Enrichment Session for Spiritual Directors: Finding Your Voice as a Spiritual Director, Part II

Finding Your Voice as a Spiritual Director, Part II: Tools for Discovery and Growth

In Finding Your Voice as a Spiritual Director – Part I (February 2025), participants explored several connected topics to help them discover their own voice as a spiritual director: unpacking the meanings of “spiritual” and “direction,” examining the late-20th century history of spiritual direction, considering how the 1970s creation of training programs unintentionally narrowed the diversity of approaches, reflecting on one’s own growth as a director, learning from directees, and growing through supervision and peer support. The central insight was that directors can move beyond a “rulebook” mentality to let their unique voice emerge, much like a singer who learns to stop controlling what their voice “should” sound like and allows what is authentically theirs to come through.

In Finding Your Voice as a Spiritual Director – Part II, you will work with Father Shaun McCarty’s dimensional framework, which organizes spiritual direction practice into four categories: structural (how your practice is organized), relational (how you and your directee relate), theological/spiritual (what beliefs shape your practice), and methodological (how you actually work). Using this framework, you will explore different approaches to spiritual direction developed in the 1970s—from CRD’s focus on deepening relationship with God through prayer to Shalem’s contemplative-evocative stance to Van Kaam’s “co-constitutive” approach where both directee and director are transformed.  You will also examine how your own training may have locked you into certain positions or left you free to adapt. The seminar will give you time to reflect on what voices from the past have shaped you; how your practice has evolved; what gifts now feel solidly yours; what you want to let go of; and what you feel drawn to change. Time permitting, Part II will also address common struggles directors face in sessions, reconsider whether a directee’s “thinking” is always problematic, and explore how gender shapes the spiritual direction relationship.

* NOTE: Participation in Part I is not a prerequisite for this webinar. A brief review of Part I will be included at the start of Part II. All participants will be asked to complete a pre-seminar survey to help organize the presentation.

Please register by May 3