Cultivation of a Discerning Heart
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by Rose Mary Dougherty
When Lynne Smith and I started leading workshops in group spiritual direction, we usually began by describing the process in its entirety. Then we would "unpack" each part of the process, sharing what it was that led us to do it this way. Finally, we would give participants an experience of the process.This never really worked very well. It seemed to hook people in a shared vulnerability: a need to "get it right." We would be halfway through describing the process and someone reading from a notebook would ask, "Could you just go back a second? Was that three minutes or four minutes of silence after a person has shared?" We would be in the midst of an actual time of group spiritual direction when a person would turn to a facilitator and say, "Is this an appropriate question for me to ask?" Or, when commenting on the process after the experience of it, someone might say, "The silences weren't long enough. I didn't have time to think of what I wanted to say."
After several times of presenting the material this way, we realized that people were missing the heart of what we wanted to convey. We rearranged the parts of the workshop. Shortly after the beginning, we would invite people into an extended time of silence together, inviting them into a place of openness for whatever might be given them for their prayer for themselves during this time. We then moved people into the small groups they would be in for spiritual direction, where they could begin to share briefly and informally a little of their spiritual journeys. We suggested that they might want to share something that had come to them in the silence or something of what drew them to the workshop. We described spiritual community and posed the possibility that, for the few days of the workshop, the group might become a spiritual community. We encouraged them to cultivate an intercessory attitude, allowing spacious silence within their listening so they could make space for God's prayer within them for each person they were hearing. We also included a different experience of intercessory prayer.
Only after this introduction did we talk directly about the process of group spiritual direction and guide people through it. And, as much as we could tell, people really seemed to "get what it was about." We noticed a difference in the feedback on evaluation forms. When we asked people to tell us about one idea or question that they took with them from the workshop, responses to the original workshop format would usually center around details. We would hear things like, "I tend to lose track of time. I'll need to get a stop watch." "I liked the prayers you used. I want to find a book of prayers I can use to begin the silence in my group at home." People who participated in the workshop in its new form raised different questions and had different insights: "I keep wondering how I can live intercessory prayer at home the way I have lived it here," or "I'm beginning to pray about where I can find spiritual community at home," or "I know I need more silence in my life."
The learnings from those early days of group spiritual direction workshops have served me well. When I was writing the book, Group Spiritual Direction: Community for Discernment, some people said to me, "This book would probably be more popular if you would write it as a handbook, a 'how to' for group spiritual direction. At least you should include a 'question/answer' section which would tell people how to deal with problems in group spiritual direction as they arise." But I couldn't do that. I felt it would betray the very heart of group spiritual direction.
Group spiritual direction is not about getting someone else's answers or mimicking a process even if it doesn't fit for us. Rather, it is about the cultivation of a discerning heart in all of life, an intercessory stance, if you will. It's about finding a community of friends who are willing to be present to God for one another in the silence and dialogue of active listening. It's about finding out together what fits for us as the unique persons we are in God.
This article is an excerpt from the book, The Lived Experience of Group Spiritual Direction, edited by Rose Mary Dougherty and to be published by Paulist Press in the fall of 2003.
© 2008 The Shalem Institute.