjoyed discovering something new. Unearthing new joys became the theme of the retreat.

Meeting daily with a gentle and wise spiritual director helped me clear space to notice how choosing the familiar can become an unhealthy habit, even in prayer. My spiritual director gave me permission to “stoke the fires of joy,” when my tendency in a world of war, poverty, and unemployment is to worry and despair. She offered a quote from David Spangler that I found particularly helpful, “Joy is a quality that by its nature reaches out to more than just ourselves. It enlarges us, expands us, gives us a reason to keep on living and striving … Joy does not lead me to escape. It leads me to embrace the world with all its suffering and all its wonder and creative powers.” 

God surprised me daily with little joys like anchovies, and big joys like the felt sense of the heart of God: not only holding the suffering of the world, but also the deepest, sweetest, and saltiest joy. 

Do you have a story about how you cultivate joy in your life and in your spiritual direction ministry and service? Please share your story by offering comments in the reply section of the blog.

Spiritual Directors International offers educational videos aimed at the general public to tell the story of spiritual direction, which is also known as spiritual companionship, spiritual guidance, spiritual accompaniment.

Do you seek spiritual direction or compassionate listener? Are you asking ...

• Where do I start?
• Why is a spiritual director or guide important?
  
• How do I choose someone to contact?

The video "How to Seek and Find a Spiritual Director with Pegge Bernecker" answers questions about how to find a spiritual director, step by step. Please share this video with your colleagues, local religious and spiritual institutions, hospital, organizations that offer spiritual care; seekers, family, friends, students, and everyone seeking a spiritual director or guide.

Pegge Bernecker lives on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska, USA. She is an author, spiritual director, and the editor of Listen: A Seekers Resource for Spiritual Direction, a FREE publication from Spiritual Directors International.

Additional resources you may find helpful:

•  Seek and Find: A Worldwide Resource Guide of Available Spiritual Directors is an online, comprehensive, global listing of more than 5,000 spiritual directors and guides. Using interactive Google maps, you can search anywhere in the world.

• FREE one hour Spiritual Directors International Teleconference “How to Seek and Find a Spiritual Director” November 10, 2009 at 12:00 EST; 5:00 GMT/UTC. To learn more, view additional teleconference dates, or RSVP, click here.

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

Spiritual Directors International offers educational videos aimed at the general public to tell the story of spiritual direction, which is also known as spiritual companionship, spiritual guidance, spiritual accompaniment.

Kristen Hobby is a spiritual director living in Melbourne, Australia. Kristen describes formal as well as informal spiritual guidance and answers the question, "Who would benefit from spiritual direction?"

Therese Taylor-Stinson is a Presbyterian spiritual director living in the Washington, DC area. She answers questions, including, "Who do you speak with about extraordinary experiences of God?" and "How might we learn how to pray from African spiritual traditions?" 

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

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

As Muslims prepare for the holy month of Ramadan, we can reflect upon words from Spiritual Directors International member Sheikh Jamal Rahman. In 2009, Rahman, together with Kathleen Schmitt Elias, and Ann Holmes Redding authored the most recent book in the Spiritual Directors International imprint series, Out of Darkness, Into Light: Spiritual Guidance in the Quran with Reflections from Jewish and Christian Sources.

We learn:

In Islam, whose name means surrender to God, the central goal is to live our lives in the spirit of surrender to our Creator. Seekers of any religious tradition have a similar desire to achieve union with Divine Reality. Whether we call it surrender, redemption, union, or quest for inner freedom, the journey is the same. It is a lifelong adventure, and along the way there are many twists and turns, many opportunities to get lost or go astray. There are no maps to guide the human heart, but in every religion there are teachers and basic guidebooks—scriptures and sacred texts that point the way toward Mystery. In Islam, we have the Quran. We also have fourteen centuries of wisdom distilled from the Holy Book by Islamic sages, mystics, and teachers. From the Quran we learn, for instance, of the delights that we will enjoy in the Divine Presence if we have learned to bring our hearts “turned in devotion to God” (50:33), and from the thirteenth-century Sufi mystic Maulana Jelaluddin Rumi we learn what that devotion should look like. When a woman asked her lover if he loved her as much as he loved himself, he replied that his whole being was so full of her that there was nothing left of his own existence except his name. Feel toward God, Rumi says, as that lover felt toward his beloved.

To read more about Out of Darkness, Into Light, click here.

In preparation for the holy month of Ramadan, Maggie Galehouse reports for Houston Belief published by The Houston Chronicle:

The family looks forward to this time of spiritual and physical purification, and all generations are eager to help define it. Ramadan is a month of introspection, they say. A month of mercy, patience and self-discipline. A time to refrain from unkindness and dishonesty. “The whole point is to carry this behavior on beyond Ramadan, to raise your God consciousness,” said Aisha Jalali, who has five children with her husband, Waseem Ahmed.

To read the entire article, click here.

When we make a retreat, or simply live the details of our everyday life, a spiritual director can be a helpful companion.

Father Kent Hemberger, a member of Spiritual Directors International living in Wichita, Kansas, USA, is interviewed in the story, "Wichita Priest to Bring New Spiritual Direction to the Diocesan Spiritual Life Center." CNA: Catholic News Network reports:

"God’s voice isn’t always easy to recognize, especially when it comes in a whisper, or in the form of silence. That’s when a second, trained pair of ears, like Father Kent Hemberger’s, can help. ...

"Directed retreats for individuals follow Ignatian spirituality, which prefers to “Let God deal directly with the retreatant.” The compiler of the Spiritual Exercises, and a gifted spiritual director, St. Ignatius has been described by Pope Benedict XVI as being above all a man of God, who gave the first place of his life to God, and a man of profound prayer. “You see what the person comes to the retreat with and what they desire, and then allow the Holy Spirit to direct the retreat,” he said. “I meet with them every day and help them discern what God is trying to tell them in their personal lives. From what I hear, I then give suggestions for their prayer that day."

To read the entire article, click here.

One of the presents I received for my sixth birthday was Now We Are Six by A. A. Milne, a collection of poems. The poems were funny and several contained words that were unfamiliar. For example, "Sneezles" describes a physician's efforts to diagnose Christopher Robin's illness. The doctor wonders if Christopher Robin has sneezles or wheezles or reazles or even phtheezles. I remember laughing when I read "Sneezles" and I usually read the poem over and over again. However, my very favorite poem in the book was "Solitude." As a six year old with a very verbal two year old brother, I realized that my true inner self craved solitude "a place where I could go, where there is no one, but me." The need for silence and solitude continued as I grew and when I was an adult, I finally was able to create a designated place where I could have time alone--my desk. I inherited the desk from my younger daughter when she went to college. Since the desk is not an "elegant piece of furniture" I have decorated in ways to make it completely my own--I have taped scripture, a tiny picture my younger daughter drew, an e-mail from my older daughter, and a challenge from one of my pastor husband's sermons. There are paint marks from numerous projects--a small container for pens and pencils, rocks, paint brushes, prayer beads and my always open Bible. Everything that I do at my desk connects me to God--prayer, drawing, painting a picture, writing a story, quilting or embroidery. I also have an elevated view of the woods behind my house since my desk is on the second floor. I watch the trees blossom anew each spring and change color in the fall--the rhythm of the seasons and the 24 hour cycle of a day are natural rituals that provide daily nourishment. I cherish my special place which began in my heart decades ago and remains a "spot where I can go where there is no one else but me ... and God."

This spiritual direction meeting was different. I arrived as usual for my monthly visit with my spiritual director. Instead of sitting in a chair, she invited me for a walk around the neighborhood. It was spring, and I had been fretting about how to finance going to graduate school in theology in the fall.

My spiritual director asked some standard questions, “Where is God in the resistance?” and “What’s happening in your prayer life?” She listened attentively to my responses. Then she did something atypical. She invited me to walk very slowly and notice the trees in the neighborhood. In silence, we walked together, listening for God in a new way: in the breezes blowing through the budding branches. Actually, listening for God in the trees was not new at all. During that extraordinarily ordinary walk on a sidewalk around a city block, my soul reconnected with the way I bonded with God as a child in the woods behind our house.

Years after my first walking spiritual direction session –- during divinity school –- my spiritual director invited me to find a tree on campus and visit the tree regularly. This was another soul-tending invitation. Spending time with a big, old, oak tree taught me about God’s faithfulness and what it means to be related as children of God, no matter what. Silently visiting the oak tree helped me move from classroom head-learning of theology to my soul’s understanding of the value of spiritual direction for creating peace and understanding.

Fast forward to July 2009. Thirty-six people gathered at St. Michael’s College in Vermont, USA to learn about spiritual direction in the Abrahamic traditions. Muslim, Jewish, and Christian participants remembered our roots and stretched to learn from each other’s similarities and differences. Participants were invited to notice the trees on the beautiful campus. Verses from the Bible and Quran referring to trees, roots, and branches offered participants ancient words to nourish their souls. During a closing ritual, we planted a tree to commemorate our time together, “Building Bridges of Understanding.” Together we offered gratefulness for the opportunity to learn and grow. Who knows! Perhaps a future theology student will find soul sustenance from the serviceberry tree we planted.

Do you have a story about a favorite place or memory that nourishes the roots of your soul? Please share your story by offering comments in the reply section.

PHOTO: George Krol and Liz Mahoney add compost to the serviceberry tree planted on St. Michael's College campus in Colchester, Vermont.

Wil Hernandez, PhD, is an active member of Spiritual Directors International. A spiritual director, he is well known for his teaching and books focusing on the spiritual legacy of Henri Nouwen, an internationally renowned priest and author, respected professor and beloved pastor.

Offering insight in his July 29, 2009 blogpost, Hernandez writes:

As if to wipe out its rhetorical mist and in the process demystifying it, Nouwen—in his characteristic simplicity—boiled down his definition of spiritual direction to that of “direction given to people in their relationship with God.” God is the ultimate focus of spiritual direction. It is not just a one-on-one but a one-with-one encounter. For Nouwen, “a spiritual director simply was someone who talks to you and prays with you about your life.” Nouwen focused on this crucial component of prayer which is the lifeblood of any true spiritual direction relationship.

Hernandez further describes Nouwen: "He filled the oftentimes indistinguishable roles of a spiritual friend, a spiritual guide, a spiritual mentor, a spiritual director effortlessly. He was able to do so because this was precisely who he was—a well-integrated soul companion on life’s sacred journey."

Read the entire post on the Henri Nouwen Legacy blog site ...