Several years ago, the Rev. Lisa Senuta, now an Episcopal priest in the Diocese of Kansas, became the rector of a church on Chicago’s ritzy North Shore.  But, she says, “about 18 months in, the place was just eating my lunch. I was having panic attacks, which was very unusual for me.” So she got help from a spiritual director, calmed her spiritual waters and stayed in that church for several more years before becoming the Canon for Spiritual Life and Clergy Care in the Kansas Diocese.  The Rev. Lisa Senuta discovered her need for a spiritual director when a church she was serving was causing her panic attacks. Now the Episcopal priest is herself a spiritual director. Photo/Bill Tammeus Thanks to the work she did with that spiritual director, “I recognized that a contemplative posture couldn’t be something on the side, it needed to be the lead dog,” she says.  Although the concept of spiritual direction goes back at least to the desert fathers and mothers of the fifth and sixth centuries, it remained largely in monasteries and within the Catholic priesthood for a long time.  Now, however, as the institutional Christian church in the U.S. continues to shrink, more people are being trained as spiritual directors and they’re busier than ever helping people who probably aren’t getting the guidance they need from clergy in a congregation.  A clear area sign of that: The Benedictine sisters of Mount St. Scholastica in Atchison, Kan., recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of the start of “Souljourners,” their program to train spiritual directors. So far it has credentialed more than 200 people.  One of those sisters, Therese Elias, acknowledges that the term “‘spiritual direction’ is a little troublesome because I don’t direct anybody. I feel direction comes from within, from that inner ground of a person, from that place where they are in communion with the divine. So maybe something like spiritual companioning would be a better term. I suppose the term is fine as long as we recognize that God is the real director and that both of us in a spiritual direction relationship are to listen for the voice of God’s Spirit together.”  But by now, the term spiritual direction is so widely used that it’s unlikely to change.  Further evidence that spiritual direction has moved outside of its Catholic origins is that the Rev. Cathleen Burnett, a United Methodist pastor, works as a spiritual director both in Kansas City and at the Hermitage Spiritual Retreat Center in Pittsburg, Mo., where she’s assistant resident director. The resident director there is the Rev. W. Paul Jones, a Catholic priest and Trappist monk who also offers spiritual direction.  The pastoral staff of the Hermitage Spiritual Retreat Center in Pittsburg, Mo., on Lake Pomme de Terre offer spiritual direction for retreatants. Photo/Bill Tammeus “I was doing student counseling” at Saint Paul School of Theology, Jones says, “and when they would come in and talk about the difficulty of writing the paper they were working on, it became clear to me that there was much more going on behind the scenes than just the difficulty of whatever it was they were bringing to me having to do with academic matters.”  Catholic priest and Trappist monk W. Paul Jones, resident director of the Hermitage Spiritual Retreat Center, is one of a growing number of area clergy who serve as spiritual directors. Photo/Bill Tammeus That triggered in Jones an interest in monastic spirituality and eventually in spiritual direction, so he moved from the United Methodist Church to Catholicism and is now attached to Assumption Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in Ava, Mo.  Spiritual directors also can be found at such places as the Center for Living Water at the Community of Christ Temple in Independence, while Spiritual Directors International (S.D.I.) offers a list of trained directors across the country.  Burnett is among those spreading the word about spiritual direction among Missouri Methodists through the denomination’s “Discover Spiritual Direction” program. Spiritual directors have different ways of describing the practice, for which many directors charge a fee but some do it simply as an unpaid ministry.  Jones, for instance, insists that “there is a tremendous difference between spiritual direction and propaganda or evangelism. The best thing a spiritual director can be is a listener. Listen. Shut up. Discern. Perceive. You don’t get that if you shoot your mouth off.”  Then he adds this: “Your job is not to make a Southern Baptist out of someone. Rather, it’s to provide Christian therapy and healing that this particular person needs at this particular time. That’s why people came to Jesus — to be healed.”  Burnett puts it this way: “We’re not problem solvers. We don’t fix things. We listen and underscore or give feedback like ‘I wonder if this is what you’re saying.’ We help people to recognize what may be going on in their lives. My perspective is to bring the sacred into the mix.”  United Methodist pastor Rev. Cathleen Burnett of Kansas City is among area Protestant clergy who have begun to offer spiritual direction. She does it not as a career but as a ministry. Photo Courtesy Rev. Cathleen Burnett And Senuta describes it this way: “Spiritual direction is a prayer practice with another person. And there’s all kinds of prayer. Spiritual direction is what it’s been called, but we’re not really directing. There are three present in spiritual direction — the director, the directee and the Holy Spirit. So I’m inclining my ear toward the person and toward the Holy Spirit on behalf of the other person.”  S.D.I. offers several definitions, including: “Spiritual direction aims to help us experience the eternal and the infinite aspects of our true nature through the wise, experienced and compassionate company of another human being.”  Benedictine sister Therese Elias, a long-time spiritual director, says that “God is the real director and that both of us in a spiritual direction relationship are to listen for the voice of God’s Spirit together. Photo Courtesy Therese Elias Elias provided this example: “I’ve had women in spiritual direction who have been wounded by the image of God as this critical male figure, the God in heaven who is counting our virtues and our sins. That’s why sometimes we need someone to listen to because they’re not sure what they’re hearing but they’re hearing some soundings from that deeper level of themselves.” In a case like that, a spiritual director can help someone find a more loving image of God.  Over at least the last half-century, more and more Americans describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious,” though that phrase can mean a great deal or virtually nothing. But when such people find that the institutional church is failing to provide adequate answers to their spiritual needs, some have searched out spiritual directors. Spiritual direction is also becoming important — in some cases mandatory — for people seeking to be ordained as Christian pastors.  “There’s a lot of anxiety and fear out there,” Burnett says, “and people feel they are alone and doing it all alone. Spiritual direction brings people back to community and to love and laughter and joy that make the abundant life really worth living. I think there’s a hunger for that. Spiritual direction is one way of being intentional about being a holy person.”  “Holy” in that sense doesn’t mean without blemish. Rather, it means people who recognize their relationship to the divine and seek to live in ways that honor that reality. In other words, people our world needs more of.  Bill Tammeus, an award-winning columnist formerly with The Kansas City Star, writes the “Faith Matters” blog for The Star’s website, book reviews for The National Catholic Reporter and for The Presbyterian Outlook. His latest book is Love, Loss and Endurance: A 9/11 Story of Resilience and Hope in an Age of Anxiety. Email him at  [email protected].  The post From Monasteries To Mainstream: Some Find Healing And Purpose Through Spiritual Direction first appeared on Flatland.