An Interview with Jane Vennard

Jane Vennard teaches prayer and spirituality at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver. She leads workshops and retreats, serves as a spiritual director, and is a member of the Face to Face advisory board. This completes her two-part interview with editor Rich Brown on prayer and spiritual direction. Part 1 is here.

Many people in Christian churches are not familiar with the concept of spiritual direction. How does it differ from pastoral counseling?
When people seek out a spiritual director they usually have an issue of faith they wish to discuss. It may be trouble praying, or discovering a new image of God, or what role Jesus Christ plays in their lives, or even dissatisfaction with the church. These questions of faith are explored against a backdrop of everyday life—family, work, leisure time, friendships. When people seek out pastoral care, they usually bring a life issue such as parenting questions, job loss, illness, grief. These problems are discussed against the background of faith and spirituality. So the content of the sessions may be similar, but the emphasis changes. Another difference is that in pastoral counseling there is some diagnosis given, and the counseling is terminated when the problem has been resolved. In spiritual direction both people listen for the Spirit at work in the directee’s life and discern where the Spirit is leading. This is often experienced as a spiritual practice and entered into as a regular discipline. Hence, a spiritual-direction relationship may continue for many years.

Even a decade or two ago spirituality was often not part of the formal training in most seminaries. Spiritual formation, if it was promoted at all, was done outside the classroom. How have things changed?
Certainly that has been true historically in Protestant seminaries up until about the last ten to fifteen years but not the case in Catholic seminaries. What I see now are people who went to seminary twenty-five to thirty years ago and are coming back in summer programs to get the spiritual formation they didn’t get in their original seminary program. But there are still a lot of questions in some seminaries as to whether spiritual formation should be addressed in the classroom. The statement is made that, “Well, it may belong in seminary but it’s more appropriate in prayer groups, in regular chapel attendance, and that kind of place.” Any seminary that doesn’t attend to worship and offerings of prayer experiences is lacking, but it also belongs in the academic curriculum. To separate out prayer and the art of spiritual formation, to think that we can’t study it—that we have to go out and do it on our own—is a dualistic thinking that I don’t agree with.

In other words, that theology and prayer are such distinct activities that they’re almost at odds with each other.
People have said to me, “Do you ever talk about theology in prayer class?” I tell them that a prayer class really is theological study because we’re looking at how we relate to God, and we have to ask, “Who is the God to whom we’re relating?” Different seminaries are doing this differently, but students need to be able to take courses in various areas of spiritual formation. That can be a class on prayer or a class on spiritual direction and what that is and learning some of those arts, whether it’s looking at their own spiritual journey or those of others, including some of the great historical spiritual journeys. Those kinds of classes need to be offered with academic credit because they’re so important. If we don’t give academic credit to them in an academic institution, we’re just giving lip service to the fact that they’re important—but in reality they’re not.

People, then, know how much spiritual formation is valued simply by the way the curriculum is structured.
If the seminary says, “These courses are the required ones and, if you’re able, then pick up a little of spiritual practices in your church group or across the street,” then it’s obvious the school does not value spiritual formation. One way an institution values something is by giving it academic credit. This still is an ongoing discussion among and within theological schools, and yet for a seminary to be accredited these days it has to show some kind of spiritual formation program.

To extend that train of thought, then, should seminaries train would-be pastors to be spiritual directors?
Not necessarily, though there’s a real overlap. One of the things I’ve discovered is that the local pastor has so many hats that he or she has to wear—to raise money, to preach, to teach, to visit the sick, to do pastoral counseling, to be involved in their communities. There are so many skills a pastor needs that I think most pastors will not have time in their ministry to do one-on-one spiritual direction. This summer I’m teaching a class called “Spiritual Direction as a Model for Ministry.” What I’m hoping to do in this class is help students understand the deep, contemplative listening that is in spiritual direction and help them take that into various aspects of their ministry. It’s not that spiritual direction is one more skill that all pastors should learn, but I think they should learn and see the possibilities of what might happen to their ministries if they come from a place of prayer. Because spiritual direction is really “being with” someone else in their relationship with God, it’s another way of talking about being with somebody in their prayer life.

Should every pastor have a spiritual director?
I always try to stay away from “shoulds.” My experience is that somebody who comes to spiritual direction because they have to is not going to get a lot out of it. In some denominations, the Episcopal Church for example, people who are studying for the priesthood must be in spiritual direction. That’s one way of looking at it, but my goal when I work with pastors and soon-to-be pastors is to help them long for their own spiritual director. When they go out into the ministry they won’t find one waiting for them automatically. I hope they will have discovered during seminary, however, that it’s very hard to do ministry without somebody accompanying you in a loving, compassionate, contemplative way.

How important is it to find a spiritual director outside your own religious tradition—say, a Methodist with a Catholic spiritual director?
I recommend that, although I don’t put any hard and fast rules on it because the Spirit moves us in many ways. As I think about my own spiritual-direction practice, I have very few people in my own denomination. During my own time in spiritual direction, I’ve had three spiritual directors and all three of them have been Catholic. This is a good thing, at least in part, because somebody from a different tradition can offer you another way of looking at things that someone in your own tradition can’t. Some people cross boundaries not only within the Christian faith but interfaith. A Jewish directee may seek out a Christian, or a Christian directee may seek out a Sufi. That’s not as common, because it’s harder to find people outside one’s own tradition. I think it’s wonderful, but again I wouldn’t say, “Don’t go to somebody from another denomination,” because that might be just the right person for them. Yet it’s sometimes hard to find a director in your own tradition whom you don’t know personally.

Is it just the nature of institutional structures—and the politics embedded in them—that creates problems?
That can be problematic. I have a number of Roman Catholic sisters in my practice because they don’t want to go to someone in their own religious order.

How does one go about finding and choosing and working with a spiritual director? It’s not like you can just go to the Yellow Pages and look under “spiritual director.”
People get hooked into the network of spiritual direction. One way, perhaps the best way, is to ask people if they know any spiritual directors or people who are in spiritual direction. Now, I probably wouldn’t take somebody who is a close friend of someone who is already in direction with me, but that person could call me and I could give them the name of somebody else. It really is the work of the Spirit in many ways. There is an organization, Spiritual Directors International, and they have contact people all over the world [editor’s note: check out their Web site at www.sdiworld.org]. So in different regions, if you contact them they will give you the name of the contact person who is closest to you geographically, and then it’s a question of just calling people, visiting with them, and finding out if it fits and whether this person is trustworthy and safe to be with to share your journey. It’s an interesting process, and my experience is that people initially think, “Where in the world will I ever find one?” But once they start asking, they realize there are a whole lot of spiritual directors around them. They may even have friends who are in spiritual direction and have never told them. It’s kind of an “Oh, wow. This is alive and well even here in my community.”

It sounds a lot like the process of finding a new doctor, doesn’t it?
Yes. Don’t you find another doctor by asking a friend? My dermatologist moved away, and I asked a friend, “Who’s your dermatologist?” and off I went. Finding a spiritual director is not as common, but it’s the same process of finding people who are trustworthy who will recommend other trustworthy people. The problem with spiritual direction is that there aren’t that many around yet and most of them don’t advertise, so it’s harder to get that initial contact. But Spiritual Directors International is a growing and wonderful organization. I was at their convention this spring in Miami, and just at that convention they had more than 400 people and expect close to 600 next year. There are more and more people training to do spiritual direction and who are available for that. It’s a good time for people to be finding direction, because they are out there.

How often does one have a session with a spiritual director? What would a session be like (if, in fact, there can be such a thing as a “typical” session, of course)?
The most usual pattern for attending spiritual direction is once a month. Sometimes at the beginning of a relationship the directee may choose to come more frequently. I had one directee who used to come just once a season; four times a year felt right to her.

What about monetary compensation–is that always the case?
Most spiritual directors ask for a donation for spiritual direction. Others charge, with the fee ranging from $20 to $90. All the directors I know have a sliding scale so no one is turned away. The question of monetary compensation is an ongoing discussion within the ministry. Some feel there should be no charge so that anyone can be in direction. The other side of that is that if only those who can afford to work for free become spiritual directors, there would be a very small and select group of people. The best thing to do when seeking a spiritual director is to ask directly what they charge. This is really no different from inquiring about the cost of any professional service.

Whether one has a spiritual director or is doing it on their own, is there some “best place” to start with spiritual disciplines, a common beginning point?
Let me back up a little bit. Even if you don’t have a spiritual director, you need to recognize that there are people in your life who are spiritual friends. And within communities and churches, people can broaden their understanding of “spiritual director” as somebody who appreciates and honors and encourages their spiritual journey. It may be a spouse, it may be a Sunday school teacher, it may be an older person in the church who has journeyed long and is willing to listen to your questions and your wrestling. It requires a willingness to share some of your own relationship with God with somebody else, and it can be informal. If we have a spiritual friend, somebody we can talk about this with, that itself is a blessing. People in ministry, though, often can’t find that person as spiritual friend because of the complications of role definition. But a lot of people do very well with their spiritual friendships. I don’t want this to sound like everybody needs a spiritual director–that somehow you can’t be on the journey without one. We do need to share our journeys, and I think we need to share our journeys in our churches more—to come out of our prayer closets and talk about our prayer lives and wrestle together: Who is God for me personally? And who is God for us as a people? Some congregations are saying to me now: We want to be known as a praying church. We want people to know that we are people of prayer, that we take prayer seriously, and we talk about it and we study it and we wrestle with it. These aren’t the whole denominational structures, but a small church that wants its community to know that it is a praying church. It’s like at other times people have said: This is a really activist church. Or this is a mission church. They now want that prayer identity. I think a lot of the spiritual formation can come in a church that’s learned how to pray together and especially wrestle with it. Do they ever talk about it, study it?

Many congregations are good at gathering people together in groups for various purposes, but often it’s difficult to make a leap to the spiritual disciplines so that they intentionally are a group that is led by the Spirit. It seems almost insurmountable because people have never done that before.
One of the things in a group like that is to learn to practice silence together. In practicing silence, it helps us move to stillness. It takes us away from our fixing mode and away from our compassionate verbal mode, for people to simply sit in silence. In any group’s spiritual formation program, for people to sit in silence together helps. It’s the silence that helps build the bridge from the personal, emotional encounters to the spiritual encounters.

Yet silence in a worship service often gives the impression to many people that something’s gone wrong, and as a consequence something needs to be done quickly to restore the flow of activity.
People need to be educated about silence, educated in a group about what happens when everybody stops talking and practices moving underneath their thoughts and concerns and bodily functions to arrive at the point of practicing their still place. It’s important within a group to covenant or make a commitment to practice that stillness in their daily lives before they come back together. I’m in a group where we’ve been practicing this for years, and it’s just wonderful because we know as a small community how to do that together. It helps us move out of the fixing, the talking over, the sharing, to a place where we can listen. And it’s listening to the Spirit as well as listening to one another at a different depth.

Dealing with silence in a culture that values filling up space with “stuff” is something like promoting fasting in a culture in which food plays an important, central role.
That’s a great analogy because again everything we’re talking about here is very countercultural. Yet I believe Jesus called us to be countercultural and to stand over and against the dominating culture and stand for compassion and justice and mercy. So we really stand in opposition to the thinking that if there’s silence then nothing’s happening because something’s wrong. One minister said to me that when he asked for silence, people thought he’d forgotten his notes: Something’s gone wrong. Why isn’t somebody singing? Somebody forgot something. I have another friend who is a pastor in a very activist church who’s trying to help the people in the church relish the silence within the midst of their Sunday service, as well as in other areas of the church. He’s been teaching them about silence, about what can happen in the silence, and he’s gotten his congregation to being comfortable with up to five minutes of silence.

Five minutes of silence in the middle of a worship service seems like an incredibly long time. That’s just amazing.
You know, in most churches when you say, Let’s have a moment of silence, it’s only about ten seconds. He will say, “Today we’re going to have a full minute of silence.” He knows people will be watching their watches, but they know this is built in, it is important, there’s a reason to do this. And people then begin to relax. As time has gone on—and he’s been in his church about eighteen months now—when they have silent prayer in the middle of Sunday worship, which is filled with music and a sermon and a children’s sermon and all of what Sunday worship includes, they also now know and relish five minutes of silence.

It’s a common memory for many people of Wednesday night prayer and testimony services in which, if more than a minute went by without somebody standing up to pray or testify, the minister in charge would usually announce, “Let’s sing hymn number such and such….” The purpose was to fill up that silence, to encourage somebody else to stand up. Silence was the enemy.
And that is not recognizing that it’s out of those silences that the true testimony comes. There’s a willingness to wait. We have a lot to learn from our Quaker brothers and sisters. Silence is at the heart of their understanding of worship. A lot of it is that we’ve just hoped people would learn to be silent, and when they aren’t we get nervous rather than educating them. When I take people on silent retreats, the silence grows on the days when we’re together. We spend a lot of time talking about silence. It’s like anything: Before you can drive a car you’ve got to talk about it. Before you bake bread you’ve got to talk about it. You’ve got to have the words so that your mind understands what’s happening. Then the rest of you can relax.

If silence in church is sometimes considered awkward or bad, then laughter may be even worse, at least in some places. After all, we’re conditioned to think we’re not supposed to have fun in church.
When we wrestle with God, when we’re angry with God, and we shout, “Why weren’t you there when I needed you?—that kind of anger at God builds a relationship with God. But who has ever had a strong relationship with someone that didn’t include humor? Now, I’m not talking about joke-telling. But consider how wonderful laughter is. Laughter cements community. Things happen in church sometimes that are just so funny that everybody laughs together. It wasn’t planned. Some child calls out in the middle of the service with something that’s very funny, then everybody bursts into laughter, and it’s so healing. I think God delights in our laughter. Somebody said once, If you don’t think God has a sense of humor, look at a penguin.

There are times when you almost have to give a congregation permission to laugh or applaud in a worship service.
It is a permission. It’s catching the moment when it happens. When somebody laughs in church or when something like that happens, it’s like what is referred to in education as a “teachable moment.” I was a teacher for years before I went into the ministry. And usually it’s just a comment somebody might make, instead of trying to get everybody to laugh. When it happens naturally it’s like, “Isn’t it wonderful that we can laugh with God, and don’t we believe that God laughs with us?” That kind of statement is permission-giving but not contrived. I’ve known preachers who would try to get people to laugh by telling bad jokes. That’s too manipulative. Real laughter comes by catching the delight of the moment.

There’s such a fine line between great humor and laughter and tears. They’re connected in so many ways.
If you’ve been conditioned to pray from your mind, not only were you conditioned not to pray with your body but also not to bring all your emotions into prayer, too. It was supposed to be some kind of logistical and, for some of us, poetic kind of prayer life rather than prayer filled with laughter and tears and anger and confession and guilt and all of those wonderful human qualities we carry around with us. I think God wants all those things in God’s relationship with us.

This understanding of prayer and spirituality can be quite a complex, deep experience then.
What is so wonderful is that the more complex our relationship with God, the more interesting it becomes. It all starts with “longing.” I hear people say they’re longing to pray. They’re longing to know God better. They’re longing to have a deeper relationship with God. They look at people they know who are people of prayer and say, I want that. That longing is the beginning place. My belief is that the longing itself is a prayer. In fact, I’m longing to pray because God is longing for me. When we recognize that, and we recognize the rich ways we can enter into this relationship, it gets very exciting. It’s not like, “Oh, now I’ve got to do twenty minutes of whatever form of prayer I’m supposed to be doing.” That gets boring very quickly. It’s the richness and the complexity that I think keeps us searching for God, listening for God, playing with God, and makes our prayer life so exciting.