Classical Spiritual Exercises

Spiritual direction is a process by which one person assists another in becoming increasingly aware of the action of the Holy Spirit in one’s life. This “assistance” often involves the simple encouragement to slow down and become more aware of God and his love.

I had a sense God was inviting me up there, inviting me to stop being mad at him. I couldn’t talk about it to anyone. After the sessions, I stayed in the chapel to gaze. I shut my eyes, knowing the window and the trees were there. No words. No tears. When I got home, I found that for the first time in a few years, I was ready to move forward with God. Those hours God and I had spent together, relating but not speaking, helped me become almost comfortable with God once again. I wasn’t so cynical, but I also wasn’t hopeful. I was just ready to hang out with God. But this time I wouldn’t bombard God with so many prayer requests. This time I would just be still and know that God is God. And learn to love it.

In the early ’70s, Richard J. Foster began to pastor a small congregation, Woodlake Avenue Church, in Canoga Park, California. One of his Sunday school teachers was a professor at a nearby university. His name was Dallas Willard. Together they began to equip a ragtag bunch of would-be saints—many coming from the counter-culture—and experiment with various disciplines of the spiritual life.

Grace. It’s a deep word, loaded with many meanings and experiences. It’s a word that is  intimately and eternally related to God. When I think about grace, it is inevitably linked to the God of grace and the grace of God (e.g., see Ephesians 1:6, 7; 2:8, 9; 1 Peter 5:10). Before relating some of my own experiences with grace, let me first focus on its definition.

When I asked if anyone wanted to read, her hand timidly went up. She had chosen John 8 for her writing assignment—the woman caught in adultery—and focused on the passage’s details: the condemning crowd, the frightened woman, and Jesus’ question once everyone had dispersed. Then the words turned inward. It was evident the student had sexual brokenness in her past. Her voice shaking with emotion, suddenly she was the adulterous woman, and Jesus’ question was directed at her.

A metaphor that helps me understand the discernment of spirits is that of dance. From the time I could walk until I was in my early twenties, I studied classical ballet for many hours each day. At a certain point in our training, when our own dancing was quite established, we began to work with a partner in what were called pas de deux classes. In those classes the focus was no longer on our own movement. It was about learning to sense and tune in to the movement of the other. When one partner pulled in the opposite direction or anticipated the movement of the other, it jarred, and the beauty of the unity in movement was spoiled. The longer one danced with a particular partner and the more experienced one became through long hours of practicing many different sequences, the more easily the movement between the two flowed. One’s whole attention needed to be attuned to the subtlest change in the other. One could sense in the other’s eyes or in a change of breathing the need to adjust one’s placement. Discernment of spirits is in many ways like the dance of God and the person, in which he or she learns to sense God’s movement with increasing subtlety and become more and more attuned to it.

Finding one’s way in the spiritual life is like wandering around in the fog. Sometimes you see figures moving ahead, sometimes you hear people talking behind, but you haven’t a clue where you are. It’s a strange city, and what you need desperately is a guide. Fortunately, in the history of Christian spirituality, there have been many spiritual guides and directors of wide and varied competence to help. Thomas à Kempis is one of those, and therein lies a tale.

Almost every year for ten years I stayed for a few days at a Benedictine monastery for women. During an early visit, one of the sisters told me how special Sundays are at the monastery, and over the years I observed many signs of festivity on Sundays. The sisters wore dressier clothes, the food was even more abundant and delicious, and they decorated their beautiful chapel with flowers, textiles, and candles in colors that reflected the church year. I learned that the sisters slept later on Sundays, and I noticed a joyful and relaxed air that permeated the community.

Traveling to monasteries throughout the world is a discipline for the sole and the soul. Every pilgrimage I take reminds me that this world is not my final home; I’m just a stranger passing through. Every path I tread, every arch I pass points me to a greater reality, where the God who draws us to himself joins us for the journey.

It was a quiet moment with deafening implications. I was sitting on the enclosed porch of a 100-year-old home in a farming community near Salinas, California. Outside was a neighborhood park. The only noise was the laughter of children on playground swings and puffs of afternoon breeze off the Pacific. In my lap was Henri Nouwen’s Here and Now. From this devotional classic I was reading short sections bundled under the heading “compassion.” I hadn’t intended to plumb the depths of spiritual life on this Saturday afternoon. My time on the porch was pure opportunism. The girls were at a movie with my wife. All computers and cell phones were off. The buzz of things clamoring for my attention was nearly absent. All that remained was park noises, the breeze, and my thoughts.