Holy Listening: The Art of Spiritual DirectionGuenther uses the images of the spiritual director as host, teacher, and midwife to describe the ministry of spiritual direction today. She pays particular attention to spiritual direction for women, and addresses such down-to-earth questions as setting, time, and privacy. The stories of real people bring the practice of spiritual direction alive. "In the pages that follow, I will attempt to describe the shape that spiritual direction might take for people of our time, aware that the subject is an elusive one. I am speaking to the beginner, those persons lay or ordained, with or without formal theological training, who find themselves drawn to this ministry. Perhaps they feel the stirring of their own unacknowledged gifts. Or perhaps they wonder about receiving direction, whether it is a ministry available to 'ordinary people' or reserved for the especially holy. I hope some dark corners will be illuminated and some questions answered." |
Contents
Introduction Holy Listening | 1 |
Welcoming the Stranger | 7 |
Good Teachers | 41 |
Midwife to the Soul | 81 |
Women and Spiritual Direction | 109 |
Epilogue | 141 |
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Common terms and phrases
Abba able Alan Jones anger Art of Spiritual attention awareness become birth birthgiver burden centering prayer child Christ Cloud of Unknowing comfort Corrie ten Boom desert directee's director and directee DIRECTOR AS MIDWIFE director can help director's task discernment empty empty tomb everything experience faith fear feel friends Gerda Lerner gifts give God's gospels guest hard healing hear holy listener hospitality host human hurt incest invite Jesus Jesus Prayer Julian of Norwich learned least live look Lord Margaret Guenther ment mother never pain Parker Palmer Parzival perhaps perience person play pray prayer present Psalm psychotherapy Puah questions relationship religious seek sense sexual abuse Shiphrah silence sins Sometimes soul spiritual direction stage story surprised survivors talk teacher teaching tell things tion told transition trust truth waiting WELCOMING THE STRANGER woman WOMEN AND SPIRITUAL words yearning