A vital aspect of the contemporary practice of spiritual guidance is the recognition of new categories of inner, mystical growth. Most often, these insights are the result of experiential encounters, in which we discover that the terms and stages of spiritual development we are taught and use to guide those who share their soul stories with us, are not adequate to the actual lives of many today. All too often classical accounts of the soul’s journey do not express the depth and anguish of the suffering of the feminine. 

From my practice, I developed the concept, the “dark night of feminine,” as a way to address a passage into deeper states of consciousness that are particularly relevant to women, but also to healing the most intimate within us, females and males alike.

Consciously recognizing the dark night of the feminine within our understanding of the soul’s journey situates the reclamation of the feminine at a deeper stratum of consciousness and highlights the intensity and depth of our struggle for wholeness.  As a refinement of our understanding of the soul, it emphasizes that the violations we experience in social, personal, and spiritual relations have a direct impact on consciousness and on our ability to know self and others. 

In this session, Beverly Lanzetta addresses a number of contemplative processes that are distinctive to the passage into the feminine dark night. Her talk will be followed with break-out rooms, an exercise, “Encounters with the Dark Night of the Feminine” and a moderated question period.

Spiritual Direction has been a consistent practice within the Christian tradition since the early 4^th Century, when women joined the flight to the desert in search of a more contemplative lifestyle. The names of women and their advice appear in collections of Sayings of the Desert Fathers. In this period, some women were hermits and others lived in small settlements of women in a given area. Both the female and male ascetics gathered for Sunday Eucharist and individual spiritual guidance could take place after that service.  The practice of spiritual direction after the 4^th century was usually related to the practice of confession and reconciliation to the community which changed through out history, and at later periods spiritual direction often took place within the context of the priest/penitent relationship. 

However, some women who were abbesses of women’s communities were also involved in the formation of members and their on-going development in the spiritual life. Julian of Norwich, who was an anchoress, in Norwich, England offered spiritual counsel to those who approached her window looking out onto the street, and Margery Kempe, a Lay woman, who was also a mystic, reported that Julian “good counsel gave.” Teresa of Avila much later in Spain sought out the best “confessors” she could for her communities but also counselled her sisters herself as well as the leaders of other convents she had founded.

In the complex relationship between men and women in the church, women found ways of working within the system to foster the spiritual growth of other women. Abbess Hildegard of Bingen, went on preaching tours along the Rhine. Women foundresses of religious communities instructed their members in this life-style and fostered their growth in the spiritual life often in collaboration with sympathetic and competent clergy.  Catherine of Siena went on preaching tours, companioned by Dominican priests to hear the confessions of her listeners, whom she had inspired to repent and develop a more advanced spiritual life. She dictated letters of spiritual direction to many people. Teresa of Avila, who reformed the Carmelite sisters with clergy collaborators, John of the Cross, among them, guided her own sisters as prioress, as well as writing letters of support to the prioresses of other convents living by the same rule.  Jane Frances de Chantal in Annecy, France, in collaboration with Francis de Sales developed a new community of women and both of them supported the spiritual development of lay women as well.

Within the Society of Friends, Quaker women often had separate “meetings” from the men. The “meetings” themselves were spiritually formative of those who participated, as individuals could seek out a more experienced woman from within the group for spiritual counsel. Within the Anglican Church in England, Evelyn Underhill, a scholar who studied mysticism and wrote a classic on that topic, also led  retreats and served as a spiritual director.

Spiritual Direction in the mid 20^th century, in response to the reforms of Vatican Il, developed programs explicitly for the training of spiritual directors for both lay and ordained people in spiritual direction by the early 70’s.  Simultaneously, others developed interdenominational formation programs for spiritual directors. Women participated from the beginning in this training.

As women anticipate and approach elderhood, or dwell there already, what spiritual roles might they inhabit? What spiritual tools might they wield? In this session Pat McCabe guides us in an exploration of grandmother wisdom, and the role of women elders as spiritual leaders.  How do women elders protect and empower the children, the life-bringers, and the sacred warriors of our societies? Pat will share about the Grandmother’s Lodge and how it can serve as a counterpoint to masculine leadership.

“Who am I in my own eyes?” is a guiding question for women in the process of shifting from other-defined to self-defined. 

Noticing how females are portrayed in advertisements, movies, in political commentary, etc. gives us clues about the difficulty women can have in defining themselves. The cultural, patriarchal flow of how women are “supposed to be” is easy to move with.   As a woman, how do you experience yourself when you are other-defined? When self-defined? Our bodies have much wisdom to offer us in this discernment and this is crucial work when companioning women.

Study upon study indicates that the sin, or great wound, is vastly different for men than for women.  Pride is named as a central wound of men while a lack of self-love is women’s great wound. Lacking a love for self makes room for others to define us.  Given this, how might we shape our spiritual direction with women?

During this session, as we consider ways we define ourselves, we’ll explore the gifts and virtues of the nine Enneagram Types and consider offering those not just to others, but to ourselves. In supporting the inward turning of women, the Enneagram Map can serve as guide, indicating how we can claim and live from our strengths.  Honoring and valuing our lives as women in a world that more often than not, doesn’t, is holy work.  Deep is our hunger to be fully ourselves, to be the ones we were created to be.

Black lesbian warrior activist poet Audre Lorde (1934-1992) is mostly known as an activist writer who wrote poems and essays about liberation from homophobia, patriarchy, and racism.  A closer look at her work demonstrates that her writing is also a resource for feminist spiritual accompaniment.  Lorde was raised Catholic, but encountered I Ching in high school, African female deities in adulthood, and secularized meditation in cancer treatment.  Lorde wrote at least 18 spiritual poems in her teens that are in her papers archived at Spelman College in Atlanta, but have not been published. In this workshop, we will discuss Audre Lorde’s life and poems, how to use her unpublished poetry as tools for feminist spiritual accompaniment, and the spiritual movements between Western and Eastern spiritualities through the lenses of African-American women who grew up in church and gravitated to Buddhism.

“Once a person is heard to speech she becomes a hearing person. ”

— Nelle Morton, The Journey Is Home

Friendship is both a gift and a profound spiritual practice. In this session, we will draw upon perennial wisdom and our own lived experience as we explore:  What is unique to friendships among and between women?  How through our friendships do we help one another to  discover and become more of who we are called to be?  How might we as spiritual companions contribute to the  flourishing of friendship in the public square?

In this session, we will …

• Become acquainted with feminist theologian Nelle Morton’s understanding of “hearing to speech” and its implications for spiritual friendship;
• Explore how we as spiritual directors can help more women to develop their capacities for deep listening and spiritual accompaniment;
• Reflect on our own experiences of hearing, and being heard, to speech;
• Consider how this embodied way of listening has the potential to increase women’s agency, creativity, capacity to self-author, as well as expand their spiritual awareness.

Trauma is a difficult word that evokes many emotions. 

How can we understand Trauma from a different lens?

What if you could learn how to free yourself from the shackles of trauma?

What if you could reframe your past experiences, where you get to choose the role that they play in your life or how much power they hold over you?

Jasvir Rababan MBE is not only an academic in the field of Sikh Music Therapy but also an expert by experience, having applied these techniques on herself to free herself from her own shackles of trauma. Jasvir works with her clients taking them on that very journey of healing and transforming their trauma into emotional freedom. Through the emotional liberation she has experienced, Jasvir has stepped into spaces of social activism to tackle taboo issues such as sexual abuse within the South Asian Community and last year launched the #metooSikh campaign.

This spirit of the Warrior Saint that Jasvir embodies, that also lives within each of us is the essence of what you will explore in this session. 

You will learn more about how trauma houses itself within the physical body and understand more about how this trauma can be released using music. Through the ancient Raag system you will discover how the journey of emotional transformation is formed and how it can open the pathway to discovering and finding your inner warrior saint.

This will be a session exploring and connection with the healing, strength, resilience and transformation that exists within each of us.

In this session, participants will have an opportunity to explore aspects of their shadow nature, including identifying how this presents in both masculine and feminine ways, in their own lives, and in the collective. Tools and practices will be shared for inquiry and integration, for both personal process and for companioning others.

According to RAINN (Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network), at least 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys will be sexually abused by the time they’re 18-years-old. When you start talking to communities of color, however, it’s more like 1 in 2. And, for Black girls, at least 70% of us will be sexually abused before we can vote. Male sexual violence was a pandemic long before COVID-19, so it’s abundantly clear: you may be companioning survivors and, you are likely a survivor yourself. I see you.

Join Pastor Lyvonne Briggs for an exploration of how we can hold space for those we companion, ourselves, and our spheres of influence as we journey towards holistic healing.

In this session we will learn how to:

• Shift from trauma-informed care to healing-centered engagement
• Carve out safe, protected space for directees who are survivors of male sexual violence
• Implement sensuality as a spiritual practice for both self and communal care

Radical truth-telling is the first step in creating a more just and equitable world…Lyvonne guides us in facing the truth, no matter how gory, together.

Spiritual companions create trustworthy, sacred spaces in which people can heal and dismantle historical systems that have dehumanized women, gender non-binary and transgender people, Black, Indigenous and People of Color, LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, poor and disabled people, Jews and others whose religion/spirituality is outside of Christian hegemony. This session will explore a feminist approach to spiritual direction that offers unique rituals, tools and practices for reclaiming and renewing the embodied experience of being created in the image of the Divine. As Sister Mary Ann Scofield wrote, as spiritual companions we are being called to be faithful to God’s “subversive values…that set us afire for justice.”

We are companions on this earth with beings of all kinds – from the rooted ones to the four, six, and eight-legged ones, the winged and finned ones, the rocks and rivers, seas and stars – we are all related.   Many women find their greatest spiritual source and sense of wholeness and connection in nature.

Ecofeminism recognizes the common and intertwined roots of the oppression and the liberation of women, the earth, animals, and colonized Others. We will examine both the Western paradigm that has led to these oppressions, and how we might uproot them using an ecofeminist lens. We will also explore how body/mind value dualism in Western culture has resulted in a separation of divinity and spirit from body and earth in many religious and spiritual traditions, and present a nondualistic alternative of the immanence of the divine and embodied spirituality. Finally, we will explore our own relationships with the earth – the wonder and awe, the wisdom that comes of listening, the depth of connection, as well as the grief we experience in the disregard and destruction of the earth – and ways we can incorporate these in our spiritual companioning. 

Some of the sources we will be drawing from include: Susan Griffin, Carol Christ, Rosemary Ruether, Starhawk, bell hooks, Linda Hogan, Luisah Teish, Vandana Shiva, Karen Warren, Greta Gaard, Alice Walker, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and the water walkers, as well as our own experiences and connections with the earth.

Presentations from live course participants:

• Cathy Wicks: Group Image meditation
• Valerie Langston Brettillo: Goddess Spirituality
• Michelle Landry: The power of Circle to transform
• Meisaan Chan: An embodied meditation that decolonizes the Christian gesture of praying hands and reframes it – the gesture of praying hands – into an embodied message of infinity.