Sacred Companions E-Book

David G. Benner

• Herausgeber: IVP Formatio
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2009

Seitenzahl: 383

Beschreibung

ECPA Gold Medallion Finalist We need companions on our spiritual journey. The modern world has taught us to value autonomy and individualism. Our churches often see spirituality as personal and private. But we cannot go long in our Christian pilgrimage before realizing that isolation leads to spiritual barrenness. We soon discover that our souls long for accompaniment, intimacy and spiritual friendship. As a result, many Christians today are rediscovering the ancient practice of spiritual direction. In this inviting guide, David G. Benner introduces readers to the riches of spiritual friendship and direction, explaining what they are and how they are practiced. Spiritual direction moves beyond mere moral lifestyle accountability and goes deeper than popular notions of mentoring or discipling. Through prayerful, guided attunement to God's activity, sacred companions provide care for the soul. If we are to experience significant spiritual formation and growth, our souls must be nurtured through spiritual companions. Benner, well-accustomed to God's work through relationships, models the kind of traveling companion who can move us toward deeper intimacy with God.

Leseprobe

Sacred Companions

The Gift of Spiritual Friendship & Direction

David G. Benner

Foreword by Larry Crabb

www.IVPress.com/books

InterVarsity Press P.O. Box 1400 Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426 World Wide Web: www.ivpress.com E-mail: [email protected]

© 2002 by David G. Benner

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from InterVarsity Press.

InterVarsity Press® is the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA®, a movement of students and faculty active on campus at hundreds of universities, colleges and schools of nursing in the United States of America, and a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. For information about local and regional activities, write Public Relations Dept. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, 6400 Schroeder Rd., P.O. Box 7895, Madison, WI 53707-7895, or visit the IVCF website at www.intervarsity.org.

Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Design: Cindy Kiple Images: konradlew/iStockphoto

ISBN 978-0-8308-7680-8 (digital)

To

Rev. Robert W. Harvey

(1931-2000)

much-loved sacred companion to so many of us

Contents

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgments

Part One: Spiritual Friendship

1: The Transformational Journey

2: Hospitality, Presence & Dialogue

3: The Ideals of Spiritual Friendship

Part Two: Spiritual Direction

4: Demystifying Spiritual Direction

5: Soul Attunement

6: A Portrait of the Process

7: Becoming a Spiritual Director

Part Three: Combining Spiritual Friendship & Direction

8: Spiritual Accompaniment in Small Groups

9: Spiritual Accompaniment in Marriage

Epilogue

Suggestions for Further Reading

General Listing

Index

Notes

Praise for Sacred Companions

About the Author

More Titles from InterVarsity Press

Foreword

When I’m still, I sometimes can feel a gentle breeze blowing softly into my soul. Others are reporting the same experience.

I am excited. For this stubborn melancholic to sense excitement stirring, something supernatural must be going on. I believe it is.

In my nearly fifty years of living as a Christian, I have never seen the soul’s thirst for God more talked about, more recognized as a vital motivation in the human personality or more strongly experienced as a consuming passion. Perhaps a revolution is under way, a revolution of the Spirit that is about to shift our core energies away from arranging life to make it as satisfying as possible to drawing near to God.

The spiritual climate is ripe. Jesus seekers across the world are being prepared to abandon the old way of the written code for the new way of the Spirit. Paul told us long ago we’ve been freed by the gospel to live a new way, but we’ve not known what it is or how to do it.

But now, living on this fallen planet in these jars of clay has disillusioned us to the point where maybe we’re willing to give up trying to do what’s right so that life will work. It just isn’t happening, at least not reliably. No amount of effort, including good “Christian” effort, makes life always go as we want. Even when it does, when things do go our way, our souls at best are half filled. Something that was missing when blessings were absent remains missing in their presence.

More people are open as never before to letting painful hardships and empty pleasures drive us to chasing after God’s own heart, to doing whatever it takes to know God and to see Christ formed in us. We’re beginning to wonder what else really matters.

In my judgment nothing is more needed in advancing this revolution than making the idea of spiritual direction more biblically rooted and clearly understandable (insofar as mystery can be understood) and making the wise practice of spiritual direction more valued and common. In the past year alone I have read a couple of dozen books on this topic. I’m grateful for them all.

But one book stands above the others as simple enough to be profound, illustrative enough to demystify the process while allowing it to remain supernatural, and passionate enough to steer us away from a merely academic approach to spiritual direction. That book, of course, is the one you’re now holding.

I’ve known David Benner for many years, both by reputation and writing. From a distance I have long respected Dr. Benner as a perceptive thinker and a seriously Christian psychologist in every sense of the word.

But now I know David. In the past year he and I have become friends. Our hearts are meeting as we realize we are walking a similar journey. My respect has deepened and an experience of fellowship in the gospel has begun.

From knowing him, I could have endorsed this book without even reading it. But I have read it—several times. And I assigned it as the lead book in the first class I ever taught on spiritual direction. I think it’s that good.

Read it slowly. Read it several times. Read it with a notepad beside you and a pen poised to record your thoughts and impressions. If you do, by the time you finish I am quite certain at least three things will happen: (1) you’ll be more aware of your thirst to know God, (2) you’ll pray earnestly for someone to provide you with spiritual direction, and (3) you’ll ask God for the privilege of offering it to others.

Readers of this book by David Benner will, I predict, feel the fresh wind of the Spirit blowing into and through their souls. They will be better equipped to join the revolution of leaving the old way behind, the way of living comfortably in this world. And they will more deeply yearn to live the new way of seeking God and living for him in this disappointing world until they wake up in the next one, where eternal satisfaction is guaranteed.

Larry Crabb

Preface

Companions on the Spiritual Journey

Of all the social changes in the last several decades, nothing has surprised me more than the recent rise of interest in spirituality. For many in Western societies, a hunger for the sacred has emerged out of the bankruptcy of materialism and secularism. And for many in the church, a longing for a deep encounter with God has arisen out of the arid soil of knowing about God but having little personal, experiential knowing of him.

My world is full of people on a spiritual journey—cradle Roman Catholics rediscovering their church and faith, former atheists visiting aboriginal healing circles, Christians practicing Buddhist meditation, new age seekers pursuing encounters with the sacred, evangelicals discovering mysticism, Roman Catholics discovering Bible study and intercessory prayer, and Protestants discovering liturgy and the sacraments.

Lunch hours in the public mental health clinic where I work used to be filled with the usual topics of conversation—gossip, weekend activities and plans, sports and entertainment. Now the number-one topic is often spirituality. (The number two remains clinic gossip!) People seem to be bursting to tell anyone who will listen about their spiritual quest. They long to share their journey with others. They want people who not only will listen to them but can relate to their story because they are on a spiritual journey of their own.

Spirituality means different things to these people. But a common component of those diverse meanings is the notion of being connected. These people all long to be connected—to God (however he/she/it is understood), to others, to themselves and often to the earth.

The hunger for connection is one of the most fundamental desires of the human heart. We are like immigrants in a new land, with no family or friends and no sense of place. We seem to have lost our mooring. Or perhaps we have lost some part of ourselves. Like pieces of a puzzle seeking their adjoining pieces, we long for connections that will assure us that we belong.

But it is not just connections in general that we seek. In the core of our being we yearn for intimacy. We want people to share our lives. We want soul friends. We were never intended to make the life pilgrimage alone. And attempting to make the spiritual journey on our own is particularly hazardous.

Paradoxically, however, what we most deeply long for we also fear. How else can we explain our reluctance to be genuinely known by those with whom we are most intimate? Often it seems that what we want is the fruit of companionship without the demands of genuine intimacy. Yet something within us remains dissatisfied with the safe but superficial relationships we experience. Our souls ache for a place of deep encounter with others. Our fears may partially mask this ache, but it won’t go away. We want companions for the journey, companions with whom we can share our soul and our journey.

Defining Our Terms

I have mentioned the ambiguity of the term spirituality. But now I have introduced another equally ambiguous term—soul. Because these two concepts are foundational to what I will be developing in the rest of the book, it is important that I clarify what I mean by these terms.

The soul that interests me in these pages is not the technical concept of the theologian or philosopher. My use of the term is more metaphorical. I use it to refer to persons in their depths and totality, with particular emphasis on their inner life.

This, it seems to me, is comparable to Jesus’ use of the term. For example, when he spoke of his soul’s being crushed with sorrow (Matthew 26:38), he was speaking of his inner world of feelings and hope. The same is true when he promised rest for the souls of those who come to him (Matthew 11:29). The soul rest that Jesus offers touches the whole of our being—physical, spiritual and psychological—but is particularly focused on our inner self.

A soul friendship is therefore a relationship to which I bring my whole self, especially my inner self. And the care that I offer for the other person in a soul friendship is a care for his or her whole self, especially the inner self. Soul friends seek to safeguard each other’s uniqueness and nurture the growth of each other’s inner self. They seek to meet each other as whole people and help each other become whole people. They offer each other the sacred gift of accompaniment on the human journey.

What, then, does the concept of spirituality add to this? I use the term spirituality to refer to a person’s awareness of and response to the Divine. On the basis of this I would argue that to be human is to be spiritual. Everybody has some awareness of God. We differ only in the degree of that awareness and the nature of the response we make to it. We all face the inescapable challenge of working out our existence in relationship to God. That is our spirituality. That is what it means to be human.

Christian spirituality is, of course, something much more specific. Christian spirituality involves working out our existence within the context of the Christian faith and community. More precisely, it is the deep relationship with God that exists when the human spirit is grounded in God’s Spirit. Spirituality is not Christian if it is not centered in the Spirit. Christian spirituality is our response to the Spirit. He is the one who initiates and guides the journey for Christians.

For Christians, the spiritual journey is at the core of the human journey. We believe that the ultimate fulfillment of our humanity is found in union with God through Christ. Nothing is therefore more important than discovering and actualizing the unique self-in-Christ that is my eternal destiny. This is the core of Christian spirituality.

Spiritual friends. If you are making significant progress on the transformational journey of Christian spirituality, you have one or more friendships that support that journey. If you do not, you are not. It is that simple.

Spiritual friends nurture the development of each other’s soul. Their love for each other translates into a desire that the other settle for nothing less than becoming all that he or she was intended to be. What they offer each other in response to this desire is not a professional role. Nor is it specialized expertise. Rather, it is the gift of themselves and their companionship on the transformational journey of Christian spirituality.

Spiritual friends are soul friends. This means that they care for each other as whole people, not simply as spiritual beings. Soul friends become spiritual friends when they seek to help each other attend and respond to God. In what follows I will generally refer to spiritual friends. I will, however, use the term soul friends when I wish to emphasize the basic aspects of caring for others in their depths and totality, and true friends when I wish to emphasize the ideal nature of these relationships.

The potential for spiritual friendship lies undetected all around us—not just in our churches but also in our homes, workplaces and communities. Tragically, those who seek such friendships often fail to see the possibilities that already exist in their lives. They fail to see a spouse as a potential soul mate, instead seeing only a husband or wife or a partner in parenting. They miss the possibility of genuinely spiritual friendships with their children, understanding their role in terms of supervision and training, not accompaniment. Other people are judged ineligible because they do not seem to be like them.

Friends, spouses and family members all have opportunities to offer each other genuine companionship on the spiritual journey. While these forms of soul friendship differ in a number of ways from the more formal and structured relationship of spiritual direction, we shall see that they also share many qualities. Ideally, they also form the dynamic core of the church. Spiritual communities are, after all, simply networks of spiritual friendships.

Spiritual direction. The second form of soul friendship that we shall examine is spiritual direction. Spiritual direction is more structured and less mutual than spiritual friendship.

Often referred to by such terms as mentoring, discipleship or spiritual guidance (these all describing slightly different but closely related forms of relationship), spiritual direction has been recently discovered by large numbers of Protestants. But it is more appropriate to describe this rise of interest as a rediscovery than as a discovery. Spiritual direction is an ancient form of Christian soul care that goes back to the earliest days of the church. It has never really gone away. It is just that large sectors of the Christian church have forgotten their own heritage.

In its classical form, spiritual direction is a one-on-one relationship organized around prayer and conversation directed toward deepening intimacy with God. As we shall see, spiritual directors are not experts, nor do they direct. They do not follow a standardized curriculum or implement a prepackaged program. Rather, they journey with others who, like themselves, are committed to the process of spiritual transformation in Christ. And most important, they seek to help those with whom they journey discern the presence and leading of the Spirit of God—the One Jesus sent as our true Spiritual Director.

Sacred companions. To describe spiritual directors and friends as “sacred companions” is to note the way they help us become more aware of the presence of the sacred. The supreme gift that anyone can give another is to help that person live life more aware of the presence of God. Sacred companions help us remember that this is our Father’s world. They help us hear his voice, be aware of his presence and see his footprints as we walk through life. They accompany us on a journey that is made sacred not by their presence but by the presence of God. In doing so, they make the journey sacred. In doing so, they help us live with a keener awareness of the sacred.

Speaking Personally

Before embarking on an exploration of these forms of spiritual companionship, I would like to say a word about how I, a clinical psychologist, happen to be writing a book on spiritual direction and friendship.

While I have long been interested in the interaction of the psychological and spiritual dimensions of the soul, until recently the focus of my work and writing has been more psychological than spiritual. Most of my previous books were on counseling or psychotherapy. While they all focus on spiritual considerations as important dimensions of such clinical activities, they are primarily addressed to professionals.

I am in no way turning my back on counseling or my professional discipline of clinical psychology. I remain deeply impressed by the value of psychology, not simply as a technology of change but as an aid to understanding the dynamics of the soul. I also remain deeply committed to training counselors and psychotherapists and to providing therapeutic services myself.

However, I am concerned about the predominantly therapeutic face of soul care in our culture’s church and society. We have entrusted the care of the inner life of persons to experts who understand their role primarily in problem-solving and therapeutic terms. But therapeutic soul care should not be the model of Christian soul care. Nor should clinically trained professionals be relied on to provide the bulk of such care.

While counselors and therapists have an important role to play in restoring wholeness that has been lost, spiritual friends and directors have an equally important role in helping others become all they were intended to be. It is my hope that the predominantly therapeutic face of contemporary Christian soul care will be balanced by an increasingly spiritual one as more Christians offer themselves in relationships of sacred companionship. The care of souls is much too important to be left to clinical professionals.

The Passions of an Amateur

I write about spiritual friendship and direction as an amateur, not as a professional. I hold no formal credentials in these areas, nor do I make any pretense of expertise.

What I know about spiritual friendship and direction comes first and foremost from the experience of journeying with my own spiritual friends. I have also been richly blessed by my exposure to spiritual direction through several personal experiences of receiving it, through reading and a modest amount of training, and by a number of years of offering it to others. These experiences have not made me an expert. They have, however, fueled my passion for spiritual companionship. It is on that basis that I write this book. Amateurs do what they do out of passion. This precisely describes my feelings about the enormous value of the gift of spiritual friendship and direction.

In recent years the church has been tragically marginalized as a provider of soul care. The rise of the therapeutic culture dominating the West in the last century led to an artificial separation of the psychological and spiritual aspects of persons. The acceptance of this distinction resulted in the church’s being judged relevant to only the spiritual part of persons. I feel very concerned about this development and have committed two decades of work to reversing it.

If the church is to be restored to its rightful place of relevance to and preeminence in supporting the care and cure of souls, we must equip and encourage people to offer themselves to others in relationships of soul friendship and spiritual companionship. This will continue to include counselors. And it will require many more well-trained spiritual directors. But it will also require parents, spouses and friends who refuse to settle for anything less than the genuine spiritual friendships for which they themselves long. It also needs elders, small group leaders and others who understand how to structure relationships in ways that best nurture spiritual growth. My commitment to assist in these efforts has been the motivation for this book.

I offer this book with the prayer that it may be used by God to raise up an army of people ready to accompany others on the spiritual journey. In other words, I want it to make a difference. To that end, I have included questions for reflection and discussion at the end of each chapter. Simply reading a book is often insufficient to produce changes in behavior. Prayerful reflection and discussion with others always help unpack the implications of what we read and prepare for any changes that the Spirit may suggest. It is my hope, then, that these opportunities for reflection will be useful to individuals and groups who read what follows.

First Sunday of Lent

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Acknowledgments

This book is the product of the companionship of a number of special people in my life. I wish to thank them for their many gifts to me, gifts that have made this book possible.

First and foremost, I again thank my wife and closest friend, Juliet, for her accompaniment on the incredible adventure that we have shared for three decades. The understandings of the spiritual journey presented in these pages have all been learned with her, many through her.

I also express deep gratitude to Larry Crabb, whose support and encouragement in the writing of this book were extravagant and humbling. I am honored to have him provide the foreword and thankful for the gift of his friendship. I also thank my good friend Gary Moon for his helpful suggestions. The book would have been better had I been able to implement more of them. But more important, I am the better for his friendship.

David and Bonnie Sigston, Simon Yiu-Chen Lee, Zoila Carandang, and Ed and Eileen Plantinga also read the manuscript and offered helpful suggestions and encouragement. I thank them for their companionship and support. I also thank Fred Gingerich and Sonia Martinez for the opportunity to present some of this material at a seminar and retreat in Manila. Feedback from these groups was most helpful in the final revisions of the manuscript that were under way during those days.

Paul Groen I thank for the conversation that led to the inclusion of a chapter on spiritual accompaniment groups. His challenge to find a way to make spiritual direction more available was much appreciated, as his friendship has been over many years.

I also wish to thank Bob Fryling and his wonderful team at InterVarsity Press for the welcome they have given me. I particularly thank Al Hsu for his exceptionally fine editorial work and the anonymous reviewers he recruited whose feedback was so helpful.

Finally, I wish to acknowledge the many people who have journeyed with me in retreats, spiritual direction and psychotherapy. You may have thought of me accompanying you but not realized how much your lives have touched mine. Believe me when I say that they have. It was in those journeys that we shared that I discovered much of what I now share with others.

Part One

Spiritual Friendship

1 The Transformational Journey

I have always enjoyed travel. Intellectually and spiritually I have also always been on a quest—always restless and always seeking. While recently reading a book about spiritual styles,[1] I was struck to see that it described people within the contemplative style (which fits me pretty well) as on an endless spiritual pilgrimage. It also described me exactly when it identified the attraction of such people to the image of the journey as a metaphor for life. Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that I frame this book on spiritual friendship in terms of accompaniment on a journey.

However, to describe spirituality in terms of a journey is to employ a metaphor that connects us solidly with the biblical account of the nature of Christian faith. Both Old and New Testaments frequently present faith as a response to a call to a journey—a journey of following and trusting God as he leads us on the adventure he has planned for us.

Consider, for example, Abraham. God asked Abraham to leave his country and his relatives and go to a land that he would subsequently be shown. Logically this made no sense. People with families and responsibilities do not generally set forth into an unknown wilderness on the prompting of their God, particularly without knowing where they are heading. But Abraham did exactly that. He agreed to follow his God on a journey that would leave him and the world forever changed.

And remember the journey of the children of Israel as they followed God out of Egypt and into the wilderness. Tracing their route throughout the forty years of wandering in what is now Saudi Arabia would suggest that they were lost. But they were precisely where they were supposed to be—following God around the wilderness until they underwent the desired character transformation. They thought their call was simply a deliverance from Egypt to the Promised Land of milk and honey. But while God did indeed have in mind their deliverance, his plan was for deliverance from much more than the Egyptians. God had in mind their deliverance from themselves. They were called to a journey of transformation, not simply to another country in which to live.

Finally, also remember the call Jesus issued to his disciples. To Simon and Andrew it was simply “Follow me and I will make you fish for people” (Mark 1:17 NRSV). To Levi it was an even terser “Follow me” (Mark 2:14). Again the call was to a journey, not to a destination. And again it was a call to a journey that would leave them forever changed.

The essence of Christian spirituality is following Christ on a journey of personal transformation. The distant land to which we are called is not heaven. Nor is it some external, physical place. The distant land is the new creature into which Christ wishes to fashion us—the whole and holy person that finds his or her uniqueness, identity and calling in Christ. Spiritual friends accompany each other on that journey.

The soul’s journey in Christian spirituality is a journey of becoming, not simply of doing or even being. This is why it gives priority to the inner self. The transformation that occurs in Christian spirituality moves from the inside out. This is the significance of Christ’s constant emphasis on the heart.

Changes in our behavior are important, but our motives for what we do are even more important. Recall how Jesus structures the Sermon on the Mount with the formula “You have heard how it was said . . . but I say this to you” (see Matthew 5—7). What is the higher standard that is set by Christ? It is the state of the heart. Motives count. Private thoughts count. The inner self counts and in fact is the primary focus of the personal transformation that Jesus calls conversion.

The Route for the Journey

As with the journey Abraham was asked to undertake, it is impossible to specify precisely the route that has to be followed in a soul’s journey of transformation. This is because rather than following a map, in this journey we follow a person—Jesus. Jesus does not tell us where to go; he simply asks us to follow him.

The Christian spiritual journey requires us to overcome the temptation to follow other people rather than Jesus himself. If we are blessed, we will have experiences of seeing him in spiritual friends or other Christians who share our journey. In these circumstances it is sometimes tempting to think that following them is following Jesus. But it is not. Spiritual friends help us most when they make clear that their job is to point the way, not to lead the way. And the Way to which they should point is Jesus.

An equally important temptation for those seeking to offer spiritual friendship is to assume that one’s own route is best for others. How easy it is to think that everyone should meet God in the way and places that I do. How easily I imagine that everyone should follow the same path of prayer, devotion or service as I have followed.

The task of spiritual friends is to help us discern the presence, will and leading of the Spirit of God. Spiritual friends provide a serious disservice when they authoritatively dictate the specific path we should follow. In so doing they seek to give us a map of their own creation. At best, this will distract us from a focus on Jesus and his Spirit. At worst, it leads us to focus on a map rather than God himself—and that is the sin of idolatry.

However, while we may not be able to describe the route in detail, we can certainly say some things about it. Following John Calvin, Protestants have generally sketched three broad stages of the journey—conversion, sanctification and glorification. Conversion refers to the initiation of our new life in Christ, sanctification to growth in holiness and glorification to the completion of this process when we receive a new resurrection body.

Because only the first two stages involve this life, Protestants have had the most to say about this part of the journey. After pointing people to conversion as the beginning of the journey and encouraging them in the basic spiritual disciplines (prayer, Bible study, church involvement and so on), Protestants have often run short of specific advice as to the route for the journey. This leads directly to the major difference between what is commonly called discipling (or mentoring) and spiritual direction. Discipling, as it is generally practiced, focuses on the first steps for those either new in following Christ or those who have not yet progressed very far on the journey. Spiritual direction focuses more on later stages of the journey and is usually judged most relevant to those who seek to deepen an already-present practice of prayer.

The formulation of the journey adopted by Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians has also included three stages—purgation, illumination and union. Purgation refers to the purification of one’s character through confession of sin and adoption of an attitude of detachment from worldly possessions and values. Illumination refers to a growing personal experience of God’s love and peace and an increasing willingness to surrender one’s will to God. Union has to do with an overall harmony between one’s being and God himself, focusing particularly on surrender to his will as his Spirit becomes ours.

Practical mysticism. Some of the most helpful discussion of the more advanced stages of Christian spiritual transformation comes from Christian mystics, both Catholic and Protestant. Mystics commit themselves to the pursuit of a personal, experiential knowing of God, particularly the experience of union with God. What they have to tell us about the spiritual journey is of great potential help to anyone who seriously seeks to know God more deeply or help others to do the same. Here I mention just two such authors, one Protestant and one Roman Catholic. Others are introduced in the “Suggestions for Further Reading” at the end of the book.

In her book Interior Castle, Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582) portrays the spiritual journey as movement through a series of seven rooms of a castle. Progress on the journey is movement toward the innermost room, where Christ dwells and where we encounter him most directly. What Teresa describes by means of this metaphor is the deepening life of prayer. Movement through the rooms of the castle involves progression from vocal prayer to meditation to contemplation and finally union with God. The deepening intimacy with God that she describes is achieved through love, not simply knowledge. This knowing of God is a knowing of the heart, not simply a knowing of the head. It is falling in love with the Lord.

Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941) also portrays the spiritual journey in terms of a progression in prayer. In Practical Mysticism she suggests that preparation for any serious progress in prayer demands three things: (1) the discipline of our attention, (2) a simplification of our lifestyle and (3) a reorientation of our affections and our will. The approach to prayer that she teaches begins with what she calls recollection, progresses to meditation and then proceeds to contemplation. This progression involves first acquiring the discipline of concentration and then allowing it to be replaced with the surrender to God’s Spirit that is involved in contemplation. In contemplation we experience God directly rather than merely thinking about him. Referring to this as an experience of sensation without thought, Underhill is describing what Teresa and others call union with God.

These two women’s descriptions of the terrain crossed in the spiritual journey are similar. Along with St. John of the Cross, Thomas Merton, St. Francis of Sales and numerous other Christian mystics, they emphasize the importance of prayer on this journey. Progression in the school of prayer is understood as involving not simply discipline but also movement from prayer of the head (verbal prayer) to prayer of the heart (prayer of loving attunement to God’s presence). Although such prayer should never be expected to replace worded prayers, it will deepen them. It also holds the possibility of helping us make significant progress toward the goal of praying without ceasing.

Embracing mystery. Protestants are often suspicious of mysticism. Sometimes associating it with magic or occultism, they may assume that Christian mysticism is an oxymoron. This is a serious misunderstanding. The Christian mystics offer tremendously rich resources for those seeking to deepen their life of prayer and intimacy with God. That help is both most needed and yet most often resisted by those predisposed by background or personality to be overly intellectual in their life and faith.

This was certainly my experience. For many years my knowing of God was primarily a matter of knowing about him. Faith was more intellectual assent than emotional reliance or trust, and I related to God much more with my head than my heart. Despite the fact that the Word was made flesh, I tended to turn him back into words—my preferred medium of engagement. This left me feeling smugly dismissive of experiential approaches to Christian spirituality that are based on what I judged to be theologically weak foundations. Not surprisingly, it also resulted in a personal experience of God that was tremendously arid.

The extent of my spiritual impoverishment first became obvious in my mid-thirties. I began to feel dissatisfied with my limited direct experience of God’s presence. I was spiritually restless and filled with longing. I envied those who seemed to love God, not just their ideas about him. I longed to know him personally and experientially, not just know about him.

My spiritual hunger led me to read the classics of Christian spirituality—the authors I have just named among them. I had many of these books on my shelf, but I had just dabbled in them, never expecting their way to be mine. Now I devoured them. Read hand in hand with my Bible, they helped me encounter the Word behind the words of Scripture. They also helped me take first steps toward meeting God not just in my head but also in my heart.

I felt as if I was being reborn. It was a spiritual birthing, comparable in spiritual impact to my conversion of two decades earlier. God gave me the Christian mystics as spiritual friends and used them to direct me toward a deeper experience of him. I am still far from the depth of encounter with God for which I long. But I am closer than I was.

From distant places and times these wise Christians are able to reach across generations, cultures and denominational boundaries to offer soul-nourishing guidance to those seeking accompaniment on the Christian spiritual journey. We should be careful not to neglect or despise them simply because they may seem unlike us—possibly overly serious, perhaps too otherworldly, maybe associated with another branch of the Christian church. In reality they are fellow pilgrims who, as part of the cloud of witnesses that surrounds us on the journey, offer us important accompaniment and spiritual guidance.

Mystery will always be enigmatic. But it need not be feared. A spiritual journey that seeks to eliminate all that is mysterious will never take us far enough from our comfort zone for genuine transformation.

The Destination of the Journey

I have been speaking of maps of the terrain covered in the Christian spiritual journey. But what can be said about the journey’s destination? Any journey must have an objective, and any process of transformation must have a goal. How, then, can we describe the goal of the Christian journey of spiritual transformation?

The intended destination of the Christian journey has been described in a variety of ways. Often it is depicted in terms of becoming Christlike, acquiring the fruit of the Spirit or becoming holy. The Westminster Confession describes it as coming to know God and enjoying him forever. Eastern Orthodox Christians have frequently spoken of moving from imaging God to resembling him (thus emphasizing what Western Protestants have described as sanctification). Roman Catholics have typically spoken of the goal of the journey as union with God. Each of these captures important interrelated dimensions of the personal transformation that is part of being a Christ follower. They can, I think, be summarized by three closely interrelated master goals of the journey: (1) becoming a great lover, (2) becoming whole and holy, and (3) becoming our true self-in-Christ.

Becoming a Great Lover

No account of Christian spirituality is complete if it fails to give a central place to love. God is love. He has poured this love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5). Offering us his love, he desires that we become like him—great lovers.

John Wesley described sanctification as the process of renewal in the image of Christ. Central to what this meant for Wesley was loving as Christ did. And how did Christ love? He loved God with all his heart, soul, mind and strength, and his neighbor as himself. Christian spiritual transformation is, in the language of the Wesleyans, being made perfect in love—Christ’s love becoming our love.

The ordering of the commands in Christ’s summary of the law is important. Love begins with God. Hence our transformation into great lovers begins not by loving ourselves more deeply, nor even by loving our neighbor more purely, but by falling head over heels in love with God.

How do we learn to love God? The answer is by coming to know him. But the knowing that leads to love can never be simply a head knowing—a knowing about God. The knowing that leads to devotion must be based on a heart knowing. To really know God we must know his love experientially. I begin to love God when I know—not simply believe—that God loves me. When the thing about me that I most deeply know is that I am deeply loved by God, I have taken the first step toward a heart knowing of God. I have also taken the first step toward becoming genuinely loving of others.

The Practice of the Presence of God presents Brother Lawrence’s simple secret of prayer that he learned while washing dishes in a monastery kitchen for a significant percentage of the seventeenth century. His “secret” is alarmingly simple; it entails a loving turning of his eyes toward God at all times. Brother Lawrence’s prayer method is in fact nothing more than a discipline for the cultivation of a love relationship. How does one come to love another but by paying loving attention to that person?

To know God we must think of him, not simply about him. We must learn to become attentive to his presence with us. We must learn to spend time gazing on him, being still before him and focused on him. And we must learn to listen to him. These disciplines of loving attention form the basis of the development of a love relationship with God.

Genuine love of God spills over into neighbor love. Jesus tells us that our love of others is to be the sign to the world that we are his followers (John 13:35). John tells us that everyone who loves is born of God and knows God, and everyone who does not love others does not know God (1 John 4:7-8). The relationship between knowing God and love could not be much clearer.

The demands of love. Writing these words makes me painfully aware of how short of these ideals I fall. I recall how harsh I recently was with a very dear friend, letting my irritation over an extremely petty matter spill out in a totally inappropriate and hurtful comment. Then, after asking his forgiveness and praying fervently for the ability to love my friend just as he is, I did the same thing again just a few weeks later.

How I wish God had set something—anything—other than love as the supreme measure of spiritual progress. Recognizing the impoverishment of my love of both God and others is so discouraging. It’s the most depressing thing I have encountered in my Christ following.

My first response to the limitations of my love is always the same—to try harder. I pray for love with more fervor. And I try to love with more diligence. But nothing seems to change. Then I recall that once again I have got it all backwards. God doesn’t want me to try to become more loving. He wants me to absorb his love so that it flows out from me.

And so I return again to knowing myself as deeply loved by God. I meditate on his love, allowing my focus to be on him and his love for me, not me and my love for him. And slowly things begin to change. My heart slowly begins to warm and soften. I begin to experience new levels of love for God. And slowly, almost imperceptibly, I begin to see others through God’s eyes of love. I begin to experience God’s love for others.

Only love is capable of genuine transformation. Willpower is inadequate. Even spiritual effort is not up to the task. If we are to become great lovers, we must return again and again to the great love of the Great Lover. Thomas Merton reminds us that the root of Christian love is not the will to love but the faith to believe that one is deeply loved by God. Returning to that great love—a love that was there for us before we experienced any rejection and that will be there for us after all other rejections take place—is our true spiritual work.

Embarking on the journey of Christian spiritual transformation is enrolling in the divine school of love. Our primary assignment in this school is not so much study and practice as letting ourselves be deeply loved by our Lord.

Becoming Whole and Holy

The reason I like to describe the goal of the Christian spiritual journey as becoming both whole and holy is that it reminds us that the focus of God’s love and salvation is not some part of us but our whole person. Jesus does not love some immaterial or eternal part of me. He loves me. And Jesus did not die so that some part of me would be saved; he died so that in my whole being I would be made anew. Anything less than this trivializes salvation and fractures human personhood in ways God never intended.

Too often the Christian journey is understood simply in terms of becoming like God. While this is an essential component, if we only emphasize this aspect of it, we are likely to develop a spirituality that deemphasizes our humanity. The goal of the Christian spiritual journey is not to become less human and more divine; it is to become more fully human. Salvation is not to rescue us from our humanity; it is to redeem our humanity.

Tragically, some visions of the Christian spiritual journey have led people to deny entire aspects of their humanity. Some people have rejected their sexuality, others their intellect, emotions or playfulness. All who do so limp along the path to wholeness and holiness. But rather than bring their lameness to God for healing, they tend to wear it as a badge of spiritual honor.

Spirituality not grounded in humanness is no earthly good. Worse, it can actually be dangerous. Spirituality that apparently makes us more like God but fails to make us more genuinely human actually destroys our personhood. If embracing humanness was good enough for Jesus, how can we despise it? To become like Jesus and take on his character, we must—like him—embrace our humanity and work out our spirituality within it. The authentic journey of Christian spirituality must always involve redemption of our humanity, never its denial or attempted crucifixion.

This draws our attention to the importance and interdependence of knowing both God and self. As argued by John Calvin in the opening pages of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, there is no deep knowing of God apart from a deep knowing of self and no deep knowing of self apart from a deep knowing of God. Meister Eckhart, the fourteenth-century Christian mystic and theologian, said the same thing two centuries earlier. Knowing God and knowing self are both necessary for wholeness and holiness.

How tragic it is when a person invests all his or her energy in knowing God and none in genuinely knowing him or herself. And how terrifying when such a person is in a position of leadership or influence. Christian maturity demands that we know God and ourselves, recognizing that deep knowing of each supports deeper knowing of the other.

While holiness emphasizes taking on the character of God, wholeness reminds us that doing so does not make us gods or even angels—it makes us more completely human. St. Irenaeus reminds us that the glory of God is a fully alive human being. God is in the business of making us fully human and fully alive. This is the abundant life promised by Jesus (John 10:10). Our vitality, our genuine fullness of life, points back to God, the author of life. In so doing it gives God glory.

The purpose of salvation is to make whole that which is broken. The Christian spiritual journey settles for nothing less than such wholeness. But genuine wholeness cannot occur apart from holiness. In The Holiness of God