Spiritual direction in the Episcopal Church.

This article briefly traces the definition, history, and current typical practices of spiritual direction in the Episcopal Church (and, by extension, the Anglican Communion). An understanding is presented of the transformation process as an alliance against the client's shame. The on-going discussion between "directors" and "spiritual companions" as different approaches to power relations with spiritual direction is summarized. Characteristics by which Episcopalians gauge spiritual maturity are described. Difficulties in exactly distinguishing spiritual direction from conventional psychotherapy are described in view of the latter's fluidity in practice. Attention is focused on the triggers that alert the director to the need for the other discipline. Also, two books representing different currents within the mainstream are recommended.

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I am grateful for this opportunity to reflect on the practice of spiritual direction in the Episcopal Church. Whatever benefit reading this confers on the reader will likely be less than the benefit to me in writing it. Spiritual direction is much more often offered than objectively considered, so any occasion to think about what we are doing must be welcome.

Spiritual direction as an expectation of ordained pastors goes back to the very beginnings of Anglicanism. The traditional wording of the service used for several centuries for the ordination of persons to the priesthood contained the following description of a priest's duties:

Ye have heard, Brethren, as well in your private examination, as in the exhortation which was now made to you, and in the holy Lessons taken out of the Gospel, and the writings of the Apostles, of what dignity, and of how great importance this Office is, whereunto ye are called. And now again we exhort you, in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye have in remembrance, into how high a Dignity, and to how weighty an Office and Charge ye are called: that is to say, to be Messengers, Watchmen, and Stewards of the Lord; to teach, and to premonish [italics added], to feed and provide for the Lord's family; to seek for Christ's sheep that are dispersed abroad, and for his children who are in the midst of this naughty world, that they may be saved through Christ for ever.

... Wherefore consider with yourselves the end of the Ministry towards the children of God, towards the Spouse and Body of Christ; and see that ye never cease your labour, your care and diligence, until ye have done all that lieth in you, according to your bounden duty, to bring all such as are or shall he committed to your charge, unto that agreement in the faith and knowledge of God, and to that ripeness and perfectness of age in Christ [italics added], that there be no place left among you, either for error in religion, or for viciousness in life. (Book of Common Prayer, 1928, pp. 539-540)

The ministry of spiritual direction is implicit all through this service.

Bishop Jeremy Taylor in A Letter to a Person Newly Converted to the Church of England unselfconsciously assumed the role of spiritual director: "Pray frequently and effectually; I had rather your prayers should be often than long" (More & Cross, 1951, p. 615). He assumed it as his duty, not thinking to ask permission.

The last century has added several important contributions to spiritual direction, some of which I shall detail. Recent developments include the inclusion of qualified laypersons as spiritual directors. Negotiation of the boundaries between spiritual direction, pastoral counsel, and psychotherapy has received much recent attention. Feminism has had a discernible and salutary impact on spiritual direction in the Episcopal Church, especially as clients are encouraged to examine their own needs to dominate or be dominated by others. The reapprehension of Celtic spirituality among Episcopalians has been a merry recent development, occasionally skirting the neighborhood of the much-maligned heresiarch Pelagius (late 4th to early 5th centuries). The expression of our love of Christ in service to others and in care for the earth has come in for much recent emphasis. This evolution has added flavor to an Anglican tradition previously distinguished by its instructional component, chiefly in the practices of prayer.

DEFINITION OF SPIRITUAL DIRECTION

In the Episcopal Church, spiritual direction is a purposeful, disciplined relationship between two (sometimes more) Christians. It aims to help one or both participants identify and cultivate practices that link their individual lives to God. Spiritual direction could be thought of as the next step after evangelism. That is, once a soul enjoys an experience of the saving grace of God in Jesus Christ that soul must pursue spiritual growth. A previously worldly soul must become holy. Spiritual direction assists a soul in pursuing holiness.

Growth in holiness can be helpfully compared to art. They share the following elements in common:

Each Requires Honest, Courageous Self-Disclosure

Self-protection makes for second-rate art. Self-deception is self-protection's spiritual equivalent, and it cancels spiritual growth utterly. Self-protection in art keeps the would-be artist cautious and imitative. Self-deception while attempting spiritual growth inclines the soul to pat answers and shallow understandings of the human condition. Spiritual directors keep us honest-or try to. A wise spiritual director can spot the difference between mere earnestness and actual honesty--and knows that legalism serves our fear of the abyss more than our love of God.

Each Requires Submission to Tutelage 

Few artists advance without submitting their work to the critical scrutiny of superior artists. This is agonizing but necessary. The growing artist needs to be able to view her own work objectively as though it were the work of another. Likewise the soul attempting spiritual growth must embrace her own ordinariness before her uniqueness can hope to emerge. There are spiritual directors who know God's ways and the "devices and desires of our...hearts" better than we do. We get "honest to God" faster in their company. It assists our spiritual growth to have another view it with us objectively. A spiritual director likely knows as much about different approaches to prayer as an art teacher would know about different approaches to, say, pigmentation.

Each Requires Struggling Over a Hump of Tedium

Anyone who has ever struggled with a painting, a sculpture, a piece of music, or a poem knows the point at which the original vision is no longer accessible or exciting to us, At such times, one is tempted to walk away from the creative work in disgust or even to destroy it. A fellow artist can often "recall us to our first love," artistically speaking. The same tedium occasionally sets into our lives with Jesus Christ. We get assaulted with periods not just of lassitude but also of actual disgust. The assault has other sources than simply the Devil and is more complex than the simple fruit of sin. Our relationship with Jesus is a human relationship just like our marriages--which, in the normal course of things, go through peaks and valleys. A wise spiritual director understands the dynamics of a complex relationship at a depth beyond mere deviltry or human badness. Such a director, for example, might discern that a soul's sense of being repelled or bored by Jesus likely reflects panic in the face of our Lord 's growing importance in her life. If we are to clear the hump of tedium that occasionally blocks the spiritual pilgrimage, it is enormously helpful to enjoy (or be made to tolerate) the company of those who have mapped such humps in their own and others' lives.

Each Leaves Us Feeling Larger, Freshly Born

An authentic artistic achievement leaves our powers of perception and discernment across the whole of life greatly enhanced. It washes away our competitiveness with other artists and confers a sense of collegiality with erstwhile rivals. In the same way, the fruit of the Spirit is "love, joy, peace..." (Gal. 5:22f). It offers us joy and peace even in the midst of turmoil; it leaves us humbly self-accepting and accepting of others. Again, spiritual direction can help us focus this internal phenomenon at points where we might hesitate to trust its reality.

Each Conveys Life and Hope to Others

An authentic work of art stretches and deepens the way we, the recipients, perceive the world around us. The presence in our lives of an authentic saint has much the same transforming power. A saint can be understood as one who has survived self-disclosure, the tutelage of superior critics, the tedium of relational intensity and frustration, the terror of rebirth. There are few Kierkegaards among us, capable of achieving sanctity in isolation from spiritual community. Most of us need incisive fellowship. Spiritual direction is one of the most intense forms of fellowship available to us. It is not for sissies.

Spiritual direction usually takes the form of periodic meetings. These can resemble the periodicity of pastoral counseling, (e.g., hourly sessions with the director in an office) or they could consist of retreats together for a stretch of days. If we but knew, probably much spiritual direction takes place these days by email-which would not have surprised Baron von Hugel or Evelyn Underhill, who often used the postal service.

Components of a typical session can include sacramental confession; review of spiritual journals or dream journals; the formation, monitoring, and adjustment of a "rule of life;" instruction and practice of different forms of prayer; suggesting and directing courses of spiritual reading; and/or informal conversation in which the directee is encouraged to share her or his story with the director, linking their "stories" with "the Gospel Story." It can occur as a one-to-one relationship or in groups devoted to that purpose.

There is a strong instructional component to spiritual direction in the Episcopal Church. Many of our members came into the Episcopal Church trailing images and notions of God sufficient to provoke nightmares, images inculcated when they were children in more restrictive church settings. It is difficult to love a god whom you fear and resent. So a director will likely spend time up front introducing the directee to the God of Jesus Christ.

Many people entering the Episcopal Church have no notion of the richness and variety of the life of prayer; their images of prayer may be confined to talking at God-with no experience of listening. For many the Bible, if it is known at all, is simply the compendium of Christian beliefs and morals-they bring no notion of the Bible as a launching pad for intimate prayer.

So a director must be a teacher. That teaching can take the form of supervising a directee's readings in the area of prayer. Or it can take the form of coaching or modeling various methods of prayer.

Some practitioners of spiritual direction in the Episcopal Church would object to my use of the terms "direction" and "director." They would argue (effectively) that the most nourishing spiritual engagement between two Christians is companion-ate and authoritatively "horizontal." "There is a ladder of spiritual maturity," a friend once told me, "and on it we each occupy a separate rung; that ladder is stretched flat on the ground before God...."

Others would report great fruit from a more traditional relationship-vertical and semi-professional in nature. In the Episcopal Church, you are as likely to find one as the other-and if you have an initial preference, you'd be wise to ask in advance.

This polarity reflects the close relationship between spiritual pursuit and psychotherapy within the Episcopal Church. The non-directive counseling methods associated with Carl Rogers made their way into our discussions of spiritual guidance in the '50's and '60's and for more than a decade virtually amounted to a fad. This contrasted strongly with the previous stereotypic image of the stern, high-collared priest assigning spiritual homework from behind a desk. As could have been predicted, this discussion has proved pendular; today Episcopal spiritual mentors tend to seek a characteristically Anglican middle way between the two extremes.

Like the Scribe trained in the Kingdom of God (Matt. 13:52), a director in the Episcopal Church will share with you treasures both old and new-as old as the Scriptures, as new as (perhaps) current brain research. Though spiritual directors distinguish what they do from psychotherapy, some wear both hats on different occasions and most are familiar with psychotherapy, either as therapists or consumers. Directors are expected to be sufficiently clinically astute to recognize psychopathology when it rears its head and to refer the sufferer to a qualified clinician.

HISTORY OF THE PRACTICE OF SPIRITUAL DIRECTION IN THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH

Spiritual direction in the Episcopal Church benefits from several tributaries. If Episcopal spiritual direction has a primary foundation, it would likely be the Books of Common Prayer. The present Prayer Book (1979) used by Episcopalians is the eleventh since the first edition of 1549. All editions of the Prayer Book share in common the sacraments (expressed in timeless Tudor English in some cases), the Daily Office (devotional services focused on scripture reading, derived from the monastic hours), the Psalter, Pastoral Offices (e.g., Ministry to the Sick), the Episcopal Offices (e.g., ordination), wonderfully worded prayers and thanksgivings for all occasions, Catechisms, and historical documents (e.g., the Athanatian Creed, the 39 Articles of Religion). One primary task of any Episcopal spiritual director is to acquaint directees to the riches the Prayer Book offers.

As a branch of the Catholic Church independent of Rome since the Reformation, with our own monastic tradition alive and well, the Episcopal Church draws on the treasures of traditional Catholic spiritual practices. It should not surprise you to find a director who is intimately familiar with, say, Ignatian spirituality. Many of us are deeply fond of St. Francis de Sales, whose Introduction To The Devout Life (2000) was written to a laywoman encouraging her to find in her "secular" life materials for sanctification equal to those found in convents. This is a project richly descriptive of what many of us understand spiritual direction's goals to be. On a director's bookshelves, do not be surprised to find Teresa of Avila (1964, 1979), John of the Cross (trans. 1901), The Cloud of Unknowing (Anonymous, 1978), Brother Lawrence's Practice of the Presence of God (1958), and any and all of the great spiritual classics. It is not only feminists who treasure Julian of Norwich (1952). There are distinctly Episcopal fo rms and applications of the Rosary, which some of our directors can teach you.

Spiritual direction was part of the armamentarium of the Anglican priest/pastor from the very beginning. The so-called Anglican Divines (e.g., the poet/priests John Donne [1571-1631] and George Herbert [1593-1633]) inter alia, theological writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when we had first separated from obedience to Rome whose writings helped Anglicanism find its "voice," took the ministry of spiritual direction as a matter of course and left us much that we still use today. Anglicanism from the beginning had its own distinct Seelsoregis (1) tradition. Indeed all of the successive Books of Common Prayer from 1549 to 1979 have been crafted to shape individuals and families in their lives of personal prayer as well as large congregations.

As the Church of England separated from the oversight of the Roman Pope during the Reformation, she contained two distinct parties of thought and practice. The "High Church" tended to stress the Church's abiding catholic essence in worship, church order, practice, and doctrine. Doctrinally, the High Church party tends to concentrate on the Mystery of the Incarnation.

The "Low Church" party (from whence eventually grew the Puritans) gratefully appropriated all it could from the continental Reformation, especially from Geneva. Doctrinally the Low Church party tends to concentrate on the Mystery of the Atonement. These two emphases can be felt among us to this day, even in the ways spiritual direction is practiced. Incarnational spiritual direction would tend to use meditation and contemplation, an appreciative non-judgmental posture towards life. Atonement-based spiritual direction would concentrate on getting one's life in order.

A robust expression of the Episcopal Church/Anglican Communion goes by the name Anglo-Catholicism, born of the Oxford Movement in 19th Century England. Both spiritual direction and monasticism have always been familiar elements of this sector of our Church. Anglo-Catholicism forms the foundational substrate of spiritual direction in the Episcopal Church.

In England-though not, regrettably, in America--the Evangelical (Low Church) wing of the Church made distinct contributions to the practice and theory of spiritual direction. One thinks of the Wesleys in this connection, for example. Evangelicals have been Anglicanism's most robust foreign missionaries, an outgrowth of their concern that humanity be reconciled to God.

In the early 1980's, spiritual direction achieved academic expression in the Episcopal Church as Alan Jones established the Center For Christian Spirituality at the General Seminary in New York. The Center's example was quickly copied by our other theological schools.

During the 1970's and '80's the spiritual lives of people in the pews were deeply enriched by the importation of the Cursillo movement into the Episcopal Church from Roman Catholicism. Thousands of Episcopalians returned to their parishes from life-changing weekends to ask their rectors, "What's this 'spiritual direction' thing all about?"

Oddly, the Charismatic Movement in the Episcopal Church has had no detectable impact on the practice of spiritual direction. Though Charismatic influences are visible in a more flexible approach to worship, more energy for evangelism, and are audible in recent hymnody, the Movement has not shaped the average director's approach to spiritual growth.

There are likely two reasons for this neglect. The first is that the Charismatic Movement (for reasons I do not entirely understand) gravitates toward an uncritical embrace of pre-modern theological and hermeneutic epistemologies. (2) Consequently the Charismatic Movement has produced no theology or biblical scholarship worth the name. (3) Episcopalians tend to think that trying to live into a mental frame of reference from several centuries back is bad for you. Spiritual maturity involves making some sort of treaty with present-day reality, including cultivating the ability to discern the presence of God within our own intellectual terms.

Second, Episcopalians tend to think of the Rock of our Salvation as sedimentary, not igneous. Ask an Episcopalian when she was saved and she will likely reply, "Two thousand years ago." Dramatic experiences of conversion are notoriously difficult to maintain. (4) Any number of classical spiritual writers warn us against reposing too much consolation in dramatic spiritual breakthroughs. Episcopal spiritual directors think of mature spirituality as within the grasp of all, not just the "reborn." So there is a suspicion toward and bias against dramatic spiritual conversion experiences.

I personally view that lacuna as regrettable. For all of its frivolity, the Charismatic Movement developed some of the best and fastest "connectivity software" we posses for launching an intense relationship with God. And our people find their way to it without our tutelage. We would do well to know what they are excited about when they report those experiences to us. A fair amount of miscommunication gets reported back from freshly "born again" Episcopalians who bounce off their attempts to get spiritual direction.

Another important tributary into the practice of spiritual direction in the Episcopal Church has been psychotherapy. This combination of medical practice and pastoral care found a home among Episcopalians decades earlier than among more conservative denominations. That psychotherapy plays a proper role in anyone's personal growth is an accepted notion among us. Familiarity with psychotherapeutic vocabulary and procedures among Episcopalians is not so much a professional qualification as a cultural expectation.

It should be mentioned here that many Episcopalians find the psychology of C. G. Jung to be especially attractive. The Episcopal Church embraces among its members any number of skillful lay analysts whose attraction to Jung expresses the same interest others confine to spiritual direction. An Episcopal spiritual director is likely quite familiar with the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator (or at least the Keirsey version) and will be able to bring it fruitfully to bear on the task of spiritual self-cataloguing. Morton Kelsey's (1972) name towers over this emphasis in the Episcopal Church-but one could mention John Sanford (1970) as well.

Some of our most distinguished spiritual directors-notably Tilden Edwards, the founder of the Shalem Institute--came to their current modes of practice through lengthy periods of study in Asian spiritual traditions. The Sufi tradition within Islam has enriched the direction of some, whereas Zen is evident as an element in others' offerings. There are Episcopal directors who find the Kabbalah a nourishing resource. Taoist receptive, non-resistant sensibilities readily find a home in some courses of direction.

That Asian ascetical practices should enrich Christian spirituality ought not to surprise us. There is evidence of yoga-like practices in early Eastern Orthodox hesychastic monasticism. In fact, a friend once explained to me something I have not been able to substantiate otherwise-so take this next suggestion cum grano salis. He reported that yoga was carried through India into China by Nestorian Christian missionaries on the way to the Imperial Court in the 5th Century CE. He went on to say that there is little evidence of these practices in Asia prior to the 5th Century. That would mean that some of the practices that we associate with Buddhism and Hinduism have Christian roots. Recently, the Asians have returned the favor.

Of course, not all of the Asian contributions to Episcopal spiritual direction have come from heterodox religions. Some Episcopal spiritual directors cherish the Greek Orthodox Philokalia (Anonymous, 1995) and the Russian Orthodox "Prayer of the Heart" or "breath prayer." When I was just starting out, my director gave me Anthony Bloom's (1970) Beginning To Pray, a Russian Orthodox treasure.

I should acknowledge that spiritual direction has had its coldest reception in the American Episcopal Church within our "Low Church" evangelical sector. This tension is more American and Australian than, say, British. Evangelicalism is a positive force Within the Church of England-both for spirituality and for social justice whose root system reaches back to our very Reformation beginnings. English Evangelicals are at the spiritual direction table alongside their Anglo-Catholic colleagues, just as they work shoulder to shoulder in the slums. Unhappily that has not been the case in this country. Why?

The reason goes deeper than the simple partisan tension that has always been present between Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics in the Episcopal Church. Evangelicalism in North America tends to be distinctly Calvinist, sometimes even blurring into fundamentalism. Consequently, Episcopal (i.e., American) evangelicalism attributes ultimate importance to Christ's atoning work on the Cross by which we are justified before God. Approaching God by cultivating our mystical proclivities appears to them to bypass the Cross, as though a sinful human being could achieve intimacy with God simply by strenuous self-refinement. Jonathan Edwards (with whose rheology many evangelical Episcopalians are in agreement) had warned against being misled by visions and emotional raptures in his (splendid) treatise on the Religious Affections (Edwards, 1997). Spiritual direction can appear to be a flirtation with that danger.

The Anglo-Catholic response to that objection tends to take two forms. First, the "High Church" party (i.e., Anglo-Catholics) would make the following theological assertion: The Atonement is already a present reality in the beginning of Creation. Paraphrasing Athanatius ("There was never a time when the Word was not"), they would maintain, "There was never a time when the Atonement was not;" the Cross does not so much effect the Atonement as call it into clear focus to be grasped gratefully. Among Anglo-Catholics and even the "Broad Church" party (i.e., the group in the middle between Anglo-Catholics and Evangelicals) the Incarnation subsumes the Atonement within itself. Second, advocates of spiritual direction would argue from personal experience that the hard work of sanctification does not bypass the Cross--indeed, the strenuousness of the effort lies in its requirement that we embrace the Cross rightly.

Let me also mention that spiritual direction has had a most difficult time in its dealing with classically Liberal Episcopalians. The latter have viewed it as suspiciously other-worldly and consequently evasive of the demands of here-and-now justice.

Against that suspicion, our spiritual direction community would maintain (and, at best, demonstrate) that a sacrificial devotion to justice, especially for the poor, is an indispensable element of any nourishing "rule of life." Justice is the fruit of piety, not its rival.

THE PROCESS OF AUTHENTIC TRANSFORMATION

What transforms a directee? How does growth in holiness happen? By the operation of the Holy Spirit, surely. Yet stating that truth by itself is nor a complete answer. We only know the wind by its effect on the leaves, the dust, and the temperature of our skins. We only know the presence of Spirit within our flesh. If there is a single factor which makes spiritual direction effective as a change agency for the soul it is this: Spiritual direction holds our shame at bay long enough for us to see ourselves as God sees us in Christ.

We would not be so prone to self-deception if we did we not hope by that means to avoid shame. The director can serve as a virtual sacrament of God's own presence by receiving a directee's most anxious (or indeed appalling) disclosures without betraying disgust, thus requiring that the directee apply our Lord's command, "Judge not..." to herself. The fruit is a more candid self-confrontation and consequently speedier spiritual growth.

That dike-like function against the tsunami force of personal shame takes various forms in Episcopal spiritual direction. The regular practice of Sacramental Confession (the Sacrament of Penance or Reconciliation) gradually transforms its practitioner.

My first confession feels like it will be the worst. That is when I finally dump all the stuff I am most deeply ashamed of in front of God and another human being and encounter mercy, understanding, and forgiveness. The one that feels best is the second time I confess formally. I've nor had time since the last confession to get into much spectacular mischief, so this time my sin list is subtler, more discerning, more "spiritual." Again I meet mercy, understanding, and pardon. My third, fourth, and fifth are actually the worst--because each of them is identical to the second. I am not making any progress; I know it, my confessor knows it, God knows it.

And yet I meet mercy, understanding, and forgiveness--no matter how often I confess the same tired stuff. It finally occurs to me that I cannot wear out God's mercy; I cannot even wear out my confessor s patience. My daily life begins to feel subtly different. I realize that at every moment I am both coming from being forgiven and walking towards it. And, remarkably, I gossip less; I abandon resentments faster; I put up with and enjoy those around me with growing discernment. I change.

Or, growth in holiness may occur as I tell my life's story in detail to one who listens without judging--one who is for me. As I love my director and trust her judgment, I come to sense the possibility of being personally lovable. All of us at some time harbor the fear that if we become known accurately, we will be abandoned. Spiritual direction proves that fear false.

Or, it may occur as I discover that I am not a contemplative "apophatic" spiritual type--that mere garden-variety vocal prayer works best for me, not wordless images embraced in hesychastic stillness! How humiliating. Until my director points out that Jesus' own prayers were "kataphatic" (i.e., talkative) and self-referential.

In some form or another, that discovery will occur--and I will change. God's own acceptance of me, sacramentalized in my director/companion, will relax something deeply within me. And as Bernard of Clairvaux predicted, my period of lengthy Purgation gives over to a period of lengthy Illumination and service to God and my fellows--with the promise of a limitless Unity with God and all creation awaiting fulfillment.

At this point in the process, an Episcopal director may offer an advantage not always found in other denominations. That is, an Episcopalian is slightly less likely to impose a "one-size-fits-all" sin-based doctrine of humanity onto you. Real spiritual direction takes you deeper than guilt-inducing revivalism--because the consolations of God go even deeper than the relief of forgiveness. God's love has other operations--even profounder operations--than forgiveness alone. When our notion of God is confined to the nightmarish enraged Parent so many pretend to love, it is difficult to imagine God's love as other than barely tolerant pardon for ourselves and apparent favoritism towards others. But when we meet the God and Father of Jesus Christ, God's love emerges as a kaleidoscope of wonderful, merry, and different operations. And your sin, while real, proves not to be the most important or interesting thing about you. At least as important as being forgiven by God is having God explain you to yourself. And the discovery that God is willing to employ your service before you have achieved moral or spiritual perfection results in a rapture superior to the relief of being pardoned. An Incarnation-based theology and spirituality is more likely to take you to those depths, heights, and breadths--where real change takes place--than a theology or spirituality confined to the Atonement alone. (5)

THE ROLE OF THE SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR

There is disagreement in Episcopal circles about the correct nomenclature--and, by extension, the proper or most helpful relationship--for spiritual direction. There is a strong current of opinion in favor of seeing the process as a peer relationship and a companionate process. As noted above, this sensibility was at one time focused in the therapeutic procedures of Carl Rogers. Promoting oneself as a "director" can sound like a bumptious power trip. My own observation is that there are two types of Episcopalians likely to introduce themselves with the title "director." One would, of course, be a nervous beginner whose self-consciousness and fear of failure benefit from any prop they can grab. The other has been at it so long that she has learned that spiritual direction is not much affected by what you call it--and that, finally, titles do not matter much.

The companionate "spiritual friend" exponents certainly have a point: our equal preciousness before God. It is quite moving to have a respected figure whom we would expect to assume power over us demit that power in order to seek intimacy with us. Yet that point can lead to a category-confusion: equal preciousness to God may not always be the same thing as equal experience in the life of the spirit. Consulting an obvious superior can save time. Disingenuousness and false modesty waste time. I have myself sometimes refused the term "director," insisting on being known as "companion," at points when I had not yet mastered impulses to power-striving and competitiveness, which I wished to mask. On those occasions, my insistence on a companionate model did not signal superiority to another director who was clearer about the value of what she could teach.

The distinction between the directing and the companionate models also pertains to what might be called "air time." In a classical direction, the directee gets the full attention of the director at all times. In companionate relationships the seeker gets less than full attention. It takes considerable maturity on the part of both parties to assign the proportions comfortably. The director who decides he is really a "companion" may confuse elements of his own life with the Gospel--and share those elements at resentable length.

INDICATORS OF SPIRITUAL MATURITY

How do we recognize mature spirituality in the Episcopal Church? I do not know that our discernment differs greatly from that of other denominations. Most devout Christians, confronted with worldly versions of "spirituality" (deliberately separate from churches) which concentrate primarily on self-love and self-refinement, understand the underlying truth shrouded in such an approach. Our Lord, after all, did say to love your neighbor as yourself--a dubious commandment if we despise ourselves. Devout Christians also detect the limitation of these "secular" approaches: their avoidance of personal sacrifice, their evasion of the command to take up our own Cross on behalf of others, and their occasionally casual approach to personal morality. There are popular forms of spirituality around which (inadvertently, we hope) traffic in moral "free-lunches" (e.g., permission to despise people who do not share our anguish over, say, the environment or over the consumption of meat).

Authentic spiritual maturity shares this in common with psychological maturity: both involve and require the endurance of discomfort in the service of growth. Again, I think something like that understanding of spiritual maturity will be found in any of the traditions represented in this journal.

Rather than offer a necessarily incomplete analysis of spiritual maturity (pretentious on my part, at any rate), let me suggest what is obvious. We have the human pattern of spiritual maturity in Jesus Christ. To the extent that our lives come to resemble his; to the extent that our kinship with him becomes more conspicuous; to that extent, we are spiritually mature.

But, again, though that is clearly the right answer, it is hardly that simple. What complicates our looking to Jesus as the model of spiritual maturity is the thick overlay of distorted images and teachings about Jesus that cloak his humanity from us. To grasp him as the Gospels present him, we have to acknowledge his occasional outbursts of anger; his occasional rudeness; his evident delight in flouting respectability when it collided with righteousness. All of those individual characteristics flowed from the fact that Jesus bad somehow got his death over with a long time before he faced Golgotha. So Jesus could speak to us about the necessity of death to self: of death to the world and to our status within it.

Jesus was not able to accomplish any of that until the Spirit of God clearly persuaded him that God loved him. It follows that we cannot, either. Until we encounter Grace in its inexhaustible totality, we dare not contemplate death to ourselves, to the world, to anything at all. Only when I know God loves my life can I think of risking it, of clutching it more loosely. Incarnation-based spiritual directors agree with the four Gospels that the actual life of Jesus is at least as important and interesting as his death.

If that is true, growth into spiritual maturity takes time--lots of it. I commented earlier on the gradual impact of the director's (and by extension, God's) love and acceptance on our ability to "accept acceptance" (in Tillich's haunting phrase). For so many of us, reaching such a state feels like the goal. How can we begin to embrace the realization that achieving this goal is, quite literally, the beginning of our real spiritual journey? The least we can say is, "Give it time--lots of time."

A director once told me, "If you want a friendship with somebody that feels like you have been friends for twenty years, invest twenty years in it." To expect less from the one who calls us "no longer servants, but friends" imposes a naive consumerist mentality onto God. We see little evidence that God feels obliged to quote us such a low price.

THE CONTRAST WITH TRADITIONAL PSYCHOTHERAPY

It is difficult to know how to contrast spiritual direction with traditional psychotherapy. The problem is that psychotherapy is a wriggling target, one that does not hold still. It is not always clear what will actually happen in a psychotherapeutic setting. Will it be an actual conversation with a discerning interlocutor? Or will I be asked to ramble about whatever comes to mind in the presence of a deliberately non-responsive analyst? Will I be told to talk to an empty chair as though my mother were in it? Will I be hypnotized--or asked to track the therapist's moving fingers with my eyes? Might I be forcibly restrained by fellow group members as I bellow my way through an iatrogenic near-psychotic regression? Will "therapy" comprise taking pills and reporting on the side effects a month later? Must I finger-paint?

And it does not help that for many decades various exponents of psychotherapy have named the therapeutic practitioner community as the "new priesthood," as though the only elements of spirituality worth discussing are those reducible to psychological ("soulish") categories. Some psychotherapies unblushingly comprise spirituality within their proper province--one thinks of Jungian analysis or Transpersonal psychotherapy in this connection. Compared with the mercurial nature of psychotherapy, spiritual direction seems palpably monolithic.

Kenneth Leech, a leader in spiritual direction within and beyond the Church of England, understands psychotherapy or counseling as a meeting between two human beings in the presence of God to pursue a human goal (better relations with self, others, and world), whereas spiritual direction is a meeting between a person and God in the presence of another person for a divine goal (to solidify one's relationship with God). That perception is widely embraced among Episcopal spiritual directors.

To that distinction I would add three additional elements. First, psychotherapy is normally administered in exchange for a fee. Spiritual direction tends to be offered ad majorum dei gloriam ("to the greater glory of God")-which is how Episcopalians say "free."

Second, many forms of psychotherapy aim to alter a person's unconscious mental processes, using its various tools to gain access to zones of the client's heart that are not consciously available to them. Spiritual direction addresses conscious material that is vulnerable to the will of the client.

Third, the task of spiritual direction is to examine every detail of the client's life sub specie aeternitatis--in the light of the presence of God. A psychotherapist may not find that point of view rigorous enough to be helpful.

I know a priest who is also a competent psychotherapist. I asked him how he tells which one he is doing. His cryptic reply was, "When I find myself playfully ironic and paradoxical, I discover I'm doing psychotherapy; when I'm spontaneously serious and attentive to what the other person is saying without the need to go paradoxical, I think I'm doing spiritual direction."

A spiritual director will normally ask at the outset whether or not a person is engaged in psychotherapy-and will normally greet a positive answer as friendly. Experience indicates that psychotherapy is an effective way to generate an accurate agenda for prayer.

Here is a brief table (see Table 1) that may convey some of the differences between psychotherapy and spiritual direction. (6)

CIRCUMSTANCES WARRANTING REFERRAL TO A MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONAL

At what point do spiritual directors refer clients to psychotherapy? A friend of mine reports that her trigger for referral is any point at which she catches herself trying to "fix" the client. That is a signal for her that she is being drawn into a conversation that belongs between the client and God, not between herself and the client.

There are a couple of obvious triggers. First, if the client divulges that he is a danger to himself or others, the director is mandated by law to alert appropriate medical and law enforcement personnel. Unless those disclosures occur within the context of a sacramental confession before an ordained confessor, such communications do not enjoy legal privilege. Related to that trigger is the mandate to report physical or sexual abuse of underage persons or the elderly to the appropriate authorities. Even were this information to come up during the Sacrament of Penance, most clergy would insist that self-reporting and reparation be part of the penitent's penance.

Should a person exhibit bizarre behavior, that is a clear trigger that it's time to refer. Should the client report visions, voices, or visitations as spiritual experiences that strike the director as incongruent with the faith of Christ as found in the New Testament and the Church's teaching, it is likely time to refer. Spiritual direction is rarely if ever an emergency ministry In the Episcopal Church, most clergy have been through at least one quarter of Clinical Pastoral Education; that is often sufficient to hone their perceptions to sort out psychopathology from spiritual phenomena.

TWO HELPFUL BOOKS FROM THE ANGLICAN TRADITION

Of the plethora of books which have shaped and been shaped by spiritual direction in the Anglican Communion (of which the Episcopal Church is the American expression) I personally have two favorites.

The first is The Elements of the Spiritual Life by F. P. Harton (1950). It's an Anglo-Catholic classic. Though some find its categories precious, it is as full a compendium of the classical spiritual wisdom of the western Catholic tradition as I know. On one occasion right after I had completed my first careful reading of it, I had an opportunity to spend two weeks uninterrupted in a seminary library reading the great spiritual classics. Though I discovered many gems with which I was unfamiliar, I recall meeting no surprises for which Dean Harton had not prepared the reader.

The second book is A History of Christian Spirituality by my old friend, the late Urban T. Holmes III (1980). Terry (as his friends and students called him) exemplified as well as presented much that Episcopalians are most proud of in our spiritual tradition. In that little book you will engage a mind that took our life with God utterly seriously--from a platform of deep knowledge of the human psyche.

That admittedly personal recommendation flies in the face of a rich and burgeoning literature by Anglican and Episcopal spiritual writers. I select Harton's Elements because it contains a fuller compendium of the great spiritual classics than any book of my acquaintance that is not an actual anthology. And Dean Holmes' History provides a helpful classification schema that will offer focus to a reader's explorations in the rest of the field.

SUMMARY

Spiritual direction in the Episcopal Church gratefully draws from too many extra-Anglican treasures to be able to claim uniqueness. Yet I believe it is the blending of those resources that amounts to a discipline that is distinctive.

First, Anglican/Episcopal spiritual direction is deeply rooted in our denominational history. No longtime Episcopalian is ever surprised to learn of this resource, even when hearing the term for the first time. It has a legitimacy among us that is distinctive.

Second, like Jesus' scribe in the Kingdom of Heaven, an Episcopal spiritual director "draws from the storehouse treasures both old and new." Classics from Roman Catholicism, from continental Pietism, from other faith traditions, and from psychotherapy all find their way into the mix.

Third, Episcopal spiritual directors tend to be open to other areas of knowledge and regard many as germane to the directee's spiritual growth. Our directors tend to be conspicuously open to the insights derived from the behavioral sciences. A fascination with Quantum Physics as like as not will be incorporated into wonderment and worship. Art will be embraced as an assistance to spiritual growth, not as its rival.

Fourth, to the extent that it makes sense to distinguish between major doctrines, spiritual direction in the Episcopal Church rests more weight on our Lord's Incarnation than on the Atonement. At the risk of gross generalization, Episcopal theological thinking tends to subsume the Atonement within the Incarnation, seeing the first as already implicit in the second. The result is an approach to the state of the soul before God that assumes that God is really for us.

Table 1

Dimension                   Spiritual Direction

Presenting Problem:  Wish to grow in one's
                     relationship to God



Goals:               Assisting directee to employ
                     the resources of the Christian
                     faith to her life in order to live
                     more closely into Jesus' company.

Procedure:           Prayer, instruction, vocal
                     counsel, directing reading,
                     and writing projects, etc.


Resources:           A vast spiritual literature
                     retreat facilities, spiritual
                     communities.

Dimension                     Psychotherapy

Presenting Problem:  Wish for relief from emotional
                     pain, aberrant thought processes,
                     or relational discord with self
                     or others.

Goals:               Assisting client to address her
                     life circumstances in fresh ways
                     leading to better adjustment,
                     greater life-satisfaction.

Procedure:           Concentrated conversation,
                     "refraining," recommendation
                     of medication, and a host of
                     additional techniques.

Resources:           Medical back-up, professional
                     supervision, a vast professional
                     literature.

(1.) Seelsorgeis the "care of souls"--a separate academic discipline in continental theological curricula.

(2.) Put more crudely, a Charismatic Episcopalian is difficult to distinguish from a Fundamentalist.

(3.) The one happy exception in my opinion is Jean-Jacques Suurmond's (1994) Word and Spirit at Play.

(4.) For a full discussion of this difficulty, see The Molten Soul: Dangers and Opportunities in Religions conversion (Temple, 2001).

(5.) For a fuller discussion of that comparison, see The Molten Soul: Dangers and Opportunities of Religious Conversion (Temple, 2001).

(6.) To those in either discipline who howl objections to the gross oversimplification such a table constitutes, I can only protest with Mother Eve, "The Editor tempted me and I did comply."

REFERENCES

Anonymous. (1978). The cloud of unknowing. London: Penguin Books Ltd.

Anonymous. (1995) The philokalia. London: Faber & Faber.

Bloom, A. (1970). Beginning to pray. Mahwah, NJ: The Paulist Press.

The book of common prayer. (1979). New York: Church Hymnal Corporation.

de Sales, F. (2000). Introduction to the devout life. London: J.M. Dent & Sons, Ltd.

Donne, J. (1959). Devotions. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

Edwards, J. (1997). The religious affections. Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust.

Harton, F. P. (1950). The elements of the spiritual life: A study in ascetical theology London: S.P.C.K.

Herbert, G. (1981). The country parson, the temple. New York: The Missionary Society of St. Paul.

Holmes, U. T., III. (1980). A history of Christian spirituality. New York: The Seabury Press.

John of the Cross. (1901). The works of John of the Cross of the Order of our Lady of Carmel (D. Lewis, Trans.). London: Thomas Baker.

Julian of Norwich. (1952). Revelations of divine love recorded by Julian, anchoress at Norwich anno domini 1371. London: Methuen & C. Ltd.

Kelsey, M. (1972). Encounter with god. Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, Inc.

Lawrence, B. (1958). The practice of the presence of God. Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Company.

More, P. E., & Cross, F. L. (1951). Anglicanism: The thought and practice of the Church of England, illustrated from the religious literature of the seventeenth century. London: Society for the Promulgation of Christian Knowledge.

Sanford, J. (1970). The kingdom within. Philadelphia: J. B. Lip-pincott Co.

Suurmond, J. J. (1994). Word and spirit at play: Towards a charismatic theology London: SCM Press Ltd.

Temple, G. (2001). The molten soul: Danger and opportunities in religious conversion. New York: Church Publishing, Inc.

Teresa of Avila. (1964). The way of perfection. New York: Doubleday Image Books.

Teresa of Avila. (1979). The interior castle. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press.

AUTHOR

TEMPLE, GRAY, JR. Address: Gray Temple, MDiv, St. Patrick's Episcopal Church, 4755 North Peachtree Road, Atlanta, Georgia 30338. Title: Rector of St. Patrick's, Atlanta since 1975. Degrees: MDiv, Episcopal Theological Seminary; additional graduate work at Gottingen and Oxford Universities. Specialization: Pastorate.

Correspondence regarding this article should be addressed to Gray Temple, MDiv, St. Patrick's Episcopal Church, 4755 North Peachtree Road, Atlanta, Georgia 30338. E-mail at [e-mail].