Spiritual direction can be helpful in a variety of contexts. It can be valuable in seasons of discernment regarding vocation or life partnership or family. It can be a helpful grounding in times of transition. It can facilitate healing and rebuilding in the aftermath of grief, loss, pain, or abuse. It can provide a safe place both to deconstruct thinking about God that no longer serves you well and to reconstruct faith.

Spiritual direction can be particularly important for those in helping professions (e.g. counselors, pastors and ministry leaders, medical professionals). It’s a way of filling your cup and processing the needs and experiences of others that it is your responsibility (and likely often your joy!) to carry. My experience of serving in a variety of church ministry and pastoral roles over the years equips me to empathize and resonate with the unique burdens and cares connected with your role.

I am always happy to have an initial meeting so that we can decide together if spiritual direction seems a helpful practice at this point in your journey. If counseling or coaching seems more beneficial for you in the current season, I can offer referrals. And if direction seems helpful but I am not a good fit for you, I am always happy to connect you with other directors.

A monthly meeting often works well. This provides space for aspects of your life that you want to reflect upon more deeply to surface between meetings. It also gives room for insights to be worked out more fully in your life. And, practically speaking, it tends to be a sustainable rhythm for most people. That said, in certain circumstances, it is helpful to meet more or less often. We can decide together what frequency is most fruitful for you in this season of your journey.

We will talk about your sense of where you are, where you hope to go, where God seems to be taking you, about your sense of connection with your truest self. We’ll talk about your soul, about hope and prayer, and the holy or transcendent in your life. We’ll talk about places of fear or stuck-ness and also about areas where you see courage or kindness being manifest in your life. We might focus on your work or family or community. Other times we’ll talk about practices or readings that might be helpful. We’ll talk about what gives you life and ways you can cultivate more of it. I’ll ask about what drains you and what that might be telling you. And in the midst of talking, we’ll also practice quiet together. We’ll get comfortable with pauses and silent prayers, making time for thoughts to deepen, new questions to emerge, and for greater clarity to form. In all this, the point is to practice listening to the voice of love within while simultaneously cultivating awareness of movements of goodness and grace and Spirit around you.

Spiritual direction is about fostering a deeper connection with your own true self and what is good and beautiful and true in the world around you. While I approach direction through a Christian lens, I will respect and make space for where you are in your own journey. We don’t have to be on the same page in terms of faith and theology to process aspects of life and living that matter deeply.

Spiritual direction has things in common with mentoring, life coaching, and counseling. All of these are about someone partnering with you to help you become the most honest and best version of yourself. But whereas the objective of counseling is greater emotional and psychological health, spiritual direction’s emphasis is wholeness and health at a soul and spirit level. Counseling is best for facilitating things like offering practical relational skills, addressing anxiety or imbalances, and healing trauma. The kind of listening that happens in spiritual direction fosters trusting your intuition and honing your ability to discern movements of life and goodness and Spirit in and around you.

Spiritual direction is fostering connection to your own soul and to your sense of God and the holy. Children can benefit from that kind of loving presence as much as grown-ups can. Spiritual direction with children is about creating playful and contemplative space to surface questions, emotions, and hopes.

Spiritual direction with children takes seriously the notion that Jesus often held up children as ideal citizens of the family of heaven. That means it is not teaching but partnering with kids to notice places of comfort and consolation as well as absence or sadness within. It’s a kind of listening that is more than mere curiosity and that resists judgment and the need to give advice. It’s the kind of Spirit-led attention that, as Lacy Borgo writes, “has the potential to listen a child into recognizing their own voice and the voice of God in their life.”

Depending on what comes up that day, we might engage around gratitude, grief, connections, share about a special person or creature, or engage existential questions around death, the meaning of life, how to be peacefully alone, or what to do with freedom. These explorations happen through conversation, drawing, using tools like story stones and finger labyrinths, and more.

If you wonder if a child in your life might benefit from spiritual direction, don’t hesitate to reach out to set up an initial conversation with the three of us to explore whether I might be a good fit for them. As with adults, a spiritual director working with children is not a teacher or counselor but a companion as the child notices their own truest self, invitations to grow and become, and glimpses of truth, beauty, and goodness around them. To respect the freedom and agency of each child, while directors will coordinate with the child’s parent or guardian to schedule meetings and with other logistics, the choice to continue in spiritual direction remains with the child themself. All conversations are confidential unless there is a danger to self or another.

Supervision can help new and seasoned directors grow in their ability to host others in holy listening. It is a chance to connect with a fellow director who can help you cultivate more freedom and safety for yourself and your directees. Who can celebrate the goodness unfolding in your work with you. Who can notice with you where the Spirit is moving in and through you. Supervision is a time to explore invitations to growth and to be supported in the often-solitary work of soul companionship.

It can help you notice ways your own story is surfaced as you listen to others, discern what healing or shift might be needed, and how you can keep growing in compassionate presence with your directees. I feel profound gratitude, wonder, and awe in getting to have a glimpse into and a small yet meaningful role in facilitating the holy work that is happening in and through fellow spiritual directors I host in supervision.

It is not required but it can help you foster a contemplative mind and heart in your approach to spiritual direction. I often notice a sense of relief that supervision meetings aren’t rigidly didactic or a simplistic evaluation of whether they did a good job. That can free you to be curious about where God is for you in your work of offering soul companionship.