Spiritual Direction vs. Therapy
Spiritual direction or therapy? Knowing the difference and which to choose matters. Interest in spiritual direction, in what Gregory Nazianzen (one of those early church fathers) called the “art of arts,” has only grown in the last 60 years. It’s the fruit of re-emphasis on the universal call to holiness, meant for “all the faithful,” the renewal of Christ’s call to perfection.
However, today when collectively we’re more alert to the reality of mental health, we run into confusion due to the similarity of spiritual direction and things like therapy. As Henri Nouwen put it, the difficulty is that spiritual direction and therapy “often appear to be one and the same thing” when in fact they’re not. The idea of therapy, of counseling, the concern for brain health and mental health are indeed similar horizons of human understanding and compassion, but they are distinct from spiritual direction and should be kept so because therapy and spiritual direction serve different purposes: the former integration and the latter vocation/calling.
First about spiritual direction: it helps to remember, as Thomas Merton wrote, that it’s a “monastic concept.” Ancient and Egyptian in origin, the art of spiritual direction was formed among men and women monastics struggling to serve God in the desert. Apart from community, these men and women needed trustworthy guides to help them stay the spiritual course. Spiritual direction was meant in this context to help a person fulfill his or her unique vocation, the ultimate purpose of which was union with God. Identifying graces as well as temptations and consolations as well as struggles, the spiritual director helps a person follow a particular vocation of prayer, whether clergy or a parent. This is why spiritual directors are “servants of prayer,” because that’s what they do. They help us find Christ in prayer and in our lives.
Which begins to explain both the difference and relationship of spiritual direction to therapy. As I said, therapy is about what from Jungian psychology we call integration. Rooted in what the ancients, and later Freud, called the “talking cure,” therapy in its different forms helps a person integrate behaviors, emotions, conceptions (or misconceptions), issuing from both the conscious and unconscious elements of the psyche, into a healthy understanding of the self in relation to reality. Processing childhood trauma, understanding emotions, managing depression or anxiety, even interpersonal problem solving are areas in which a therapist helps a person realize what Jung called “individuation”—the achievement of a healthy self in relation to the rest of the world.
Many pastors engage with a Spiritual Director for sure and some also with therapy. All pastors need to make time for either or both so as to prevent burnout and to be strectched as each pastor tries to stretch the membership of the local church. Stretch, I stress, as this pastor neer expects everyone to think like the pastor, but surely to THINK. If that is happening, I am one contented pastor.
Pastor KatieD+
Lent 2024 Study (Sin)
- Overview 1
- Lesson 2
- Lesson 3
- Lesson 4
- Lesson 5
- Lesson 6
- Anger & Rage
Morning Reflections
Saturday, 2024 March 23 Reflection - Rapture is Being Fully Alive
The word “membrane” popped into my brain one morning and refused to leave. So I paid attention. I learned that a membrane is “a thin, soft, pliable sheet” surrounding the cells in our body and in many other things, as well. Membranes provide a separation, protect what they surround, and can also transport materials that enter and exit the cell. Think of the placenta that held us as a fetus, or the thin coating inside an egg, or the shell around a seed.
While I was educating myself about membranes, I began pondering the feast of Easter, the celebration of joy. I questioned what kind of membrane might be surrounding my joy. Was this protecting or preventing it from coming forth? I found my answer in a comment Joseph Campbell made to Bill Moyers in The Power of Myth: “People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”
Feeling the rapture of being alive—isn’t that Easter’s underlying message? Not only celebrating the aliveness of the Risen Christ after his brutal death, but finding the aliveness that can come after we go through our own “deaths” of loss in various forms. Easter assures us that joy is possible even when much of life does not meet our desires or needs. I see now that the membrane I have created is what prevents joy from emerging—it is formed from my expectations of how that aliveness ought to happen in my life.
I recognized this while watching the touching PBS interview of war reporter Rod Norland who has brain cancer. After his diagnosis (forty months ago), he reunited with his estranged children. Having brain cancer led him to “think about what is important” in life and to learn how to be vulnerable. Norland now knows he is truly loved in a way he never was before. At the closing, Norland acknowledged, “We’ve been through some of the worst circumstances.” Then he concludes, “I’ve never been happier and I have the tumor to thank for that. I will die a happy man.” Norland has found the rapture of being alive.
It’s up to me, to each of us, to unseal our “membranes,” to find the aliveness that awaits. It doesn’t have to take a brain tumor to do that. I think of the Easter story—the two disappointed followers of Jesus, forlorn with grief. As they made their way back home, they were unable to break through the membrane of desolation. Only when they openly welcomed the disguised Risen Christ meeting them on the road did joy begin to leak out. The two didn’t hurry their pace nor did they ignore his presence. Instead, they welcomed this stranger, deliberately entered into conversation with him. This led to the magnificent “weren’t our hearts burning” recognition—the membrane concealing their joy gradually dissolved as they “urged him strongly” to stay and break bread with them. (Luke24:29)
The permeable layer surrounding my joy, your joy, varies but we can move through it if we slow down and extend a welcome to the stranger within ourselves and others, if we lovingly attend to what stirs within and beyond us. It is then that the Essence of Joy slides through the membrane’s seal and we know the rapture of being alive.
May all the season of Easter bring you wellness and blessing. KatieD+
Pastor's Reports to Council
Pastor Katie’s Office Hours and Pastoral Care
If Pastor Katie is not in the office when you need pastoral care, please know that Pastor Katie is always glad to take your call or to arrange a day and time to meet with you.
Cell number: 586-202-8644
Home phone: 586-716-9543.
You can also call the office at 586-727-3155 and leave a message with Helen or on the answering machine. In the old days, hospitals and rehab/nursing facilities used to inform pastors when one of their flock was admitted. That doesn’t happen anymore, so please feel free to give us a call when needed.
Rev. Katie Dailey, Pastor
E-Mail: daileystory@gmail.com
Phone: CELL: 586-202-8644
Office hours:Pastor Katie is available before worship on Sundays from 9 - 10 am and then again
after worship from 11 am - 1 pm. She is also in on Wednesdays from 10 am until 2 pm.
OFFICE: 586-727-3155
Church E-Mail: firstunitedcc@outlook.com
OFFICE HOURS:
The secretary is in the office on Tuesdays, 8:30 am —12 noon and Fridays 8:30 am till 1 pm. If you need additional assistance at other times, please send Helen an email at firstunitedcc@outlook.com or leave a phone message at the church office: 586-727-3155.
Thank you.