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SPIRITUAL DIRECTION

The whole point is discernment, and I would like

more people who are into spiritual direction to open themselves

up to feeling, to intuition, to the stuff from the right brain.

and so on. He describes where he was. Then somebody discernment, and I would like more people who are into
says, “So what is the theology of that?” And he begins to spiritual direction to open themselves up to feeling, to
stutter. Now the regular theologians don’t like mystics intuition, to the stuff from the right brain. When they
because they say they are always so vague. Regular theo- meet a person, instead of saying, “I know exactly what
logians want to hammer it down, they want to make sure you have to do,” they rather elicit from the person their
that it won’t move. own way in which they have been attracted to God, so
they can know how to do it and find out what is it that
The theologians want to get it back into the blocks them and help them remove the blocks. Very few
left hemisphere? people can say “Thou/You” to God. It’s very important
Because that’s the way they are taught. They need that people should learn more how to say to God: You,
concept. I give you an example: Someone asks Jesus, Abba.
“How do you pray; how shall we pray?” And Jesus begins
the “Our Father.” And he shows how he prays the Our You’ve been extremely generous with us, giv-
Father, goes deep inside and he really connects with God ing us this time.
our Father. “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be So, bless you all. Another thing I want to teach spiri-
thy name.” And somebody writes down the words and tual directors is to bless people more.
then they say, “Say five ‘Our Fathers.’” You see what I’m
saying? They have exported it from the experience into a Can you say more about that?
mechanical thing. The world is under-blessed. Everything that’s in reli-
gion right now is empty calories. Most of it is empty
They have captured the product? calories. You go to a service and then you say, “What has
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the Roman Catholic nourished me there?” Not very much. When you come
Baltimore Catechism. They were trying to create for you with a blessing you are saying, “I wish for you to get to
a shoe and then make you wear the shoe whether it fits the full realization of who you are meant to be by divine
or not. Spiritual direction has been trying to tell people, grace and generosity.”
“You don’t have to live in a shoe.”
Amen! Our world would be different if people
What does it mean to you to reach out to this offered more blessings to one another.
community of Spiritual Directors International? You got it. Thank you very much. I am really grateful
The answer is that we all have to learn. A lot of people to God that I’m now in my eighty-ninth year. It’s amaz-
who are learning, once they have been taught, look in the ing that I’m still alive and that I can share with people
rearview mirror. That’s what I learned. When I did spiri- like you from my experiences of having met those great
tual direction 101 they taught me this and they taught people and having been in such inner spaces in which I
me that, and that’s what I will do. The whole point is could bear testimony to the Divine Presence. ■

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