In a recent email from SDI I found this very helpful chart which differentiates the various listening and helping professions . I would encourage directors to print it out. It will also be posted under the resources tab at the Alaska Spiritual Direction website.
SDI member Christine Luna Munger has developed a terrific comparison chart of relationships designed to nurture mental and spiritual wellbeing that is available on the SDI website. Use this chart to determine which modality is right for you or those you companion!
I also wanted to share some reader responses to my post on Reverence: Please spend a moment with each person’s awareness. Their sharing deeply blessed my own practice.
Reverence (and everything else that practice entails) appear when I sit for meditation, when I feel my breath after a few awkward ‘hello there, breath.’ And definitely, when I walk, when a scene or image calls me, when I sit to draw or paint it, while I am in the act of drawing and painting, and after it, when I look at the result of my communion with Reverence.
As directee, I experience Reverence during an SD session between me and my SD.
The practice of paying attention is what I try to develop and cultivate in me. Drawing helps on that because it helps me see what I do not normally see. I would love to see like Thomas Merton –
“Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts, where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time.”
I often sense a ” call to reverence” in my body. My head turns gently for no known reason……
and I am made aware of the Presence of the Sacred. This sensation is almost always wrapped in silence……and I simply sense it is an invitation into reverence.
I experience reverence when I am kind and gentle to myself and stop pressing so hard. As a professor said recently: God is enough for me and I am enough for God. If I/we “get” this then life becomes more tender and we abide in God in a way that feels more loving and reverent.
Autumn blessings to all!
Rebecca
