Excerpted From Still Listening: New Horizons in Spiritual Direction. (c) 2000 edited by Norvene Vest. Reprinted with permission of Morehouse Press, Harrisburg Pennsylvania. All rights reserved. Buy the book from Amazon.com and help support GraceOnline.

While I was in college, I decided that I no longer believed in God. Many personal factors contributed to that somewhat precipitous decision, but in part it was also the time and my age. I was finding it difficult to reconcile the God of my childhood with the exiting new ideas I was absorbing at school, and like many of my peers in the 1960s, I opted for the liberal rationality of the enlightenment instead of traditional religion. Today I might observe that the young adult I was felt the need to choose between awareness of a deeper unity of reason and faith. But at that time I thought a decisive break was necessary, and I suddenly left the church. Since I did not soon have children to baptize I stayed away for more than fifteen years.

I marvel at the ways God worked with me in those years when my attention was stubbornly turned away. Somehow all my great spiritual energy and longing were carefully stored in an "inner room" I ignored, until one day a flyer arrived in my mailbox inviting me to visit an innerșcity church. I reacted strongly, first eagerly reading the entire flyer word for word and then announcing loudly to my cat that I would not go back! But I did notice that my response seemed a little extreme, so a few Sundays later, I gave myself permission to sneak into the service late and to leave early, defying anyone to invite me to coffee afterward! How hungry I was, how rich my store of wonderments, and yet how insistently I fought myself and the persistent "hound of heaven." When a year later I moved back to a town I called home, I knew that one of the first things I had to do was to find a church home. Joining a confirmation class, I wept as I came forward for the Eucharist, so much like the prodigal child did I feel.

But how was I to make the transition with my whole self, mind as well as emotions, adult as well as child? I felt myself to be a battleground of "yes" and "no," knowing I could not simply revert to my earliest understanding of the gospel, but also knowing that I could no longer deny the part of me that loved God. A wary seeker, I asked the rector, "What must I mean when I say the creed?" and he wisely responded, "Whatever you believe you mean." The acceptance warmed me while the freedom challenged me: what did I mean? Soon I was enrolled part-time in seminary, not to become ordained, but to find and learn to speak my own adult faith in Jesus Christ.

Who is the wary seeker?

I have deliberately chosen to name the wary seekers about whom I speak as "church dropouts," not to label persons as wayward, but to address the peculiar "in/out" status that many feel. Contemporary polls inevitably report a very high percentage who say they believe in god, but a much lower number who attend church regularly. Some of those non-attendees may have little or no previous exposure to church, but many have some church background coupled with a hesitancy about renewing church membership. Perhaps, as I did, they may "drop in" on a church service occasionally, but they have not yet found a faith home. I am particularly interested in those with some childhood training in and love for Christianity who at some time dropped out or away from church membership and commitment, but who now are feeling a renewed spiritual interest, coupled with reluctance to return to a faith they have "outgrown." My interest is with those quickened by a desire for a more "spiritual" dimension in their lives but not greatly inclined to seek it within the Christian church. I am not speaking mainly of persons abused by church dogma, and/or church authorities, for their potential return requires a period of active healing that is beyond the scope of this essay. (See chapter 2, "Spiritual Direction with Traumatized Person," in the present volume.) Bracketing such persons, we find a growing population of persons exploring widely and eclectically in the growing field of "spirituality," but who perceive the churches as places where doubt is the enemy of faith (rather than its active partner) and where dogma is more important than the experience of God (rather than its expression).

I believe that Christianity offers an attractive and compelling faith home for wary seekers, and I find exciting the faith we walk together as many of them rediscover the riches of Christian tradition.

In my practice of spiritual direction, I frequently meet such wary seekers. The early and crucial question of our conversations is whether Christianity in fact has resources of value for them. I believe that Christianity offers an attractive and compelling faith home for wary seekers, and I find exciting the faith we walk together as many of them rediscover the riches of Christian tradition. However, special concerns, which invite the director1s careful attention, surface with these wary seekers. This essay explores potential problems and suggests some paradoxes of engagement with such a directee, even as it also invites you, the reader, to be an active partner in this exploration.

The Mystical Experience

Our wary seekers are often immersed in awareness of God1s presence, though they may not have language for it.

Because the wary seeker comes as one not identified with the church (or only recently so), we may also expect them to be distanced from the experience of God. Sometimes, from inside the church, we tend to think that our task is to help directees have and experience of God's presence because we associate such experience with the spiritually adept. However, our wary seekers are often immersed in awareness of God1s presence, though they may not have language for it. Many times they come full of excitement because they have had one or more mystical moments that they know to be gifts from beyond themselves. One benefit of the growing but amorphous popular field of "spirituality" is its clear message that the spiritual life is not limited to the discursive and rational. Contemporary seekers are deliberately opening themselves to mystical experience, and frequently do receive the direct touch of Spirit. Today the options for routes to the mystical are vast, ranging from time-tested practices of improvement in the flow of "chi" (also called "prana" or "life energy"), to the ecstasy of a sweat-lodge experience, to simple tears of gratitude for a friend1s comforting presence. The market has no standards for screening such offerings to determine their intrinsic value, save that of "will it sell?" But, just as visions and voices have long been phenomena requiring careful discernment on the part of the church, we now find ourselves faced with many persons who undeniably are having direct experiences of the divine.

We know that the first step in spiritual yearning is always taken by God, who placed the desire in our hearts.

What do we do with "novices" who are mystics? Do we discount their experience because it falls outside New Testament language? Sometimes our human limitations as spiritual directors can blind us to the direct touch of God if it takes a form we do not recognize. And sometimes we may be reluctant to acknowledge an experience of God because we know how easily intense experiences can be distorted, even or especially when they are experiences with God. But even novice mystics know when they have encountered the living God, and, like all of us, they hunger for a resonating response of gladness and gratitude when they speak hesitatingly of the Holy. We can help the wary seeker name mystical experiences as the touches of God, affirming the blessing they carry. As directors, we constantly strive to ground talk about God in a specific experience of God. We know that the first step in spiritual yearning is always taken by God, who placed the desire in our hearts. How important that we help the seeker celebrate with thankfulness the very desire for God. From such celebration, we can see the deepening desire emerging in the directee to become more worthy of the beloved.

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