USCJ Review - Spring 2006
Ayey Mekom Kevodo? Where Is God In This?
An Introduction to Jewish Spiritual Direction
I first heard the question that lies at the heart of spiritual direction just a few months after my ordination, as I settled into my new position as Jewish chaplain at Methodist Hospital of Indiana. Long before I was ready to face such a situation, I was sent to care for a young couple who had just lost their baby in the neonatal intensive care unit. I longed to help, but I felt inept as I sat with these young parents, helped them to hold their baby one last time, prayed with them, and walked with them as they left the hospital.
When I returned to my office, which I shared with a female Southern Baptist minister, I was bereft, overwhelmed by the tragedy of the situation and by the painful sense that I had had little to offer these people in their time of suffering. My officemate listened gently as I cried my way through the story. When my words were exhausted, she asked me the stunning question, "Where was God for you when you were with those parents?"
The question was so foreign to me that I had no idea how to respond, yet I knew that she had said something extraordinarily important. The question "Where is God in this?," the core question of spiritual direction, stayed with me for many years. It now lies at the heart of my work as a spiritual director and guides my own spiritual life on a daily basis.
Spiritual direction is a relationship in which we dedicate a regular period of time to the exploration of the presence of the Holy in our lives. In one-on-one relationship to a spiritual director or guide or in a group, seekers are guided to notice, savor, and deepen their awareness of how the Divine has been present in their lives in recent days and weeks. Seekers may speak of any life experience - tragic or joyful, powerful or ordinary - and in the reverent context of the spiritual direction relationship discover a sense of the sacred that might otherwise have escaped their notice. In spiritual direction we look beneath the surface of our daily lives, recognizing sparks of the divine, experiences of Oneness, or a sense of being guided or accompanied along our life journeys. We ask what a particular life event or struggle may have to teach us, what new level of growth we are being called to, or what God may be offering us through this experience.
In these conversations, we frequently come to recognize moments when like our forefather Jacob we have been awakened from slumber, to discover that the Holy One had entered our lives in unexpected ways. Like Moshe at the burning bush, we are reminded again and again that the place where we stand is holy ground. Bringing the eyes of faith to apparently ordinary events, we explore the personal meanings of the Chasidic teaching that divinity is present in every moment of our lives, if we can but learn to recognize it.
Some months we emerge inspired and filled with a sense of mystery in the midst of life. At other times we share our experiences of alienation, loneliness, and betrayal. Some people primarily share emotional experiences, some generally begin with an intellectual passion, others find the divine most readily in social justice work. Regardless of our particular way of experiencing the divine, we gradually grow in our ability to dwell, as the Psalmist says, "in the house of God all of our days" (Psalm 27), living with a greater degree of awe, reverence, humility, and trust, more filled with awareness of the Divine Presence that infuses our lives.
The terms direction and director, standard in the field, are seriously confusing misnomers. The real and only Director, as any spiritual director will fervently affirm, is God. The human guide primarily offers holy listening - listening reverently to the other, to echoes of holiness in the sharing, and to a sense of Presence in the encounter between seeker and guide. Author Margaret Guenther suggests that the guide primarily offers a kind of spiritual hospitality, welcoming the seeker to feel safe and cared for in tender explorations of the life of the soul. Or, Guenther offers, spiritual guides fundamentally serve as midwives of the soul, standing by calmly, patiently, joyfully, and faithfully as the natural work of spiritual birthing unfolds. When serving as a spiritual director, I often sense that I am primarily a witness, essentially saying "Amen" to another's bracha, when I hear someone else reflect on an encounter with the holy.
From this perspective, spiritual direction is readily distinguished from its cousins: psychotherapy, pastoral counseling, and adult education. Whereas in psychotherapy there is nearly always an area of pain to be addressed, the goal of spiritual direction is not to fix or resolve anything, but to support and deepen the spiritual journey. Likewise, while spiritual direction in some ways resembles pastoral counseling, the latter generally arises from pain, confusion, or need, and ends when the seeker has healed, integrated, or reached new understanding of the difficulty. Spiritual direction, by contrast, is part of a lifelong search to connect more deeply with the sacred. People often enter into spiritual direction as part of a journey into more serious Jewish life. Jewish spiritual directors regularly recommend Torah study, more consistent prayer, and deeper immersion in Jewish community, but the primary goal of spiritual direction is to focus on the person's unique way of experiencing the divine, which lies at the core of Jewish life.
During the past 10 years, serving as a Jewish spiritual director and as the co-director of the Morei Derekh training program for Jewish spiritual direction, I have witnessed countless moments in which so-called ordinary people encountered God in the midst of their lives.
- Teaching at the recent United Synagogue Convention in Boston, I watched a room full of Conservative Jews eagerly dip into their memories, easily identifying moments when they had felt the Presence with them.
- One Conservative lay leader who came to me for spiritual direction for several years discovered an entirely new level of personal meaning in the Modeh/Modah Ani prayer. The words "Rabba emunatecha," "Your faith/faithfulness is great," addressed to God at the end of the prayer, became for her a powerful mantra, as she imagined God offering these words to her, supporting her in her journey to more fully embrace her own giftedness.
- Another Conservative lay leader, praying out loud in his own words during a session, suddenly experienced a visceral longing to build his life around love of God.At first he hesitated, wondering whether this was an acceptable way for a Jew to feel. In a powerful moment, he came to see the "Ve'ahavta" as the mitzvah to which his heart was drawn to respond.
- In the sacred safety of the spiritual direction hour, a rabbi, accustomed to having others turn to her as a paragon of faith, explored her own doubts about God, only to touch a deep well of faith that had been with her since childhood.
It is often said that the Kotzker rebbe posed the question "Where is God to be found?" His chasidim were puzzled, thinking the answer obvious: "Melo kol ha'aretz k'vodo," "The fullness of the earth is God's presence." The Kotzker challenged them with the penetrating reply, "No, the Divine is found wherever we let God in." Jewish spiritual direction trains us in the sacred practice of recognizing and embracing the Divine at the heart of our lives. May many more Jews open their hearts to God, for the sake of our people and for the healing of our world.
For more information on Jewish spiritual direction, go to the website of the Yedidya Center for Jewish Spiritual Direction, www.yedidyacenter.org.
Rabbi Amy Eilberg is co-director of the Morei Derekh training program for Jewish spiritual direction, a program of the Yedidya Center for Jewish Spiritual Direction. She offers Jewish spiritual direction to individuals and groups in St. Paul, Minnesota.
