Connect with a Spiritual Director
Call 650-340-7474 or send an email to Sister Jean Evans, RSM.
Contemplative Listening is a hallmark of our approach to spiritual direction.
Call 650-340-7474 or send an email to Sister Jean Evans, RSM.
Sr. Mary Ann Scofield, RSM, a pioneer in the teaching of spiritual direction, left these words that can guide those on the path of seeking a spiritual director:
“The major premises that underlie spiritual direction are disarmingly simple: namely, that God is active in our lives, constantly taking the initiative; that God’s actions are unrelentingly loving (which is not to say always easy or comforting but, rather, always on the side of our deepest desires); that we can experience these actions of God, can sense the movements of God’s Spirit; and that we can respond to these movements either with willingness or with resistance.
Spiritual direction at its best entirely focuses on helping the directee to become attentive to the presence, action, and movements of God in ordinary human experiences, and on noticing the directee’s own responses to these movements of the Holy. Whatever content the direction conversation may hold, however many interesting twists and turns and diverse paths it takes, the director listens for one thing only. The director “tunes in” like a person fiddling carefully with a radio dial, spinning from one music clip to another, one fragment of speech to the next, until “Aha, this is it!”: the director recognizes the presence of God in the conversation, and then helps the directee to explore further what has occurred or is occurring.”
Excerpted from:
Buckley, Suzanne editor; Sacred is the Call- Formation and Transformation in Spiritual Direction Programs. Chp 5 (Crossroad Publishing Co 2005)