What is spiritual direction?
Time and space set aside to explore our spiritual lives is rare.
Spiritual direction is a deep witnessing to spiritual life and the divine, in a 1:1, trusting and confidential relationship with a trained Spiritual Director. It may include tending to grief or uncertainty, discerning a big life decision, discovering what matters to you, and/or seeking coherence or flourishing in your life.
In spiritual direction, we co-create a practice together, in relationship over time. A typical spiritual direction relationship is sustained in monthly (or bi-weekly) one-hour sessions. Our time is often structured by a short opening and closing ritual. Sessions may include conversation, silence, prayer, meditation, art-making—or whatever is needed on the day we meet.
Spiritual direction is not therapy: there is no goal or treatment plan. We can, however, explore some of the same questions you might bring into a clinical context, and see what these questions feel like held in a different light.
Some reasons to begin spiritual direction
To find or deepen a connection with the divine.
To discern a major life decision or transition.
To explore questions of identity and spirituality: addressing religious trauma, navigating multiple religious belonging, tending to relationships with the living/dead.
To develop a sustained spiritual practice or design a ritual/ceremony.
To have a nonjudgmental witness in the unfolding of your life over time.
To engage with topics otherwise addressed in a psychotherapeutic space from a different perspective.
My approach
My own experiences of the divine have included moments and longer periods of pain, longing, desolation, mystery, clarity, and love. I am a Spiritual Director because I am open to the vastly different ways we encounter and respond to the divine. Witnessing and responding to others’ experiences of the sacred—all the messiness of it—is among my spiritual practices.
I often think of the sentiment from one of Wendell Berry’s poems: there are no sacred and unsacred places; just sacred and desecrated. The sacred is woven through all of life. It just takes a quality of attention, and sometimes an encounter with another, to see it. I regard spiritual care as a collaborative craft, drawing upon the images, memories, sounds, and embodiments brought into a session to see or create something new from what is already luminously there before us.
I enjoy working with people who do not consider themselves to be “spiritual” or who are yearning for their own language of the sacred. Where are the places in our lives we have denied as sacred—because we have been rewarded to devalue or bypass them in capitalism, because we have been told they are unworthy in our families or by others, or because we have conditioned ourselves to consider them otherwise?
I am inspired by contemplative traditions and practices, including Christian mysticism, Zen Buddhism, listening, and singing.
Session cost
Sessions are tiered based on need: $80, $65, or $50. I will share more information about how to select a tier in our intake process.
