Journey of the Human Soul

At lunchtime in Judge Frank Firmat’s chambers if someone says, “All rise,” be ready to stand and pray. Twice a week, Firmat calls together a small group of people, most of them judges and lawyers used to asking all the questions. At these meetings, they bare their own souls.

The group of 12 is on an odyssey through the spiritual exercises, a daily practice created by Ignatius Loyola in the 16th century. The Spanish priest was looking for proof that God took a hand in his life and found that a daily regime made up of prayer, Scripture reading and reflection worked like detective’s powder on God’s hidden fingerprints.

It seems a growing number of people are hoping to find the same proof today. They are putting in the time, submitting to the slow process known as spiritual direction. The basic form dates back centuries, well before Ignatius fine-tuned it: Set aside time every day to be alone, keep quiet and listen. Beyond that, meet regularly with a director who is experienced at helping others figure out what, exactly, God is doing in their life.

The process can go on for years, but often it begins with a crisis.

Dan Shanahan, 35, was working long hours in a sales job. He didn’t have the time he wanted to spend with his wife and baby. A Catholic, Shanahan consulted the Archdiocese’s interdenominational referral service and was directed to a United Methodist minister, the Rev. Larry Peacock. Peacock, pastor of the Malibu United Methodist Church, had been trained for the role of director--often referred to as a spiritual companion--through a series of programs sponsored by Catholics, Quakers and Methodists.

“I wanted to get closer to God,” Shanahan says. “I never had any time for anything and asked, ‘God, what do you want me to do?’

“I needed somebody to bounce my ideas off.”

After a few months of intensive praying and listening, Shanahan quit his job in sales and took a job--at half his former salary--as a coordinator of volunteers at St. Monica’s Catholic Church in Santa Monica.

“Don’t enter spiritual direction unless you’re prepared to have your life turned upside-down,” he says. “When you ask, ‘What is God calling me to do,’ the answer might not always make worldly sense.”

Directors Guide Individuals or Groups

For centuries, spiritual direction was a practice limited to clergy, monks and cloistered nuns. Laypeople were introduced to it only after 1963, when a Vatican Council by the Roman Catholic Church encouraged the congregation to become more active in their faith. Thirty-six years later, what had been a Roman and Eastern Orthodox system is finding a place in every Christian denomination.

Typically, a person operates on his own with a director as a guide. The solo course has an obvious appeal for today’s self-help citizenry.

“Spiritual direction is very functional in a middle-class Western society,” says Father Allan Figueroa Deck, director of Loyola Institute for Spirituality in Orange. “It comes of an independent vision of one’s self, rather than a corporate vision.”

But group counseling, such as in Firmat’s office, is an option.

Many Spanish-speaking and Asian cultures that keep the traditional family and community ties are more comfortable in a group, Deck says. Either way, he explains, “Spiritual direction is a reality check. If you are talking about your life and suddenly you say something that sounds like you could be deluding yourself, the other, or others, can help.”

In Firmat’s office, a session can start out sounding vague. That doesn’t last long. “We picture our life as a garden and talk about what belongs in it,” says Firmat, 46, a Superior Court judge in Santa Ana who is married with two children.

“If I’ve put my profession in my garden but my wife and family are out in the field, it is a life-changing issue.”

Along with the midday meetings he organizes, the judge is part of a larger group of judges and lawyers who meet monthly to talk about spiritual matters. Someone is prepared to address a topic, such as forgiveness, and everyone else brings up their own experience with it. The ecumenical group of men and women is called Daniel’s Inn after a member of the king’s court in the Bible’s Book of Daniel. The group has been meeting for more than five years, with about 100 regulars attending.

“I’ve seen two lawyers sitting next to each other in a meeting,” Firmat says. “Later, one calls the other and they settle a case, or resolve a portion of a dispute over the phone.”

In the last 10 years, growing numbers of people have entered formal training centers to become directors or to learn about the system and find a director. These centers have increased from a handful to a growing international network.

More Protestants

Taking Training

In Los Angeles in 1984, Sister Thomas Bernard was one of the founders of the Archdiocesean Spirituality Center, sponsored by the Catholic Church. For years it attracted mostly Catholics. This year, the number of new students jumped from 30 to 40. Nearly half the new students belong to a Protestant denomination.

“People are more sophisticated about their faith than they were in the past,” Bernard says. “And there is a disillusionment that has set in. People have found that it isn’t money, power or sex that gives them peace. There must be something else.”

Part of what she does with new students is clarify for them what spiritual direction is not.

“It’s not psychological counseling,” she says. “And it’s not religious education, teaching people about the Bible or church history. It is about learning to recognize the directee’s personal experience of God. As they go about their ordinary life, the director wants to know, ‘How does a person in spiritual direction become aware of God?’

“Prayer is an absolute necessity,” she says. “Beyond that, a person might find, in nature or in the supermarket, they meet God.”

The pioneering Shalem Institute in Bethesda, Md., has graduated about 1,000 students since the program began 25 years ago. As many as nine Christian denominations are represented on campus in a semester. The program helps make up for the lack of church-based resources to give congregation members much individual guidance.

“Religious communities are too fragmented to help people through the complexities and changes they have to survive in modern life,” says the Shalem Institute’s executive director, the Rev. Tilden Edwards Jr. “A few right prayers and Eucharist just isn’t enough.”

There are no required academic degrees or qualifying tests for spiritual directors. Graduates of most programs spend at least one year in the hands of a mentor. But there is not a broader system of checks and balances.

“We oppose professionalizing the spiritual direction process,” Edwards says. “Still, there have to be some guidelines for training and accountability.” Most spirituality centers keep a list of graduates available for referrals.

Some people seem to fall into the process, rather than go looking for it. Marshall Wayland was jogging partners with a chaplain in the hospital where he worked in administration. Before long, the chaplain became his director.

“You need some outside guidance,” says Wayland, who is in his early 60s. It helped him recognize something about himself he wanted to change.

“I tend to think my way is the best way,” he says. “With someone to talk to, I hoped I could avoid doing what I wanted and then rationalizing. As if what I wanted was God’s will for me.”

Eventually, he changed.

“Now I can see that other people might know something I don’t know,” he says. There have been some surprise benefits too. “A lot more people like me now than did 20 years ago.”

Father Rafael Luevano of St. Hedwig’s parish in Los Alamitos is now Wayland’s director. He says a director is a companion who helps one see his own movement toward inner peace and happiness.

“The answers people find in direction are deeper and richer than what they might find in any other place,” Luevano says.

There are obvious signs of movement.

“People develop a greater knowledge of God in their lives and a greater acceptance,” he says. “Most of all, they become more loving. Charity is the foolproof test of spiritual progress.”