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Literature Review on Topic 7: Spiritual Direction

Spiritual direction fosters Mana Atua.

In Dorrie Johnson's search for a satisfactory spirituality (ref 046) he has good company. The quest for secular spirituality by the original worker-priests is recorded by Erdlander (ref 066) who chronicles their efforts of to discover ways of understanding faith as being present in real life and not merely an intellectual structure. Their experiences pointed to new ways of religious experience expanding and deepening faith. The worker-priests and industrial chaplains had spoken of their closeness to God in the activity in the world of work cooperating with workers and combating oppression; some worker-priests said they felt more close to God in such types of activity than in Church. They were caught in the dichotomy of inwardness and outwardness of which Duquoc writes (ref 133) .

If we follow Nash (quoted by Mackenzie in ref 044) there is not just one dichotomy but several. And in her interviews she observed three spiritual strategies for dealing with them: generalising justifying and seeking. If faith and economic thinking are too close Nash says then they will collapse into a secular wholly rationalised mindset. If they are too distant - as in a completely privatised faith - faith concerns will no longer impact on the economic world.

Pitt (ref 081) emphasises that the minister in secular employment needs to be secure enough in God simply to wait for God to disclose God's purposes in the situation.  This he calls 'secular contemplation in the secular desert'. It is a fascinating image for it paints the PSE as a pilgrim in a barren land -- the secular employment is to be endured not celebrated. According to Pitt the spiritual disciplines appropriate to the PSE's employment situation are: not to be constantly talking about God or sharing Christian things; not to be anxious about being successful; not to have unrealistic goals about making converts; they are the disciplines of self-control.

In this Pitt may be reading the situation more pessimistically than is warranted. Evidence of a thirst for spirituality can be detected in the very midst of secularity. McLaughlin a secular writer asserts (ref 093) that the workplace is far from being a spiritual desert. It is her observation that people at all levels in the corporate hierarchies increasingly want to nourish their spirituality and bring more meaning and purpose into their work life. Spiritual values that are widely embraced in business include integrity honesty accountability quality cooperation service intuition trustworthiness respect justice and service. And she says they want their spirituality to be practical and applied -- to bring heaven down to earth.

Johnson comments that Christians who are trying to reconcile science and religion often ascribe different functions to the two fields for example science may answer the How? questions while religion responds to the "Why?" ' Teilhard de Chardin (1957) and Polkinghorne (1992) address this dualism differently. The nub of the matter is as Johnson ays in another paper (ref 099) that the PSE will truly be a person in secular employment one who -

... will identify with the work people experience the same contention take part of the blame carry the anxieties be among those needing forgiveness and release him/herself with compassion as well as the institution organisation or system.

There says Johnson is the rub. Conventional approaches to seeking a spirituality can prove too simplistic for PSEs as for other Christians at work. Accountability to God should invigorate a spirituality of the community at work. While traditional spirituality may separate itself from the ordinary working world the PSE must find a spirituality that not only takes account non-Christian spiritualities (ref 135) but also affirms the working environment as part of God's creation.

In this quest the PSE may gain value from an insightful spiritual director. Spiritual direction takes place when two people agree to meet to give their full attention to what God is doing in one of their lives and seek to respond in faith. According to Peterson (ref 100 ) spiritual direction sessions are based in the belief that an active grace is shaping this life into a mature salvation; that the Christian community has acquired wisdom through the centuries that provides guidance; that to apply that wisdom it is necessary to discern the particulars of this life this situation. It is a situation where prayer itself in so many ways the antithesis of activity has to be an integral part of the life of the bivocational priest. The pretres-ouvriers themselves (ref 015) needed to communicate with God in the midst of assembly-line toil and in so doing found that their work and its orientations nourished their interior life.

And there is a specifically Anglican programme for spiritual direction; Kenneth Leech describes it in the context of the traditions of spiritual direction and its significance for the prayer life of the individual (ref 103) But that programme needs to be re-interpreted if it is to relate spiritual direction to a life spent largely in the secular world and resolve its conflict with the world organized around secular objectives.

Some of the spiritual issues that a PSE engage with their spiritual director are what Anne Hadfield 136 describes as -
  1. Identity and Indentities: what of the fellow traveller ?
  2. Motivation and Motivations: what of CALL ?
  3. Values: clashes - integrity
  4. Recollection: how to centre oneself with God other than in a religious place - how to access one's spirituality while in the secular setting
Yet one-on-one spiritual direction has a major drawback too: it reinforces the individuation to which the PSE is naturally subject. Insights from the provisions of the EFM programme (no this is not a commercial for EFM !) group encounters might provide a fruiful model in which the spirituality of PSEs could be nurtured.

For all that Peterson spends some time describing why priests especially need spiritual direction -

"Our position requires that we act with authority; our faith requires that we live in submission. ... Our already healthy propensity for pride is goaded a dozen times a day with no one in sight to check it. It is not merely nice for pastors to have a spiritual director; it is indispensable." [Quote ref 100 p.167]

Head reference for 015 044 046 066 077 081 093 099 100 103 133 135 136