Depth as a Place of Listening
Spiritual direction has always been concerned with attentiveness — to God, to the movements of the heart, to the unfolding of a person’s life, and to the presence of the Divine or Holy within these. Yet not all listening is the same.
The Director’s Inner Work: Why It Matters
A mandala of wholeness — a reminder that the director’s inner work shapes the space in which others are invited to unfold. Spiritual direction is often described as a ministry of listening, discernment, and accompaniment. Much attention is rightly given to the skills required for this work: attentive presence, theological grounding, prayerful awareness, and an understanding of spiritual traditions and practices. Yet beneath all of this lies something more fundamental and less
Dreams, the Unconscious, and Spiritual Maturity
Dreams often arrive at moments when something within us is shifting. We wake with an image that lingers, a feeling that does not easily fade, or a story that seems to hover at the edge of understanding, asking not to be solved but to be noticed. They tend to surface not when life feels settled and clear, but when we are unsettled — when prayer has grown dry, when a long-held certainty begins to loosen, when we feel inwardly stuck, conflicted, or quietly disturbed without know
Shame and the Spiritual Journey: Healing the Inner World with Compassion
Shame longs not to be fixed, but to be met. Many people come to the spiritual life carrying a quiet but persistent burden of shame — a quiet, corrosive sense that something is wrong with who they are. It may not always be named as such, yet it often shapes how a person prays, how they imagine God, and how safe or unsafe it feels to be truly known. Shame whispers: “I am not enough.” “I am fundamentally flawed.” “If I were truly known, I would be rejected.” Shame is not simply
Listening to the Heart: Spiritual Direction as Contemplative Presence
How often does it occur in conversation that, when opinions differ or clash, we fail to truly listen? While the other is opening their heart, sharing intimate and often sacred thoughts, we gather just enough of what they say to prepare our response — or our rebuttal — the moment they pause, if we even wait that long. We may call this dialogue, but in truth one person speaks while the other does not listen. After the exchange, roles reverse, and both have spoken — yet neither
Depth Spiritual Direction: Tending Soul and Spirit
A contemplative space where soul and spirit are held together, and deeper truth is allowed to emerge. Spiritual direction has always been concerned with the interior life — listening where soul and spirit meet — with how a person responds, over time, to the presence and movement of God. At its best, this ancient practice has never been limited to prayer techniques or spiritual discernment alone, but has attended to the whole terrain of human experience through which the spir
Images of God: How Theology Shapes Our Experience of the Divine
In this series on Images of God , I have explored how our personal psychology can shape our perception of — and relationship with — God, through the potent inner images of the divine we may consciously or unconsciously carry. I have also reflected on how wider cultural consciousness influences these images, often in ways we barely notice. Another significant, and sometimes overlooked, influence on our images of God is theology itself — the ways we have learned to think about
Working with our Dreams in the Spiritual Life Part III
Dreams often linger with us long after we have woken, carrying questions, images, or emotions that do not easily resolve. In this final article in the series, I turn toward how we might respond to what a dream reveals and allow it to shape us over time. Responding to the Dream When a dream has been lived with prayerfully — recorded, explored, and allowed to speak — we often arrive at a quiet sense that something has been revealed. This knowing is rarely dramatic. More often
Guided Imagery in Spiritual Direction: Recovering a Creative, Ancient Practice
Across religious and psychological traditions, images have long been recognized as carriers of truth, insight, and transformation. Yet in much contemporary spiritual accompaniment the imaginal dimension—once central to Christian prayer and discernment—has often been sidelined or treated with caution. A rediscovery of guided imagery opens a creative and deeply rooted way of engaging the soul, a way that resonates with the ancient Christian imagination as well as with modern de
Our Changing Images of God: A Jungian Perspective
The ways in which human beings imagine God are never static. They shift over centuries, reflecting not only theological debates but also profound transformations in human consciousness, culture, and as I have shown in previous articles, our psychology - each shift revealing something about the inner landscape of the human soul. Carl Jung invites us to read this unfolding not as doctrinal confusion but as psychological evolution. The God-image changes because we change, it evo
