In the morning before the day’s appointments, I pause to take a breath and listen for the Divine Voice to guide my feet in the way of peace, a path of righteousness“Paths of righteousness,” Psalm 23:2. toward human and planetary healing. Am I hearing the call deep enough?
In the hearts of those I accompany in spiritual direction is a recurring theme of uneasiness and dread. I thought prayerful listening to our world at this historical juncture was the core of my work. But I find myself questioning if spiritual formation and direction will be found faithful to the Divine call in this moment. In my own contemplative rhythms, I sense and continue to reckon with the urgent need for compassionate aid for displaced people, for local social action and human transformation. Will I be found faithful?
I pray with the words of an old choir anthem:
After all our hopes and dreams
Have come and gone
And our children sift through all
We’ve left behind,
May the clues that they discover
And the mem’ries they uncover
Become the light that leads them
To the road we each must find.
O may all who come behind us
Find us faithful.Jon Mohr, “Find Us Faithful,” 1987, Birdwing Music and Jonathan Mark Music.
Find us faithful. This is my prayer. As I gaze into another crimson sunrise filtered through wildfire smoke, I grieve for those children and what will be left for them to sift through. Scripture is adamant that the earth is the Lord’s, that Creation is God’s original word of self-revelation and witness.The earth is the Lord’s, Psalm 24; God’s original self-revelation and witness, Romans 1:19–20. Are we deaf to the prophetic voices that seek to guide the footprints we leave behind?
One of God’s first commands to humans is to steward and replenish the earth.See Genesis 1:28. But if the worst comes to pass, how am I guided to be the kind of person who can hold a centered and brave space with others who are laboring to ward off social disruption and ecological disaster?
One of the bravest spaces I know is in spiritual direction.
My devotion is honing in myself and others a practice that shapes the interior ear for hearing the Divine whispers and prompts. All the while I keep in mind Thomas Merton’s wisdom:
We did not come here to breathe the rarified air beyond the suffering of this world. We came here to carry the suffering of the whole world in our heart.James Finley quoting Thomas Merton in “Breathing Underwater, Week Two: Not For Ourselves Alone,” Center for Action and Contemplation, July 26, 2024, accessed September 19, 2024, https://cac.org/daily-meditations/not-for-ourselves-alone/.
In such complex times, while the Divine voice is discerned in Scripture or Word, we can also learn to listen for God’s voice in the heart of Nature. In her book, Church of the Wild, Victoria Loorz offers insight that may broaden our listening in spiritual direction. Her experience resembles my own Divine encounters along timbered trails, listening to all that is there in the wild. We have both sensed in the voiced and nonverbal, through presence and attentiveness, There is God.Victoria Loorz, Church of the Wild: How Nature Invites Us Into the Sacred (Minneapolis, MN: Broadleaf Books, 2021), 89–104. In spiritual accompaniment we come to find that our call is about cultivating the Divine Connection that leads to the There is God. St. Francis mentors such listening by his kinship with other-than-human partners in creation.
Take for example my adventure in trout fishing. I was out on the Big Creek Reservoir in Newport, Oregon, with my husband, Dave, for some evening fishing this summer. Dave had good luck catching his limit of trophy-sized trout in the early morning. And since the water was still, the sunshine golden, and I was with him, he put our little dingy in the water again. It was fun to catch trout that size on the light pole Dave had already geared up for me. I know my way of casting and holding the pole, the line, and the reel is very amateur—and the cause of some occasional exasperation for Dave who heroically repressed his urge to coach me. His good humor reigned when, despite my poor form, I still reeled my catch to the boat for Dave to net. We hauled our string of trout to the shore just as the last of the evening light dimmed amber.
Certainly, Dave as the captain of the boat in charge of the rowing and trolling was essential, as was his gearing up my reel with the most likely test line and lure for success. But I had to know by feel how to respond to a strike or a tug on the line. This way of embodied knowing is a different kind of posture for listening to both our own nature and that of God’s in Creation.
I resonate with the hope expressed in this excerpt from a post by the Center for Action and Contemplation quoting its founder, Franciscan priest Richard Rohr:
I believe that there is a deep relationship between this inner revolution of prayer and the transformation of social structures and social consciousness. The Book of Wisdom says, “the multitude of the wise is the salvation of the world” (6:24). Our hope is that contemplation really can change us and the society we live in by guiding our actions for compassion and justice in the world.Richard Rohr, “Loving a Suffering Planet: Prayer and Politics,” Center for Action and Contemplation, May 16, 2024, accessed September 19, 2024, https://cac.org/daily-meditations/prayer-and-politics/.
The deepening trust and intimacy with God that one finds in spiritual direction renews our reservoir of resilience. I am drawn to think of spiritual direction as a support for radical resilience and, in a hidden-in-Christ sort of way, a catalyst for social transformation—for it supports the mystic and prophet, the priest and deacon, the pilgrim and seeker in listening for the sacred and divine Presence in their lives. Such listening does help us, as Episcopal priest and educator Alice Updike Scannell (1938–2019) wrote:
Whenever we seek to understand how we can best live our lives with meaning and purpose, through prayer, meditation, or another practice of spiritual discernment, and we pay attention with an open mind to what comes to us in response to practice, we’re engaging with our spirituality as a radical resilience skill. Over time, engagement with spirituality in this way is transformative. It changes the way we understand ourselves. It opens our hearts to an awareness of gratitude and leads us into greater compassion and a sense of connection with others.Alice Updike Scannell and Stephanie Spellers, Building Resilience: When There’s No Going Back to the Way Things Were (New York: Church Publishing, 2017, 2020), 112–113, 120–121; quoted in “Tending the Fire Within: Spirituality as Radical Resilience,” Center for Action and Contemplation, May 16, 2024, accessed September 19, 2024, https://cac.org/daily-meditations/spirituality-as-radical-resilience/.
And the transformative connection ripples out into the world healing the harms while nurturing a readiness for incarnating Love—as loving thought and loving action—in human communities and institutions and nations. It is the renewed and resilient human that in collaboration and concert with God in others of goodwill that gives me hope for a future for the earth and all who dwell therein.
In the audio version of Joan Chittister’s book, The Time is Now,Joan D. Chittister, The Time Is Now: A Call to Uncommon Courage, read by author (New York: Convergent Books, 2019), Audible Audiobook, 3 hr, 57 min. she talks about the prophetic work that is needed from prophets who want the will of God for the world. Chittister is helpful in encouraging my own imagination for a future and for a kind of people who might cultivate thriving.
She, along with the authors of The Future We ChooseChristiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac, The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis, read by Christiana Figueres (New York: Random House Audio, 2020), Audible Audiobook, 4 hr., 48 min. have already imagined it. Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac can see it with just the technology and knowledge we already have—and they understand that averting further injustice in climate crises begins with changing our minds. That mind change, or metanoia, is the message and work of Jesus and the prophets. That is what I am listening to and aiming for, and I feel that desire belly deep in the work I do in hosting conversations of consequence and ongoing conversion.
Anne Long, in her book, Listening, insists that personal and corporate devotion are meaningless unless their outcome is Kingdom-shaped. She writes:
In many vital areas of our national life the Church today lacks a clear prophetic voice. . . . Prophets who, as they listen to the nations and to God, will hear his word for the hour and fearlessly pass it on. But may we also be faithful and fearless listeners.Anne Long, Listening, UK ed. (London: Darton, Longman & Todd Ltd, 1990), 103.
On a clear day along a sandy Pacific Northwest beach with scrub-vegetation and panoramic views, I’m grateful to feel so small. Just a speck of life on a beautiful and generous planet. I’m easy with the reminder that my part to hold is quite small, that I can hold it in good faith with intentions to be simply what I am.
While forests across the west are burning, the evergreen trees in our yard are producing more cones this year than we’ve ever seen before. So many of our landscaped areas are sprouting volunteer baby trees. Nature seems to know how desperate the earth is to offset carbon and greenhouse gases. So trees, being simply what they are, are supplying their own remedy for producing oxygen and providing shade. In partnership with nature, there is hope.
This summer’s long hot days and warm nights brought early harvests to berry fields and fruit trees. I pray the heated social and environmental climate in our country and around the world will accelerate human maturity, that it might somehow bear good fruit, like wisdom and compassion. I’m grateful both wisdom and compassion that characterize the kind of Presence that ripens the earth, also attends us when I meet with others in spiritual direction.
Jesus so consistently listened to his Father that he could say, “I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me.” Jesus insisted, “You are the light,” and challenges us to “Let your light shine.” John 12:49; Matthew 5:14–16. I am grateful for the sages who have held out their Christ Light and illumined our lives.
A Jimmy Carter quote circulating on social media was forwarded to me as the former United States president, a Christian and social justice servant now on hospice, approaches his one hundredth birthday. The quote readily highlights his insistence on faith in action:
I have one life and one chance to make it count for something . . . I’m free to choose what that something is, and the something I’ve chosen is my faith. Now, my faith goes beyond theology and religion and requires considerable work and effort. My faith demands—this is not optional—my faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference.Jimmy Carter, quoted on What Should I Read Next, accessed August 6, 2024, https://www.whatshouldireadnext.com/quotes/jimmy-carter-i-have-one-life-and.
Philosopher Dallas Willard would agree and consistently taught that grace is not opposed to effort.Listen to Dallas’s teaching on Spiritual Formation and Soul Care, lecture series, parts 9, 10, and 11: “Human Effort, Human Character and Divine Grace: Why Grace Requires Effort,” accessed September 19, 2024, https://conversatio.org/collections/spiritual-formation-and-soul-care-audio/. Wisdom and faith informed Carter’s presidency and Willard’s work as a Christian philosopher. Like Jesus, they lived under social systems—in religion, in business, and in the world. But the wise ones remember the way to walk with God in the world is through humility.
Dallas further counselled a group of pastors in San Diego in the early 2000s, “as far as evil goes, don’t participate.”Author’s notes, San Diego, 2003, of Dallas Willard, “Taking the Kingdom of God to the World of Business and Government today,” accessed Sept 19, 2024, https://conversatio.org/taking-the-kingdom-of-god-to-the-world-of-business-and-government-today/ In following Jesus, both Carter and Willard advocated for faithfulness in the things that make for peace.
Author and Renovaré founder Richard Foster spoke at a pastor’s conference in 2018 at George Fox University. In his address, “Casting a Vision, The Past and Future of Spiritual Formation,” Foster offers wisdom for a faithful way forward. From his subsection titled, “Living through Dark Times,” he urged his hearers to first of all listen:
If we really want to be a countercultural people, I suggest first of all that we simply, “shut up and listen.” We listen to our neighbor. We listen to the angry. We listen to the fearful. We listen to the bruised and the broken. We listen, simply listen.Richard Foster, Casting a Vision: The Past and Future of Spiritual Formation (Englewood, CO: Renovaré, 2019), accessed August 7, 2024, https://renovare.org/books/casting-a-vision.
This, of course, expresses what spiritual directors, through practice and attention, are doing. It is my prayer and hope that others formed in the Kingdom Jesus proclaims will do: Listen.
I met with a directee recently who had emailed me, “Lately I feel I’m battling the demons of doubt. I’m feeling full of anxiety about everything. Is there any way we could move up our scheduled meeting to sometime sooner?” It was during the session, while I simply listened, that the directee was eventually able to return to calm and reconnect to three anchors that are for them trustworthy:
Another directee who has met regularly with their spiritual director for a dozen years offered their reflection, “With my spiritual director helping me trust in my essential Belovedness, I recognize my whole life as an expression of Sacred Mystery.”
I have spiritual directees, friends, and colleagues who are, through compassion and action, making a difference in the world. They are gracious to allow me to be a witness to their work and service—and Divine Love through them. They are also a source of joy for me even as I feel humbled in their with-God presence.
The joy is in having a front row seat to Love’s presence and activity, healing and empowerment, in them and through them. Humbleness is in the reverence I feel for their incarnating Christ and their courage to continue the heroic journey of becoming a fully alive human being resembling Jesus. The humility is also in facing the responsibility I have for how I show up in their lives as a helper, a witness, a mirror, a midwife—as a listener and one who sees.
I am grateful that this work immerses me in the Essential Belovedness of others in the world. I am in awe at the number of hours I have been, with them, held in a sacred oasis of Love. So, I’m confounded at how elusive it is for me at times to live unwaveringly from my own essential belovedness in Sacred Mystery. Directees’ acknowledgements do console me during the haunted night of wondering whether I will be found faithful, if my life of listening is enough, if my work matters. And it is all gift in the moments when I am assured it does.
At this historical juncture of uneasiness and dread, when what is needed is wisdom, resilience, and action, I spend my time in spiritual formation, training, and direction because I believe in the wisdom and tender mercy of our God to guide our feet into the way of peace . . .
O may all who come behind us
find us faithful.
Jean Nevills is a graduate of Western Evangelical Seminary and the Renovaré Institute. A listener, retreat leader, spiritual director, and supervisor, she serves on the content development team at Conversatio.org and is a founding board member, instructor, and mentor at the Companioning Center. Northwest trees and terrain ground her in God’s creation; marriage and mothering, a family business, and community life are her arenas for practicing what she’s learning regarding spiritual transformation, spiritual practices, and living life with God in a Jesus way. Learn more at jeannevills.com.