Recently I was honored to serve as a keynote speaker for the graduation ceremony for a new cohort of spiritual directors, who have completed the Spiritual Direction formation program sponsored by Unity Worldwide Ministries (you can check out this program at www.unityspiritualdirection.org). I teach a course on mystical spirituality as part of their program, and was truly honored and delighted when the 2025 cohort asked me to speak at their graduation ceremony.
Here’s what I had to say…
As I was thinking about what I’d like to share with you tonight, my intuition guided me to begin on a personal note, so I’d like to share a little bit about my own journey with the wonderful ministry of Spiritual Direction.
I have been meeting with a spiritual directer since 1984 — more than forty years now. My first spiritual director was old enough to be my grandmother, and my current director, with whom I have been meeting since 2019, is the first one I’ve worked with who is actually younger than I am. Along the way I have met with clergy and lay people, men and women, Catholics and Episcopalians and Methodists and members of other church communities, a couple of Trappist monks, and a Tibetan Buddhist. Each one has been unique and brought their own personality and flair to our spiritual companionship, but what they all shared in common was a wonderful spirit of compassion and curiosity, along with a capacity for deep, attentive, contemplative listening.
When I met with my first spiritual director, back when Ronald Reagan was president and Taylor Swift had not yet been born, I was an awkward, anxiety-ridden young adult trying to make sense of a powerful mystical awakening I had experienced a few years earlier. Like many young adults, I was suspicious of religion and vague in my understanding of spirituality. I also had no spiritual practice or discipline to speak of. In the many years that followed, spiritual directors and guides have been there at several key moments in my life: one spiritual director gently referred me to counseling, another one recommended that I make retreats at a Trappist monastery, and yet another encouraged me as I haltingly worked on what would eventually become my first book.
Perhaps most important of all, my spiritual companions supported and encouraged me as I slowly deconstructed my toxically patriarchal and angry image of God that I inherited from the ultra-conservative church of my childhood, replacing that with an image of God as the lavish and kind Divine Lover, who woos me gently and beguiles me to move ever more deeply into the infinite ocean of limitness grace and joyful, unconditional compassion.
I would not be overstating the case to say that Spiritual Direction saved my life — or at the very least, it shaped me, formed me, and helped me to become the writer, teacher, and spiritual director that I myself am today.
Now it is time for each of you to explore how you can make a similar impact in the lives of those you accompany. I know that some of you are already in amazing ministries, deeply engaged in serving your community with good cheer and kind regard. Others may be relatively new to this world of one-on-one companionship. Either way, you have now completed your studies through a splendid program of learning and formation that has equipped you to engage in one of life’s most sacred trusts: the care of souls.
The people who come to you will each be unique, radically so. Their stories will be unique, as will be their wounds, their trauma, their hopes and desires, and their image of the Divine. Some will be deeply engaged in a church or other faith community; others may be survivors of spiritual abuse or high control religion, who manifest love most clearly by staying as far away from institutional religion as they can. And there will be all sorts of shades in between.
And one day you will find yourself listening to the story of an amazing person whose faith, spiritual maturity, and indeed mystical wisdom will blow you away, and you may think to yourself, “I have nothing to give to this person, they should be directing me.” When that happens, please know that your calling is to listen carefully, respond compassionately, ask questions that open up the conversation to deeper reflection, and only sparingly share bits of yourself as you seek to keep the energy focused on their magnificent relationship with Divinity. For you see, the Spirit is the ultimate Director. You are simply there to assist.
Now, you knew I couldn’t get through this talk without quoting at least one mystic, right? So let me quote Julian of Norwich, who said that God showed her “true prayer, and steady trust, and wants us to be generous in both alike.” Such deep wisdom!
When I reflect on those words of Julian’s, I believe they reveal to us a beautiful, interconnected spiritual dynamic that is available to any person at any time — and is a wonderful insight into the ministry of spiritual accompaniment. Julian is basically telling us that in the spiritual life, the qualities of generosity and trust and spiritual practice go hand in hand. Let’s unpack this a bit.
We tend to associate generosity with material sharing: giving money to a worthy cause, or helping one of our adult children to buy their first house. And such expressions of lavish abundance certainly can be a powerful doorway into spiritual growth and boundless compassion. But the generosity that Julian is calling us to is, first and foremost, a spiritual generosity. Being generous with our time. Our attention. Our capacity for listening and care. Our willingness to hold sacred another person’s story and their hopes and dreams. Spiritual Companionship invites us to create and hold an intimate sacred space where we generously give our soul’s wisdom and presence to another. It is beautiful and powerful and can be deeply, deeply healing.
The second element Julian commends to us is prayer. If that particular word doesn’t resonate with you, then I invite you to consider it in a larger sense of spiritual practice. Prayer, or spiritual practice, is anything we do on a regular or disciplined basis to foster deeper soul unfolding and divine intimacy. It can be as simple as working with affirmations or touching base with Divine Wisdom before going to bed at night, or as complex and consuming as a robust daily meditation practice. It can also be manifested in how we love, care for, and serve others, including Mother Earth and especially those in need (which overlaps, of course, with generosity).
Spirituality can be a lot like learning a musical instrument or going to the gym. Human beings already contain within themselves the genius that can manifest as a star athlete or guitar virtuoso. But just as those gifts are manifested slowly, as the result of sustained discipline, study and practice, so too the genius of the mystical life thrives best in a context of slow, steady, and stable spiritual practice. As spiritual directors, we lovingly support our directees as they seek to manifest their own mystical genius. It’s also important that we cultivate our own spiritual practice, honoring that it looks different for every person. Our job is not to copycat anyone else, but to find that deep place within ourselves where we express the singular masterpiece that is our “one wild and precious life,” as Mary Oliver puts it.
Finally, Julian of Norwich links generosity and spiritual practice together with trust. Such a beautiful and powerful word! Biblical teachings have been inviting us to Trust in the Lord for centuries now, and even our money keeps declaring that “In God We Trust.” But what do we mean when we speak of trust? What does that look like, and how does it manifest in the life of spiritual direction?
Here are a few thoughts. I believe we are invited to express trust in at least three different ways.
First of all, we are invited to trust in the Spirit. Carl Jung famously said, “Bidden or unbidden, God is present.” We can paraphrase this: Whether you feel it or not, the Spirit is at work in your heart and the heart of your directee. It is the same Spirit, and she is the one who has brought you two together.
Trust the Spirit to lead your conversations. Trust the Spirit to help you find the right words, and the right questions, and perhaps more importantly, to know when to be quiet. Trust the Spirit that she is continually guiding both you and your directee to your individual and collective highest Good.
Next, trust your directees. Your directees walk a different path than yours. You will not see eye to eye on many things. You will have different life rhythms, and different God-languages. Your directees have the important task of learning to trust you, and so you need to be trustworthy and patient during that process. Allow your directees to set the pace, the level of intimacy, and the language of your relationship. The best spiritual direction relationships take time to reach the fullness of their depth and the height of their flight. Trust your directee’s part in that process.
And finally, trust yourself. You are an amazing person and you have been fearfully and wonderfully made in the Divine image and likeness. You are so beautiful and so wise. Your heart is a direct portal to the deepest mysteries of the universe. Will you make mistakes as a spiritual director? If you’re anything like me, the answer is yes. But we make mistakes in all areas of our lives: in our marriages and with our children and in our careers and ministry. Learn from your mistakes and trust your peer group to support you as you grow. But always, trust yourself. Trust your capacity to truly show up for this amazing person who is revealing their soul to you. Then take a breath, be present, and allow the miracle of spiritual direction to unfold for you, hour after meaningful and mystical hour.
Congratulations, class of 2025! You’re the best. In the words of St. Ignatius of Loyola, speaking in a spiritual metaphor of course: “Go out there, and set the world on fire!”
Visit www.anamchara.com/spiritual-direction/ to learn more about my ministry of spiritual direction/companionship.
