Encounter

[wildeabandon]

The second year of my Spiritual Direction course began on Saturday. Although we will be continuing to meet online for our weekly evening lessons, there will be three full day in person sessions, and this was the first of these. It was quite exciting to finally meet in person these people with whom I've been sharing an intensely personal journey over the last year. I had been feeling a bit ambivalent about the course restarting, because my plate is already more than full enough, but perhaps unsurprisingly, now that it's started I'm feeling really engaged and enlivened.

The first year was quite a broad curriculum, covering the various traditions of spirituality throughout the history of the church, various scriptural themes and how they relate to spiritual direction, as well as practical listening skills. The second year is going to be focused on what they call the "psychospiritual journey", and will be looking at the ways in which spiritual direction overlaps with psychotherapy and psychiatry. It is based around the idea that to be able to enter into the perfect intimacy which God desires of us, and which we in our deepest selves desire of God, we must know ourselves in complete truth and honesty, letting go of all illusion.

Thomas Merton, in New Seeds of Contemplation, with his characteristic wryness puts it thus, "Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self. This is the man that I want myself to be but who cannot exist, because God does not know anything about him. And to be unknown of God is altogether too much privacy."

Comments

[sfred]

I hope the second year goes well for you.

[ludy]

That sounds (reads) like awesome stuff to studying and thinking about.
All the best for your second year.

[highlyeccentric]

*sighs a vaguely wistful sigh* Obviously my path has taken me far far away from this sort of possibility. Certainly this looks a lot more comprehensive than what my home denomination offer(s/ed). (And yes, much has been said of my future as a high anglican awaiting me, but in the unlikely event i get a fit of christianity into my head again, I'd be torn between the Swiss Methodist Church (who I think would recognise my UCA affiliation) and the Reformed Churches of Bern-Jura-Solothun. In a total reversal of what I'm used to, the Swiss protestant churches were solemnising /religious/ same sex marriages DECADES before it even came onto the governmental agenda, a thing I did not know until recently and which has promptly bumped them up my in my esteem.

ANYWAY. DIGRESSION OVER. I hope this works out well for you!

[wildeabandon]

Hmm - that looks like something fairly different, in that it appears to be about discerning one's own vocation. Encounter is training/formation in the specific vocation of providing spiritual direction, in order to support and guide other people in their discovery of where the Holy Spirit is calling them in their lives. Unsurprisingly, the formation process typically entails quite an intense stage of our own spiritual journeys, but it's not just about that.