Someone asked how to become a Spiritual director.

First you have to have a heart for it. You need a desire to lead people to the Light. This comes from being led from your own darkness. You need a desire to help people deepen their relationship with God. You need to have personal experience with listening for, recognizing, and yielding to the voice of God in your own life. You have to have a willingness to change your own ideas if you discern something unexpected. If you are lacking these needs and desires don’t pursue direction.

The goal of Spiritual Direction is to assist people in their own walk with God. The Director helps the directee see where God is present in life circumstances. The Director may have an insight that the directee has not yet considered. The Director is a safe place for the directee to process his own journey.

Ignatius of Loyola, a Jesuit priest, developed the Spiritual Exercises in the early 1500s. The Exercises were a series of meditations, prayers and mental exercises lasting 28 to 30 days. The intention was to help a person to discern God’s will in his life. The Jesuits teach a course to train people to use the Spiritual Exercises in their own lives, and to be able to guide other people in their own individual journey. My internship course was a 2-year-course. Contact your local Catholic Church to find out where the internship is taught.

Many of the people who took the Internship were already involved in helping professions. Ministers, nurses, councilors, therapists, and the like. Some took the internship for personal enrichment. If you are considering this as a way to make money, look elsewhere.

Once you are trained, a good place to begin is in your own church. Let your pastor and the parishioners know who you are. Let them know of of your availability. The rest is up to God.

Lately, there is a whole lot of pain going around.  In my own little universe, a friend has cancer, another friend had a stroke, my son continues to be autistic, my sister lost her job, my grand-nephew may have a serious health issue, and financial problems continue all around.  In reaction to immediate fears our government is making decisions that will affect generations to come.  Some of us are making the same types of decisions in our own lives, based on fear, that will have far-reaching consequences for us.

A friend asked me, “Do you think if we make a total mess of our lives God will figure it out for us?”

I pondered this question for a long time.

Some of our pain comes from our own bad choices.  Self-will, self-seeking, self-comfort.  No good comes out of serving our own comfort.
Some of our pain comes from honest mistakes.  We think we are doing the right thing, but it turns out to have an unforseen, painful result.  We are capable of “seeking God’s will” and still making mistakes.  This is being human.
And sometime things happen to us that we are totally blindsided by.  Sometimes we are struck by things that come out of the blue that lay us low.  This is the scariest kind of pain.  Pain we don’t “deserve”.  And yet it happens.

If you are reading this blog, my bet is that at some time in your life, you have had a personal encounter with the living God, the Great Mystery, Creator of All.  You probably have some belief in the Power and Majesty of the One Who Is.  And you have asked this One, “Why?”  Why do You do what You do?  Why do You permit what You permit?  I think, at its core, all our questions are really asking, “Do You love me?  Can I trust You?”

And the One Who Is answers, “I sent you Jesus.”

    Non-sequitur, Great One.  I asked You if You love me.

“I sent you Jesus.  I sent you ME.”

    But Jesus suffered.

“And so will you.”

I got a meditation in my email the other day that said not to spend too much time trying to figure out why we suffer–that Jesus spent very little time explaining suffering.  When Jesus encountered suffering He blazed a way through it.  Some things he fixed.  Some things he let be.

That’s when it gets scary.  Evidently some things I am supposed to bear.  Let be.                                               When I think of surrendering to some of the pain in my life I feel a thrill of fear go through my body.  Adrenaline is released and my brain goes numb.  I forget to breathe.

I’ll bet Jesus felt like that in the Garden of Gethsemane.  Yet Jesus did not run from it.  Jesus went through it.  And out of what Jesus went through has come my faith and my salvation.  What if, instead, Jesus had run?

Evidently God only permits what God can use.

So when we suffer, if there is an obvious way out, take it.  (Duh.)

If there is no obvious way out, we are to bear it, at least for the present moment.  (Otherwise, God would provide a way out.)  (Duh, again.)

So, when bearing this present suffering that God is permitting, I begin each day asking for God’s direction.  I go through the day doing the Next Right Thing.  I try to trust the mystery.  And I watch what happens.