Practicing G.R.A.C.E. in Spiritual Direction
- Anne Solomon
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read

Many people in helping professions can find themselves in times of struggle trying to compassionately support others through their work. We can understand compassion as the capacity to attend to the experience of others, to feel concern for them, to sense what will serve and be of benefit, and it is certainly a key ingredient in good spiritual accompaniment where we come alongside others as anam cara in their spiritual seeking and journeying.
To help people access these competencies of compassion, Rev Roshi Joan Halifax has developed a wonderful little process from her research into how we can come alongside people in a compassionate and open way in caring contexts - G.R.A.C.E.
Here I seek to frame this insightful and helpful approach for the work of spiritual accompaniment:
G - Stands for gathering one's potential. It's about being grounded, bringing your attention to the breath or some place of stability in your body and letting go of all distractions outside of you. One inhale gives you an important pause that allows you to access a sense of presence, helping you make connection with the person you are with, being present in the situation that you are bearing witness to. It's to do with the cultivation of attentional balance and gathering your attention. You can use this moment of gathering your attention to interrupt your assumptions and expectations and to allow yourself to simply relax and be present.
R - is recalling one's intention. Most of us who work as spiritual directors, or who entered caring professions, have done so because of a calling. We really want to help and be of benefit to others. But we can sometimes lose the thread of our motivation and why we became, for example, a spiritual director. So, R, in recalling one's intention, is about perfuming or flavouring the cultivation of one's heart to remember why you are here - to be of support and help to others in their spiritual search and journey, connecting to your highest values and serving the work of God or the Sacred in their life's path.
A - is attuning to self and other. It is that capacity to actually track your experience in the moment - what's happening emotionally, physically and also what thoughts are present. So you know what is going on in your own heart, mind and body and can be with that non-judgmentally. This is not only grounding, but helps to locate our biases, many of which can be quite unconscious. So, this self-tracking is really critical in adjusting our view - how we notice and acknowledge the other person. Then we can attune to the other, the directee in front of us, in a way that is truly empathetic physically, cognitively, emotionally and spiritually.
C - Consider what or who we really serve both within the person and beyond. This is not so much focused in the cognitive knowledge place, but about dropping down to that deeper inner place of openness in inquiry and 'not-knowing' as we recognise the presence of the 'third chair or person', the true spiritual director as Thomas Merton says of the Spirit, in the room in the spiritual accompaniment encounter. That we are there to serve in the person's life that which we understand as both deeply within and beyond in whatever way we chose to name that - God, the Sacred, Ultimate Reality, the Holy. That we can attune to, listen and respond to that Presence in the encounter in the most helpful way for the person we are with.
E - Ethically engaging and ending. Working in an ethical and responsible way is obviously foundational. Endings are also very important to complete the process in a way that acknowledges what has transpired. It could be a sense of deep appreciation within of what we have learned from the directee. It could be a sense of self-appreciation of what we have learned from the interaction. It could be a deep gratitude that needs to be affirmed in our experience with the person we are present with and the Holy with us in the encounter.
G.R.A.C.E. can be an active and adaptive process not only in the spiritual accompaniment encounter but in the context of our whole lived experience, and a powerful resource for us, not just a technique. When we live it, it can become a way in which we align ourselves with our integrity, values and deep aspiration to be of service to others in our life with God.
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