What Is Spiritual Direction?
I thought it would be a good opportunity to have my friends and fellow Spiritual Director’s Kim Verriere and Emily Turner on to talk about this with me. Kim and Emily have both been on the podcast before so you can listen back to find out their typologies and a little more about each of them. If you would like to know more about what happens during spiritual direction, what sorts of things are discussed and how working with a trained listener affects your life, then this podcast is for you.
In each one of these podcasts I introduce myself as “Spiritual Director Aaron Manes.” But what is a spiritual director? Sure, you can google it, you can look up the big spiritual direction entity that is Spiritual Directors International (www.sdicompanions.org) and find a definition, but I thought it would be a good opportunity to have my friends and fellow Spiritual Director’s Kim Verriere and Emily Turner on to talk about this with me. Kim and Emily have both been on the podcast before so you can listen back to find out their typologies and a little more about each of them. If you would like to know more about what happens during spiritual direction, what sorts of things are discussed and how working with a trained listener affects your life, then this podcast is for you.
Read the full transcript below:
Giving Up Control and Reconstructing Prayer
At different spots on our path we grow tired of or maybe lose the ability to use some faith practices we have grown up with. For me, a practice I have needed to reconstruct is prayer. I was taught to pray using the ACTS (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication) method but a number of years ago, constantly asking God for "things" just didn't feel very prayerful anymore. So what do we do? We have to reconstruct. On this episode I am talking with Marcia and Tom Hotchkiss.
At different spots on our path we grow tired of or maybe lose the ability to use some faith practices we have grown up with. For me, a practice I have needed to reconstruct is prayer. I was taught to pray using the ACTS (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication) method but a number of years ago, constantly asking God for "things" just didn't feel very prayerful anymore. So what do we do? We have to reconstruct. On this episode I am talking with Marcia and Tom Hotchkiss. Father Tom is an Episcopal priest and Marcia is a spiritual director. So who better than to have on to talk about prayer. Actually we are talking about how Marcia and Tom came later in life to spiritual practices, contemplation and letting go of our own need to be in control.