Starting Anew

When people who are seeking a spiritual director phone me to set up that first meeting, I experience a wide range of thoughts and emotions. Having searched for a new spiritual director two times now, I have a sense of what is involved. So, let me describe that process of starting anew as spiritual companions.

I had been given the name of my first spiritual director by my therapist several weeks before I made that first phone call. I kept stalling, not sure if I was ready to take the plunge. When I got her answering machine, I was a bit relieved to leave a short message. But once we started talking on the phone and found several things that we had in common, my anxiety level dropped and I was ready to begin.

When someone telephones me to see if I am available, I am never expecting the call. There is no special phone number, no special office hours so the call could come anytime during my ordinary day. I have to stop whatever it is I am doing and decide if it is a good time to talk. It might be better to set-up a better time when I can focus on the series of questions that help both of us to decide if we will move onto the next step. We need to determine whether our schedules will match-up, what the directee is looking for and what I am trained to provide before scheduling our first meeting.

Sometimes the phone conversation provides a preview about who this person is and what led him or her to reach out. Often there is some specific event, either positive or negative, that started the search. Other times the person is experiencing a staleness or stuckness in his or her journey in faith, and wants to know how to get moving again.

When I first called my first spiritual director, I was in the “feeling stale” situation. I had started a regular time for Morning Prayer a few years earlier, and it was feeling monotonous. I did not want to give it up, but I had no idea how to keep it fresh either. There was also a sense of wanting more, a desire to go deeper than I could with people in my church community who became anxious with my questions about God.

The first face-to-face meeting is often filled with hope that the relationship will be productive and spirit graced. At the same time these is some anxiety for both persons as they consider entering a mutual commitment to an ongoing spiritual direction relationship.

In forming any new relationship, there are questions about who this new person is and how trustworthy he or she will be. I like a conversation where we are each telling the other our personal backgrounds, looking to see where there are similar issues and approaches to life and faith. If there is not some common ground, the relationship may not have enough shared experience to build upon. Either one of us might decide not to continue.

I remember feeling reassured the first time I met with a spiritual director. We had similar experiences and I left with some new ideas of how to enhance my daily Morning Prayer time. Most importantly, she affirmed the yearning I felt for connecting to something beyond my current life.

We continued our relationship for six years, and it was hard to end it. But both of our circumstances had changed, and each needed to move into new things. I knew I needed a different kind of director, with a different focus and skills, and began to seek a new director.

I did not know where that first meeting would lead, and as I look back now, I am deeply appreciative of taking that leap. It did not seem a big leap at the time, but it has led me into a rich new understanding of God. The journey has been scary and challenging alongside the times of satisfaction and newness. I would not have done it by myself. Having a companion has made it possible.

Intimate Wrestling

While researching the story of Jacob with the angel, I looked for images available on the Internet. This drawing by Bonnat makes it dramatically visible how intimate wrestling is. Bare flesh against bare flesh, and faces held just inches from each other. The intimacy is not just physical. It includes all aspects of a person, such as the emotional and intellectual, as two persons battle to gain the upper hand, moving into a position of power.

How does this adult who avoided wrestling in high school gym class engage with this image? As a teenage male, holding another boy closely made me anxious. It was too close to the intimacy I desired even though society told me it was wrong. Even now, I want to avoid the intensity of wrestling, especially with God.

So, how can any of us put himself or herself into this story am imagine we can wrestle with God? As I try to picture what that would be like, I want to make it into an interior rather than an exterior struggle. I am good at intellectual manipulation of ideas and thoughts. That feels much safer. Yet, my own body betrays me with a knot in my stomach and tight shoulders. I am wholly caught up in the struggle.

One of my cherished images of God is a companion on my journey. I have been comforted by the idea of God walking beside me, often in silence, but there to turn to as I needed. There has been a comfortable distance between us, the equivalent of the 30 or so inches that social norms require for friendship. So, when did the One who has been nearby but not deeply engaged become so closely and intensely entangled in my life?

Didn’t I keep saying, praying, and hoping for a closer relationship with God? But I did not expect this kind of conflict between us, this struggle over who would be stronger. I want God to do it my way. Just like Jacob, I want to define the direction and set my own goals.

How dare I take on the all powerful, all knowing creator of my own flesh? Not only is it dangerous but it is totally foolish. There really would have been no match if God chose to be all powerful creator of the universe. I would have been beaten into submission at the first sign of my resistance. Maybe this is an invitation from God to move into a new level of relationship, or intimacy?