The History of Spiritual Direction
Spiritual direction is often spoken of today as a contemporary practice, yet its roots reach deep into the history of spiritual life across centuries and traditions. This article traces the long and rich story of spiritual direction — from the wisdom of the desert, monastic and Celtic traditions, through to its contemporary rediscovery — and reflects on how spiritual accompaniment has always sought to support the deepening of a person’s relationship with God and their own inn
Spiritual Life and Our Emotions: When Spirituality Avoids Feeling
Spiritual bypassing names a subtle but pervasive tendency within spiritual life: the use of spiritual beliefs or practices to avoid painful feelings, unresolved wounds, and developmental needs. While often unconscious and well-intentioned, it can quietly undermine growth, wholeness, and genuine transformation. What Is Spiritual Bypassing? The term spiritual bypassing, coined by psychologist John Welwood in 1983, describes the use of spiritual beliefs or practices to avoid eng
Spiritual Life and Our Emotions: Toward Wholeness and Integration
Transformation of our emotion life remains one of the greatest challenges confronting us on our spiritual path. Emotions and the Spiritual Struggle Indeed, perhaps in exasperation, many historical strands of Christianity relegated feelings to an inferior and suspect status, often seeing them as manifestations of female weakness far less trustworthy and more 'primitive' than 'male' rational powers. Strong feelings needed to be muted for fear of muddying objectivity, with 'dis
Spiritual Direction or Counselling?
This question is often asked as though spiritual direction and counselling are competing or interchangeable practices. In reality, the relationship between them is more subtle and more fluid than a simple comparison allows. Over the years, as spiritual direction has increasingly entered dialogue with psychology, many practitioners have found themselves working at an attentive boundary between inner healing, meaning-making, and spiritual discernment. What follows is therefore
Going on Retreat
Retreats are times of renewal and refreshment - time to slow down and go deeper, to connect with what is truly important to you in life; a time to listen inwardly. Life these days can be a whirlwind of activity. We can become so caught up in our everyday 'doing' that pausing and reflecting, taking time just to 'be', can be a very deepening and centering experience, refreshing our weary, stressed body, mind, and soul. We can regain a sense of personal balance and integrity.
Sacred Cairns: Markers Along the Inner Path
There are images that quietly accompany us through life, gathering meaning as we change. The image of a cairn — simple, weathered, and humanly made — is one such symbol , holding memory, passage, loss, and orientation in a single form. Cairns as Markers On the home page of my website is a picture of a cairn. Cairns are piles of stone placed one on top of the other to mark key events such as battles or burial sites, to mark trails, or to remember sacred and important moments.
Describing Spiritual Direction : Voices from a Living Tradition
A sacred conversation held within the life of God. Spiritual direction is often described today in careful, well-established ways — as a contemplative, supportive accompaniment that helps a person attend to God’s presence in their life. These descriptions are not wrong. Yet they are not the whole story. Across Christian history, spiritual direction has been understood, practised, and named in many different ways, shaped by context, temperament, theology, and human need. Rath
Awakening Love
Just back from attending a refreshing and inspiring interfaith retreat day led by Maura Sills. She spoke of the numinous quality of love and wisdom that is at the centre of us all. And how awakening to, and resting prayerfully and consciously in this depth within us, not only helps us but all those to whom we relate in life. I was very struck by how easily we can live our life separate in our own skin, sometimes never really experiencing a sense of deep connection to others
Spiritual Landscapes: Places of Journey and Transformation
There are so many landscapes we pass through, internally and externally, as we journey in life. I find that the outer and inner are often brought together when reflecting on the geographical and spiritual journeying of God’s people in the Old Testament, and how these places relate to our lives and experience now. Garden Places There are lush gardens such as the Garden of Eden, and the garden that forms the backdrop to the lovers in the Song of Songs — an almost restored par
Spiritual Journeying
'In one sense we are always travelling, and travelling as if we did not know where we are going. In another sense we have already arrived.
