Reflections on spiritual direction as sacred companionship — the discernment and attentive listening that help someone notice where the sacred is already at work in their life. These posts explore where spiritual direction and the contemplative life meet.

What People Get Wrong About Spiritual Direction

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There’s a particular kind of confusion that comes up almost every time spiritual direction is mentioned. People hear “spiritual” and think church. They hear “direction” and think someone’s about to tell them what to do. Neither is quite right, and the confusion is understandable — it’s an old practice with a name that doesn’t translate easily into how we talk now.

So let’s start with what it actually is.

Spiritual direction is a confidential, one-on-one companionship that creates space to notice where the sacred is already present in your everyday life — your joys, struggles, questions, and transitions. Not where it should be, or where you wish it were. Where it already is, whether or not you’ve had language for it yet.

That noticing happens through deep listening. A director isn’t formulating a response while you talk; they’re paying attention — to your words, to what’s underneath them, to the silences. Conversation, prayer, silence, reflection — these are the tools, but the posture underneath all of them is the same: compassion without judgment, curiosity without an agenda.

It’s also, importantly, not a single appointment that wraps something up. Spiritual direction tends to unfold as an ongoing relationship, typically meeting monthly, because the things worth paying attention to in a life rarely show themselves all at once. They surface slowly, in fragments, across seasons. A director who’s been walking with you for a year can hear an echo in this month’s session that connects to something you said eight months ago — and that kind of continuity is part of what makes the practice work.

And it’s open to anyone. You don’t need a particular faith tradition, or any tradition at all, to do this work. The starting point is always your own lived experience, not a doctrine you’re being measured against.

Is This What I’m Looking For? Reflection Sheet

Now, what it isn’t — because this matters just as much.

It isn’t therapy or counseling. A spiritual director isn’t trained to diagnose or treat mental health conditions, and a good one will know that boundary well and respect it. Plenty of people find real value in having both a therapist and a spiritual director at the same time — one tending to the mind, one tending to the soul, each doing its own work without trying to be the other.

It isn’t religious instruction. Nobody hands you a doctrine to follow or grades how faithfully you’re practicing. If you came expecting a syllabus, you’d be disappointed — and that’s by design. The conversation starts with you, not a curriculum.

It isn’t advice-giving or problem-solving. This might be the hardest one for people used to efficiency. A director isn’t going to hand you a three-step plan. Instead, they ask the kind of questions that help you find your own clarity — slower, yes, but often truer, because it’s clarity you arrived at rather than clarity you were handed.

And it isn’t a quick fix. Like most things worth doing, it unfolds gradually, session by session. If you’re looking for a fast resolution to something, this isn’t that. If you’re looking for a steady companion while you sit with something that doesn’t resolve quickly — grief, a discernment, a season of change — this might be exactly that.

So who is this actually for?

Anyone in a season of discernment. Anyone carrying grief that hasn’t found its shape yet. Anyone who senses there’s more going on beneath the surface of their days but hasn’t had a space — or a companion — to slow down enough to notice it.

If that’s resonating, here’s an easy next step: a free, no-obligation 15-minute conversation with either of us, just to talk it through. No pressure, no commitment — just a chance to see if this is the right fit for where you are right now. 

Schedule with Jim:

Schedule with Lynette: 

Peace and every good.

 

“The Work of Art at the Center of Every Person”

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There were two easels in our house growing up, set at angles in the same room so neither parent blocked the other’s light. My mother worked in oils, slow and layered, sometimes returning to the same canvas for weeks until a shadow finally sat right. My father moved faster, looser, more willing to ruin a piece chasing something better. I grew up in the smell of turpentine and the quiet of two people absorbed in work that had no deadline attached to it, only a standard only they could see. I didn’t understand, as a kid, that I was watching two different theologies of creation. I just knew that in our house, “finished” was a word my parents used carefully, almost reluctantly, the way some families talk about money.

 

I tell you this because I’ve spent the better part of three decades since then assuming the lesson I took from that house was about art itself — about craft, attention, the discipline of starting over. It took my friend and colleague Jeff to show me I’d had it slightly wrong the whole time.

Jeff and I go back further than spirit of EQ. Long before either of us thought about emotional intelligence as a vocation, Jeff was part of the Varment Guard years — one of the people who helped build something out of almost nothing, back when “failure was not an option” was a motto we meant literally because the alternative wasn’t survivable. He’s the kind of person you want next to you in a startup’s early days: steady under pressure, unbothered by long hours, the sort of teammate who shows up and does the unglamorous work without needing credit for it. He was a member of New Albany UMC for years, and he still gives his weekends — actual weekends, the kind most people guard fiercely — to Kairos Prison Ministry, sitting in rooms with incarcerated men who have no platform, no audience, and in many cases no expectation that anyone outside those walls is thinking about them at all. Ask him about it and he doesn’t describe it as a sacrifice; he lights up. Being of service is, by his own account, what energizes him most.

 

When Jeff talks about coaching now, he uses a phrase that stopped me the first time I heard it. His own way of putting it: “I believe that each person has a unique and amazing work of art at their core. Not art like painting, but their essence.” Not a metaphor for potential, exactly — closer to a literal claim. Somewhere underneath the job title, the defense mechanisms, the years of doing what was expected instead of what was true, there is something formed and specific and already complete, waiting less to be built than to be uncovered. His own Noble Goal, the thing he organizes his working life around, is to help people find that art in themselves.

I used to think that was a generous overstatement — the kind of thing you say to encourage someone, true in spirit more than in fact. Then I watched what Jeff does with men inside a prison who have nothing left to perform for, no résumé to protect, no boss to impress. There’s no career upside to a Kairos weekend. No referral pipeline, no testimonial, no audience beyond the man across the table. Jeff describes what he brings into that room plainly: “These men have been beaten down for so much of their life that no one has told them that they have worth or value. I believe that is the most important thing that I take into the prison.” That’s the same claim as the work of art, said in a different register — not a creative impulse waiting to be unlocked, but a worth that was never actually in question, only buried under years of being told otherwise. And it’s precisely there, where every external reason to fake it has been stripped away, that Jeff says he sees people most clearly — not the art they wish they’d made, but the art that was always there, scarred over, hidden, waiting on someone steady enough to notice it without flinching.

This reframes the question I’d been asking wrong for years. I’d absorbed from my parents’ easels that art was something you produced — a discipline you practiced, a skill you built, a thing that either existed on the canvas or didn’t exist at all. So, when people tell me, in coaching sessions or over coffee, that they don’t have a creative bone in their body, that the art conversation isn’t for them, I understand exactly what they mean, because I used to measure it the same way. But Jeff’s version of the Noble Goal isn’t asking anyone to make more. It’s suggesting that most of us are sitting on something we’ve already made — a way of loving people, a particular kind of patience, a capacity to stay present in rooms other people flee — and we’ve spent so long hiding it, smoothing it over, calling it ordinary, that we’ve forgotten it was art at all.

This is where emotional intelligence stops being a corporate competency and starts being something closer to excavation. The tools Jeff uses — the same EQ frameworks we teach leaders and teams — aren’t really about performance optimization when you trace them back far enough. They’re instruments for noticing: what someone feels underneath what they’re saying, what’s been buried so long it reads as personality rather than choice, what got hidden because revealing it once cost too much. Jeff’s years in prison ministry didn’t happen alongside his coaching work by coincidence. They’re the same practice in two different rooms — one with stakes most people will never know, one with a quarterly review attached, both asking the identical question: what is the work of art this person has been hiding, and what would it take for them to trust it back into the light.

The Art You’ve Been Hiding Reflection Sheet

I think about those two easels differently now. My parents weren’t only teaching me about craft. They were teaching me, without either of them saying it outright, that the thing worth making was never separate from the person making it — that the canvas was just where it became visible. Jeff would say the canvas isn’t required at all. The art is already there. The work, his work, our work, is helping people stop believing they have to make something new before they’re allowed to call what’s already inside them by its true name.

You don’t need to make more art. You need to stop hiding the one you already are.

Peace and Every Good

If this stirred something, you can find more reflections like it on The Mystical Seeker.

mysticalseeker.substack.com & spiritofeq.com/blog

About the Author

Jim Vaive is co-founder of spirit of EQ, where he and his wife Lynette help individuals, leaders, and teams grow through emotional intelligence, the Enneagram, and contemplative spiritual formation. He writes at The Mystical Seeker on the inward life that makes the outward work possible.

 

The Exquisite Risk of Letting the Dark Do Its Work

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There is a photograph I have carried in my memory for decades — not one taken on film, but one pressed into the body the way cold presses into bone. It is a winter morning in Detroit, still dark at six a.m., and I am standing at the kitchen window watching my mother mix paint in the silence before the house woke up. She wasn’t sad. She wasn’t lost. She was in that rare place artists sometimes go — a place that looks like emptiness from the outside but is, from the inside, a particular kind of waiting. A necessary hollow. I didn’t have words for it then. I do now.

The mystics called it la noche oscura — the dark night of the soul.

When the Ground Falls Away

Most of us arrive at the dark night not by choice but by collapse. Something that once held meaning — a career, a faith practice, a sense of self, a relationship — gives way beneath us. The fall is disorienting precisely because we didn’t see it coming, and because the things we reach for on the way down don’t hold.

This is not ordinary sadness. It is not burnout, though it can look like it. It is not clinical depression, though it can travel alongside it, and if it is significantly impairing your daily life or generating thoughts of self-harm, please reach out to a licensed professional — that is not weakness, it is wisdom.

What distinguishes the dark night is its spiritual texture: the loss isn’t just of energy or motivation but of meaning itself. Things that once lit you up feel hollow. Your spiritual practices go silent. You withdraw. You wonder, quietly or loudly, whether you have lost God, or whether God was ever there at all.

St. John of the Cross — a sixteenth-century Spanish mystic who wrote from inside a prison cell no larger than a closet, where he had been confined by the very religious order he was trying to reform — would say: you are exactly where you need to be.

That is hard to hear in the dark. It was for me.

 

The Poem That Knows the Way

What John wrote in that cell was not a lament. It was, against all reason, a love poem.

“Dark Night of the Soul” — in Mirabai Starr’s luminous translation opens not in despair but in secret motion. The soul slips out of the house while everything is still. She travels in darkness, not despite the darkness but through it, guided not by any external lamp but by something burning in her own chest.

No other light, no other guide Than the one burning in my heart. — St. John of the Cross, trans. Mirabai Starr

This is the paradox the dark night holds: what feels like abandonment is, in John’s vision, a form of being led. The stripping away of every consolation — every spiritual feeling, every certainty, every framework that once made sense — is not punishment. It is preparation. The soul is being emptied so that something truer can fill it.

The poem ends not in the darkness but in a garden. In rest. In transformation. Lover transformed in Beloved.

John doesn’t promise the journey will be short. He doesn’t promise it won’t hurt. He promises it goes somewhere.

What Emotional Intelligence Has to Do with It

Here is where the contemplative tradition and emotional intelligence meet in a way I find profound: both ask us to stay present with what is, rather than immediately managing it away.

One of the core competencies in the Six Seconds model of EQ is what we call Feel Your Feelings — the capacity to move toward your inner experience rather than away from it. Not to be consumed by it. Not to perform it. But to let it be what it is, without premature resolution.

The dark night, spiritually understood, asks for the same posture. It resists the fixes we reach for — the productivity systems, the five-step frameworks, the urgent need to locate the lesson and extract it. Those impulses are understandable. They are also, in the dark night, exactly what is being dismantled.

What the dark night wants from you is not your solutions. It wants your surrender.

And surrender — in the contemplative sense — is not passivity. It is a particular kind of courage: the willingness to stop managing the mystery and begin inhabiting it.

 

Five Things to Do When You Are in the Dark

I want to offer not a ladder out but a way of being in. These are not performance targets. They are invitations.

Stay close to your body.  The dark night is disorienting in the mind, but the body often knows more than we credit it with. Walk. Sit with your back against something solid. Pay attention to what you can smell, hear, feel. The Incarnation — God taking on a body — is itself a theological argument that matter matters. You are allowed to be a creature.

Release the spiritual performance.  If your prayer feels empty, don’t force it into the shape it used to have. John wrote from inside a prison cell with nothing but scraps of cloth and the words forming in him in the dark. The form of devotion may need to change entirely. Let it.

Find one trustworthy companion.  Not someone who will rush you to resolution, but someone who can sit in the not-knowing with you. A spiritual director. A therapist. A friend formed in contemplative patience. The dark night is not meant to be survived alone, even when it demands solitude.

Practice lectio divina with the darkness itself.  What if you read the darkness the way monastics read scripture — slowly, with openness, asking not what does this mean but what is this forming in me? The dark night, John insists, is doing something. You may not be able to name it yet. That is alright.

Trust the heart that burns inside.  Even when you cannot feel it. Even when the candle seems to have gone out. John’s soul travels the whole dark journey guided by what is burning inside her chest — not what she can see, not what makes rational sense, but what is alive in her. There is something in you that has not gone out. It may be very quiet. Tend it like an ember.

What the Darkness Already Knows Reflection Guide

 

What the Darkness Already Knows

My mother would finish her mixing before the sun came up, and then she would begin. I used to think the dark hours were the waiting. I understand now they were the work.

The dark night of the soul is not a detour from the spiritual life. For John of the Cross, for Meister Eckhart, for Howard Thurman writing from the underside of suffering, for Julian of Norwich holding her visions in the midst of plague — the darkness has always been the passage. Not the destination. But not the obstacle either.

It is, to borrow Mirabai Starr’s phrase, an exquisite risk.

And if you are in it right now — if the house has gone still and everything you reached for is no longer where you left it — you are not broken. You are, perhaps, being made.

The night that joins the lover with the Beloved does not announce itself. It simply comes. And it leads.

St. John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul, translated by Mirabai Starr, Riverhead Books, 2002 —

If this found you in a threshold season, we’d be honored to walk alongside you — explore spirit of EQ’s community on Substack or join us in our Mighty Networks space for ongoing conversation.

Peace and every good.

Lynette’s DMin: Deepening Spiritual-Emotional Care

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There are moments in life when personal accomplishment and communal mission converge in a way that changes everything. Lynette’s completion of her Doctor of Ministry  in Spiritual Direction is precisely one of those moments. This degree represents years of disciplined study, late nights balancing family and ministry, deep reflection, and the courage to push into new theological and practical territory. But beyond the diploma lies the person I’ve always known, compassionate, inquisitive, disciplined, and humble—someone who models faithful service and thoughtful leadership. Her DMin is not merely a credential; it is a deepening of the wisdom and skill she brings to everything she touches. For our family, for me personally, and for everyone connected to Spirit of EQ, it is a cause for celebration and renewed purpose. I am profoundly proud of Lynette, and my admiration for her grows with every step she takes in service to others.

As we move forward at Spirit of EQ, Lynette’s scholarship and pastoral insight will shape how we support individuals, leaders, and communities in cultivating emotional and spiritual maturity. The Spiritual Emotional Intelligence Assessment (the SEQ) has long been our foundational tool—designed to help people name where they are spiritually and emotionally, and to chart a path toward greater resilience, clarity, and wholeness. With Lynette’s advanced training in integrating theology, emotional intelligence and practical ministry, the SEQ will become even more robust. Expect enhancements that will weave research with pastoral sensitivity: richer assessment items that capture relational patterns and spiritual practices, evidence-informed interpretation guides, and culturally attuned frameworks that honor diversity of belief, experience, and context. The goal is not simply to measure, but to illuminate—helping clients see the intersections of their inner life, relationships, and spiritual formation so they can move toward healing and flourishing.

 

Practically, the work we will do with clients will deepen across several dimensions. First, our assessment process will be more integrative. Rather than offering a static score, the SEQ will provide a narrative map that identifies strengths, vulnerabilities, and possibilities—linking emotional regulation and spiritual practices. This map will be used in collaborative coaching and spiritual direction contexts, helping clients translate insight into sustainable practices. Second, our interventions will be more evidenced-informed and pastorally sensitive. Using evidence-based modalities—such as emotion-focused techniques, narrative practices, and contemplative disciplines—paired with Lynette’s pastoral spiritual direction training, we will support people in learning practical tools for self-regulation, conflict navigation, and meaning-making. Third, we will expand our training offerings for leaders and teams. Churches, nonprofits, and organizations seeking emotionally intelligent spiritual leadership will find workshops, retreats, and certification tracks that marry theological depth with applied emotional skills: how to lead with empathy under pressure, how to sustain pastoral identity over a long ministry career, and how to cultivate staff and congregational wellbeing without sacrificing mission.

One of the most exciting changes is how we will incorporate qualitative, story-centered work alongside quantitative assessment. People are not numbers; their lives are narratives. Lynette’s project work emphasized case-based learning—listening deeply to life stories, isolating turning points, and carrying those insights into tailored growth plans. At Spirit of EQ, that means every person who comes to us will receive an assessment that honors their story: how they were formed, how they are coping now, and what practices or relational shifts can help them move forward. For couples and families, this approach will allow us to identify not only individual spiritual-emotional patterns but the relational rhythms that either support or undermine flourishing. For leaders, it will highlight vocational strengths, blind spots, and sustainable rhythms of work and rest that preserve long-term effectiveness.

We will also broaden our community offerings. Lynette’s work has deepened our capacity to design group experiences that cultivate corrective emotional and spiritual experiences—small groups, peer supervision cohorts for clergy, and community healing circles that use structured practices to promote trust and transformation. These community modalities are powerful because they provide both accountability and belonging. People practice new ways of relating in safe contexts and then carry those practices back into their families, workplaces, and congregations. The ripple effects are significant. When a leader learns to regulate under pressure, their staff experience decreases in burnout and increases in trust. When congregation members learn compassionate ways of speaking about pain, the entire community can become a cradle for healing rather than a site of hidden suffering.

We are also committed to elevating accessibility and cultural relevance in all our work. Lynette’s DMin emphasized contextual theology through spiritual direction application and culturally sensitive care, and that emphasis will shape how we adapt the SEQ for diverse populations. Assessments, coaching curricula, and training materials will be offered in ways that respect linguistic, cultural, and theological differences—so that people from all backgrounds can find the language and tools that resonate with their faith and experience. We will invest in partnerships with local congregations and community organizations to co-create programs that address specific needs: supporting immigrant communities, equipping inner-city pastors, or providing transitional support for people moving through major life changes.

Finally, this degree enhances our capacity to contribute to broader conversations about spiritual and emotional health. With Lynette’s research skills and pastoral credibility, Spirit of EQ will produce resources—white papers, training manuals, podcasts, and workshops—that synthesize best practices at the intersection of faith and emotional intelligence. We want to equip not only individual clients but also the wider fields of ministry, counseling, and organizational leadership with tools that are both theologically grounded and psychologically sound. Our aim is to be a resource hub: offering practical, scalable interventions that help people live not just coping lives, but flourishing lives.

None of this would be possible without the love, perseverance, and integrity Lynette has shown throughout her journey. Her achievement is both deeply personal and profoundly public—an example of how disciplined study and faithful service can amplify a mission. I am endlessly proud of her and grateful for how she continues to shape our shared work. As Spirit of EQ enters this new season, we do so with greater clarity, deeper resources, and renewed hope: to help people name their struggles, cultivate practices that sustain them, build relationships that heal, and live into the fullness of their spiritual and emotional calling. If you or someone you love is seeking a compassionate, rigorous, and practical pathway to greater wholeness, we are here to walk alongside you—now with even more training, heart, and skill than ever before.

Hide-and-Seek of the Soul: Learning to Be Found…

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When I was a child, summer evenings meant the sweet, damp smell of grass and the soft thud of bare feet on the lawn as we played hide-and-seek until the light thinned to the color of my old side of our old house. I remember crouching behind brick walls in that ethnic area of Detroit called Hamtramck, my breath held, counting on my hands while my young friends scattered like leaves on the wind. The delight of being both pursued and hidden—of waiting in a secret pocket of the world until someone found me—stayed with me. That game was, in miniature, a schooling in the rhythms of life: the thrill of discovery, the quiet of waiting, the embarrassment and laughter when the hiding place failed. Beginning here, with that memory of hide-and-seek, helped me see how the hidden things of life are part of the same pattern we practiced as children.

One moment we are walking along, sure of our path, and the next moment something rises from below the surface—a memory, a grief, a joy so bright it takes our breath away. We jump, we scream, we wonder, we are grateful, sometimes all in the same moment. These small detonations and soft arrivals are reminders that we are alive. They are also invitations: invitations to pay attention, to name, to bear witness.

In spiritual direction, I have found that the time spent sitting with clients and listening to the story that unfolds usually brings about those hidden things that want to bubble to the surface. There is a kind of safety in the slow arc of attentive listening. As someone tells their story—staggering details together with ordinary moments, explanations scribbled in the margins—those tucked-away parts of experience begin to show themselves. A pause becomes pregnant with meaning. A stray tear draws out a knot of memory. An offhand joke reveals a wound. The directed space is not magic; it is relational and structured, and that structure matters. It offers permission to the hidden to be seen.

Why do hidden things remain hidden in the first place? Often because we have learned survival strategies that require us to ignore certain sensations or thoughts. We may have been taught that some feelings are inappropriate, unspiritual, or unwise to voice. We may fear the consequences of acknowledgement—shame, judgment, or a sense of being overwhelmed. Or we may be so immersed in the busyness of living—work, caretaking, the small daily duties—that we simply do not have the patience to notice the subtleties at work in our inner life. But life has a way of insisting. The hidden, like water, finds the path of least resistance. It leaks through in dreams, in somatic signals, in sudden irritations, in wonderings that won’t let us go.

When those pesky hidden things are asking to be seen, what do you normally do? Stuff them down, let them out, ignore them? That’s me, Ignore them! This simple question is an important litmus test for our way of managing interior life. Each of these options—suppressing, expressing, or ignoring—carries consequences.

Stuffing things down can be a short-term coping mechanism. It may allow us to function under pressure, to remain reliable for others, or to dodge the immediate pain of facing something difficult. But suppression is porous. Pain that is not metabolized finds another expression: chronic anxiety, irritability, sleep disturbances, or unexpected explosions of emotion. Over time, what we have buried can calcify, making it harder to access and integrate. Spiritually, suppression can feel like a closing off from the grace that often arrives when we name the truth of our condition. It can turn our inner landscape into a desert.

Letting things out—expressing raw emotion—can be liberating. A cry, a fierce conversation, an honest confession, a journal entry that spills secrets onto the page: these can unbind what was stuck. But unrestrained release without discernment can also cause harm. If the expression is directed at vulnerable others or enacted impulsively, it can fracture relationships and create new wounds. What helps is a tempered expression: naming what is present without launching it like a spear at someone else. Finding appropriate outlets—trusted friends, therapists, spiritual directors, creative acts—can channel release in healing ways.

Ignoring is its own form of avoidance, subtly different from stuffing. To ignore is too busy ourselves with neutral or distracting activities—scrolling, workaholism, noise—so that we do not have the space to meet whatever is asking for attention. Ignoring can feel safe because it delays the inevitable. Yet the hidden things have stamina. They may return more persistently or in altered forms. Ignoring is a passive collusion with fear.

So, what is the middle way? From the practice of spiritual direction and from the rhythms of contemplative life, a few patterns emerge that help make the hidden visible without being consumed by them.

  1. Cultivate a listening posture. Listening is not merely the absence of speaking; it is an orientation of attention. When you cultivate a listening posture toward yourself—pausing, closing the gap between stimulus and reaction—you give the hidden a chance to emerge. Practices that cultivate listening include silence, breath awareness, journaling, and prayerful attention. In a listening posture, you loosen the habit of immediate reactions and make space for discovery.
  1. Name gently. When something surfaces, name it as precisely as you can. “I am feeling afraid,” “I notice grief behind my anger,” “There is shame when I think about that conversation.” Naming is enacting a tiny liturgy of truth: you acknowledge a reality and thereby diminish its power to run you unconsciously. Naming need not be a full-blown analysis—often a brief, compassionate descriptor will do.
  1. Use trusted containers. Not every feeling needs to be told to everyone. Spiritual direction, therapy, close friendships, creative outlets, and ritual provide containers where the hidden can be explored safely. A good container holds both tenderness and truth. It helps you stay with a feeling long enough to learn from it without being overwhelmed.
  1. Practice curiosity, not judgment. Hidden things often come with a script—a voice that tells us we are broken, weak, or unworthy. Replace condemnation with curiosity. Ask, what is this wanting from me? How old is this pattern? Where did I first learn this response? Curiosity opens pathways of understanding that judgment seals shut.
  1. Attend to body and imagination. The hidden speaks not only through thought but through the body and imagination. An ache in the chest, a clenching in the jaw, a dream, an image that keeps returning—these are languages of the soul. Attend to them. They often carry the metaphorical shape of what’s needing attention. Let your imagination be a map, not a liar; test its images against gentle reality-checks. As an example, I tend to hold stress in my neck and at times becomes so painful that I cannot use one of my arms and when I check in with my body, I can usually find the reason.

When I think back to hide-and-seek on the lawn, I notice how the children’s version of the game allowed for a safe reveal. We knew, inherently, that being found wasn’t the end of the world—it was part of the play. That trust made hiding feel not like concealment but like a temporary, innocent withholding. In adult life we often forget that being found can be met with gentleness rather than punishment. Spiritual direction, friendships, and practices of presence restore that simple truth: the world, and the people we trust, can be safe places to be seen.

Reflections on life’s hiddenness inevitably led to paradox. The very things that surprise us—the sudden joy, the spontaneous grief—are both evidence of our vulnerability and of our depth. They remind us that life is not a list of accomplishments but a living relation. When we make room for these hidden things, they can become sacramental: ordinary moments that reveal deeper truth. A tear can be a doorway; an unexpected laugh can be grace.

In the end, how we respond to the hidden shapes the arc of our lives. Do we cultivate a posture of listening and curiosity, or do we keep building higher walls? Do we find companions who can sit with the messy reality of us, or do we continue a lonely performance? The invitation is simple and relentless: pay attention.

And so, I come back, as the sun sank on those summer evenings, to the hush of hiding and the laughter of being found. The child who crouched behind the hedge trusted that discovery would not be punishment but part of play; the adult who sits in a quiet room with a spiritual director or a friend can relearn that same trust. To let the hidden things surface is not to expose ourselves to harm but to return to a game we once knew well—the risky, delightful art of being seen. If we remember how play taught us that being found often brings relief, connection, and a burst of laughter, then perhaps we can meet our inner surprises with less dread and more curiosity. Hide-and-seek becomes a small theology: what is hidden will be found, and what is found can become fuel for deeper life. Trust the finding.

Eastertide: Living into Easter for Forty Days

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Today’s blog post is about Easter from a deeply methodist standpoint in the form of a sermon. As a spiritual director I felt with all that is going on in the world we could take a moment and breathe into a deeply felt practice. And yes, I know that some of my brothers and sisters do not practice this form of worship, thank you for reading, and, lastly for those of you that do not have an active faith, consider acts of kindness you can perform.

When I was a child, one of the greatest joys of Easter was not the church service—but the Cadbury chocolate bunny ears. I don’t know about you, but I could not wait for Easter morning: the thrill of hunting for hidden eggs, the bright colors winking from the grass, baskets overflowing with candy, and the small, necessary negotiations with my brother over the Peeps I didn’t like. It became a ritual I could not escape, one that shaped my expectations for finding hidden treasures. I learned to look for delight in the ordinary places; I learned that joy is often buried, waiting to be discovered.

For those of us who celebrate this holy week for a man called Jesus, and for brothers and sisters from other traditions who know how important this time is for Christians, I want to offer a few thoughts. Do you think we might have missed the point? We faithfully observe Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and finally Easter Sunday. We come to our respective places of worship, we sing the hymns, we share the sacrament, we kneel and we weep and we laugh. But then—when the baskets are put away until next year, and in my case the last of the chocolate bunny has met his end—what do we do with the days that follow?

Eastertide. The church calendar gives us a word for the season we so often forget: Eastertide, the fifty days from Easter Sunday to Pentecost. Within that season is another mark: the forty days after Easter—the days in which the risen Christ we believe in continued to appear among his disciples, teaching, encouraging, healing, and preparing them. Luke, in Acts 1:3, tells us that Jesus “presented himself alive to them by many proofs” and “appeared to them for forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God.” Forty days—long enough to be formative, not a mere moment but a way of life being reframed.

Think for a moment of the bunny ears. As a child I associated them with surprise and delight; they trained my eye to pay attention to the small, hidden places where joy could be found. But if Easter for us is only the morning we find the chocolate, if that joy is only the counter of an Easter Sunday, then we have turned a lifetime into a holiday. We have reduced a movement of God—into a seasonal confection. Jesus does not show up for one photograph and then leave. He walks with the disciples for forty days and more; he breaks bread, he opens scriptures, he commissions them to go out. This Easter life spills over into ordinary days.

This is the pastoral point I want to leave with you: Easter is not an event to be consumed. It is a reality to be inhabited. The forty days after Easter are practice sessions. They are an apprenticeship in what it means to live in the knowing of Christ. The early church did not celebrate Easter and then go back to business as usual. They kept the feast. They lingered in the light of Jesus until their habits, their affections, their deeds, were reshaped.

What does that reshaping look like? Allow me to name a few practices—simple, Methodist (me being Methodist), and practical—that can help us live Eastertide as more than memory.

  1. Keep the feast of the Jesus. The Wesleyan tradition talks about “means of grace”: prayer, scripture, the sacraments, fasting, and works of mercy. During the forty days, make a habit of coming to the table. Let the sacrament of Holy Communion remind you that resurrection is a feast to be shared.
  1. Read these Easter stories slowly. Don’t rush past the Easter narratives as if you know how they go. Re-read Luke 24, John 20–21 and Acts 1. Hear the bewilderment, the fear, the doubts of the disciples. Notice how often Jesus invites them into ordinary things: eating fish, walking on the road, opening scripture. We are invited into this relationship not as a leap into fantasy but as a transformation of the everyday.
  1. Practice visibility and testimony. The early disciples were given the task to witness. But witness is not merely verbal proof; it is a life that reflects the truth of the faith. This Eastertide season, decide on one way to make faith visible: meals with a neighbor, forgiveness offered where resentment lingered, a note to someone who is lonely, a visit to someone in prison, charity given without fanfare. Let your life be an Easter basket for others.
  1. Re-learn to look for hidden things. The chocolate bunny ear was hidden to be found—and that shaped my anticipation. Similarly, Jesus revealed that God hides grace in unlikely places: in failure, in loss, in hospital rooms, in apologies. Train your eyes to find the small, bright things of God. Keep a journal for forty days in which you note one “hidden treasure” you noticed each day—an unexpected kindness, a phrase of Scripture that struck you, a sunrise you had not seen before. By the end of forty days, your instincts will be reoriented toward noticing God.
  1. Tend to doubt honestly. Thomas’s doubt is part of the story (John 20:24–29). The forty days included questions and skepticism. Methodism, for all its joy, has room for honest uncertainty. Bring your questions to God. Bring them to your community. The Easter story is not weakened by doubt; it is made credible by a God big enough to meet us in our honest, messy searching.
  1. Remember the promise of mission. The forty days end in a commission. The Christ prepares his followers to be sent. The direction is outward. Our discipleship, formed in Eastertide, must lead us into the world with mercy, justice, and love. Easter is always an announcement that something new has begun; it calls the church to participate in God’s new creation.

And finally, let us talk for a minute about ritual and memory. The practice of an Easter egg hunt—hidden treasures, bright colors, baskets—wasn’t a failure as ritual. It taught me to expect joy. But if we do not let that expectation reach beyond candy, if we do not allow it to inform how we look at the poor, how we treat our spouse, how we speak to our children, then the ritual has become a trap. The chocolate bunny taught me how to search. The Christ teaches us where to look in the broken, the overlooked, the hurting—and in those places we find the glory of God waiting, like an egg, for discovery.

So, if you find yourself this week putting the baskets away and wondering what to do next, I invite you to spend these forty days as if your life depends on it—because it does. Begin with small things: a daily prayer of thanksgiving for one surprising thing you noticed; one act of mercy each week; one conversation about faith with someone who does not belong to the church; a regular reading of the Easter narratives. Practice being a people who not only celebrate an event but live a new life.

We believe that Christ is risen. This is not an idea to be tucked away in a corner like last year’s candy. It is the force that calls us out of the habit of fear, despair, and selfishness. It is the promise that our old life will not have the last word. And it is a call to spend the next forty days—and the next forty years—looking for and making visible the hidden treasure of God’s kingdom.

Jesus, you appeared to your disciples and walked with them in ordinary days. Walk with us these forty days. Open our eyes to the hidden places where you hide your grace. Teach us to feast, to witness, to forgive, and to love. Shape our expectations so that we look for you not only on high festival mornings but in the faces at our table, in the poor at our gate, in the breaking of bread each day. Send us forth with Easter joy, and fill us with the Spirit of surprising, steadfast love. Amen.

Go now my friends, with ears attuned to the small, bright things of God—and with baskets ready to give away what you have been given. Alleluia.

Presence Over Pressure: Rethinking Adulthood at 32

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I have started todays blog with a paraphrased story to illustrate this important study for coaching and spiritual direction.

When my friend Lila brought her twenty-four–year–old nephew, Jonah, to the small group at our church last spring, I expected the usual restless energy of someone caught between college and a first job. Jonah sat quietly through the opening prayer, his hands folded, eyes darting now and then to his phone. Then he listened as a woman in her fifties talked about grief; he asked a thoughtful question about responsibility. By the time the meeting ended he admitted, with a nervous laugh, that he sometimes felt like he was “pretending to be an adult.” He wasn’t sure whether that was a confession or a relief.

This part is dense reading but worth the time if you are a coach or spiritual director. The conversation Jonah sparked has stayed with me, (Jim) because it maps a striking piece of science that demands we rethink how we guide young people in coaching and spiritual formation. IN the latest issue of “Presence” a Spiritual Directors International publication it states this study from 2025 that neuroscientists from Cambridge University published in Nature Communications (Mousley et al.) that compared diffusion MRI scans from nearly four thousand human brains ranging from infancy to ninety years old. Rather than finding a smooth, linear path of maturation, they reported discrete shifts at roughly ages nine, thirty-two, sixty-six, and eighty-three. One of the most provocative takeaways: adolescence, in neurological terms, appears to stretch well beyond what most social norms call “adulthood” — actual adulthood, the study suggests, may not begin until around age thirty-two.

This finding upends a lot of assumptions we make in churches, coaching programs, and spiritual direction. If brains remain in a significant developmental flux into the late twenties and early thirties, how should mentors, pastors, and spiritual directors show up for people like Jonah — or for us — in ways that match their neurodevelopment reality?

What the study suggests….

Mousley and colleagues used diffusion MRI to map patterns of white matter — the brain’s communication highways — across the lifespan. Prior to age thirty-two, the brain is still reorganizing: white matter is growing, neural pathways are becoming more efficient, and connectivity patterns are shifting. After roughly thirty-two, the researchers found a more stabilized architecture that often persists for about three decades, followed by later-life shifts around sixty-six and eighty-three. These aren’t just trivia about neurons; they have implications for how people form identity, sustain relationships, and engage with meaning and purpose.

A short story: the mentor, the millennial, the map When I met Jonah months later for coffee, he’d switched jobs twice and was enrolled in a night course on ethics. He confessed he dreaded the “adult checkboxes” — house, marriage, stable job — yet felt impatient with peers who seemed to have them. We talked about mentors: he wanted guidance but bristled at being told what to do. I told him about the Cambridge study — he laughed, then listened.

“Maybe being older isn’t the only way to be wise,” he said. “Maybe people can help me without trying to make me into something I’m not yet.”

That line captures the pastoral (presence) pivot we need: to offer presence without premature pressure, to accompany without imposing finished forms. The neuroscientific finding invites humility and patience. It asks us to honor the ongoing developmental work young adults are doing — neurologically, emotionally, spiritually — while providing steady practices and relational spaces that support maturation without rushing it.

Two ways for us to be present

  1. Practice steady attunement through embodied listening What it is: Embodied listening means attending to the whole person — voice, posture, affect, silence — and not just the words. It requires slowing down, modulating one’s own responses, and noticing shifts in emotion and cognitive framing without immediately correcting or advising.

How to do it:

  • Create predictable space and rhythm: offer recurring meetings that give the person time to try on insights between sessions. Stability matters to a brain still organizing its networks.
  • Use nonverbal check-ins: begin with a single question — “Where is your attention?” — allow a minute of silence, then reflect what you notice about tone and posture before asking probing questions.
  • Resist the fix: when you sense the urge to “solve” identity questions, mirror instead. “I hear uncertainty about responsibility and a desire for meaning.” This models a mind that can hold complexity without collapsing into premade answers.

Why it helps:

For a brain in flux, steady attunement supports the integration of new patterns. It offers a relational scaffold where the young adult can test emerging values and neural pathways safely.

  1. Offer scaffolded practices that combine exploration with ritual What it is: Scaffolded practices are simple, repeatable spiritual exercises that invite both experimentation and the formation of habit. They recognize that neurodevelopment thrives on both novelty (to build new connections) and repetition (to consolidate them).

How to do it:

  • Introduce three-month “experiment” cycles: choose one spiritual practice (e.g., contemplative journaling, short daily silence, or service with reflection) to try for 90 days. Check in weekly for the first month, then biweekly.
  • Combine short, diverse practices with a consistent ritual frame: begin and end with a five-minute centering practice (breath or scripture reading), then introduce a varied middle (creative reflection, dialogue, or action).
  • Encourage meta-reflection: every month, ask: “What patterns do you notice in your responses? What feels alive? What drains you?” This helps the maturing brain integrate experience into identity.

Why it helps: This approach respects the brain’s dual needs: novelty for growth and repetition for stability. Ritual gives a predictable platform for experimentation, reducing anxiety while encouraging exploration.

Why this matters to coaching and spiritual direction

  1. Developmentally informed accompaniment improves outcomes coaching and spiritual direction aim to catalyze growth: in habits, vocation, moral discernment, and interior integration. If the brain continues to rewire well into the late twenties and early thirties, then coaching strategies that treat early adulthood as a finished stage may be ineffective or even harmful. A developmental lens encourages coaches and directors to calibrate expectations, scaffold change plans over longer timelines, and attend to the neurobiological rhythms of consolidation and plasticity.
  2. It reframes maturity as a process, not a milestone spiritual direction, at its best, is about guiding people into deeper coherence — integrating emotions, beliefs, and actions. The Cambridge study reminds us that coherence can be emergent and slow. Rather than treating a thirty-year-old’s doubts as failures, we can see them as part of ongoing integration. This reduces shame and normalizes the nonlinear trajectory of faith and identity formation.
  3. It demands relational humility and patience Both coaching and spiritual direction rely on relationship. Neuroscience underscores that relationship is not merely a context but a mechanism for change: safe, attuned relationships shape neural development. Coaches and directors who cultivate attunement, ritual, and scaffolded experimentation are not just providing tools — they are offering the relational conditions in which the brain can reconfigure toward more adaptive patterns.
  4. It broadens the role of community If individual neurodevelopment unfolds across decades, community becomes a crucial resource — not merely a backdrop. Churches, peer groups, mentorship networks, and coaching cohorts can offer the recurring, low-stakes opportunities to practice new moral habits, relationships, and vocational identities. Programs that build long-term relational continuity will likely be more aligned with how brains mature.

A closing note to mentors and leaders:

When you sit across from someone like Jonah, remember you are not simply transferring information. You’re participating in a slow, relational craft of formation. The Cambridge findings do not strip away responsibility; they expand it. We must give space for the messy apprenticeship of being an adult, provide practices that balance novelty with ritual, and be present in ways that allow the nervous system and the soul to settle into new patterns of coherence.

Jonah eventually stopped checking his phone during our meetings. He still questions, still wanders in and out of certainty. But he’s started keeping a short weekly journal and meets once a month with an older mentor who listens without solving. Watching him, I’m learning to be less anxious about boxes checked and more attentive to the small, steady shifts that mark maturation. That’s the work neuroscience is asking us to honor: presence over pressure, accompaniment over answers, and the patient trust that growing up is a journey that may take longer — and be more sacred — than we thought.

Thank you for reading this study and helpful guide for professionals who coach and do spiritual direction.

Mousley, A., et al. (2025). (2025). Nature Communications. [Mousley et al., 2025, Nature Communications — diffusion MRI lifespan study]

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41290675/

The art of Spiritual Direction

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I have had more than a few people ask me if I do spiritual direction (I do) and what is it if I do. So here is a blog to talk about just that.

In the quiet moments of our lives, when the noise of the world fades away, we often find ourselves yearning for a deeper connection with the Divine or the “other”. This longing is not merely a desire for spiritual growth but a profound call to explore the depths of our being and our relationship with God as we try to understand it.  For many, this journey is illuminated through the practice of spiritual direction—a sacred companionship that guides individuals toward a more intimate and authentic relationship with the Divine.

The Essence of Spiritual Direction

Spiritual direction is an ancient practice rooted in the Christian tradition, where a trained spiritual director accompanies an individual, known as the directee, on their spiritual journey. This relationship is characterized by deep listening, compassionate guidance, and a shared commitment to discerning God’s presence in everyday life. Unlike counseling or therapy, which focus on addressing specific psychological issues, spiritual direction centers on nurturing the directee’s relationship with God, fostering spiritual growth, and discerning divine guidance.

A Sacred Companionship

At the heart of spiritual direction lies the concept of companionship. The spiritual director serves as a companion who listens attentively to the directee’s experiences, joys, struggles, and questions, creating a safe and non-judgmental space for exploration. This relationship is built on trust, openness, and a shared commitment to spiritual growth. The director’s role is not to provide answers but to help the directee attune their heart and mind to the movements of the Spirit, fostering a deeper awareness of God’s presence in their life.

I started my own spiritual direction with a director 45 or 50 years ago and have had only three in that time. I can be very vulnerable and say that it has been the most enriching time of my life. Some of the time I was beat up lovingly, some of the time listened to with a deep and abiding love and other times teaching was involved.

Lynette and I now go to the same director at the same time which is not common but can work for those couples that care to grow together. Our present director has helped us greatly by gently guiding, deeply listening and holding us accountable to our choices we wanted to make. I have been seeing her for about 17 years and together we have seen her for about 11 years.

The Process of Spiritual Direction

Typically, spiritual direction involves regular meetings—often once a month—lasting about an hour. During these sessions, the directee is encouraged to reflect on their spiritual experiences, explore questions of faith, and discern God’s guidance in their life. The director may suggest practices such as prayer, meditation, or reading to support the directee’s spiritual journey. The focus is on the directee’s relationship with God within all aspects of life, helping them become more attuned to God’s presence and respond more fully to that presence.

Qualities of a Spiritual Director

In spiritual direction, a holistic approach acknowledges the interconnectedness of the spiritual life with all facets of human existence. A director assists the directee in integrating their faith into daily life, recognizing that the divine presence permeates every aspect of their being. This perspective fosters a deeper awareness that there is nowhere the divine is not, encouraging the directee to perceive and experience the sacred in all moments and activities.

Embodied presence is central to this practice, emphasizing that the body holds profound wisdom. A director encourages the directee to become attuned to their emotions, sensations, and tensions, viewing these bodily experiences as avenues for spiritual insight. By turning actions into prayer and cultivating mindfulness, the directee learns to listen to their body’s language, facilitating a deeper connection with their inner self and the divine. This approach aligns with somatic-informed spiritual care, which combines body-mind psychology with presence-based care to support healing and self-discovery. (artofspiritualcare.com)

Creating spaciousness involves establishing a sacred environment that holds all that the directee brings, allowing for deep listening and receptivity to the divine spark within. This sacred space fosters an atmosphere of acceptance and compassion, enabling the directee to explore their spiritual journey without fear of judgment. Contemplative listening is a key component of this process, where the director listens with the ears and heart of God, offering silence, reflections, and deepening questions to support the directee’s spiritual unfolding.

Trauma-informed sensitivity is crucial in spiritual direction, recognizing the impact of trauma on the body, mind, and spirit. A director grounds the direction in neuroscience and psychology to support healing and integration, being attuned to signs of dysregulation and knowing when to refer to a therapist. By integrating trauma-informed principles, the director creates a safe environment that acknowledges the directee’s experiences and promotes spiritual growth. (hadeninstitute.com)

The Journey of Transformation

Embarking on spiritual direction is a journey of transformation. It involves unlearning old patterns and embracing new ways of being. As one spiritual director notes, “The spiritual life has more to do with unlearning than it does with learning.” This process may require descending into the depths of one’s interior to ascend to new heights of holiness. Rather than achieving perfection, the journey leads to a radical breaking apart that results in wholeness. A spiritual director, having undergone their own crucible, offers a compassionate and spacious presence to hold others in their journey.

Approaching Spiritual Direction

Embarking on the journey of spiritual direction is a profound step toward deepening your relationship with the Divine. Selecting a spiritual director who aligns with your unique spiritual path is crucial for this journey. Compatibility is paramount; choose a director with whom you feel comfortable sharing your spiritual experiences and questions. This comfort fosters an environment of trust and openness, essential for meaningful spiritual growth.

Experience and training are also vital considerations. Seek a director who is experienced in the spiritual life and has received appropriate training in spiritual direction. A well-trained director can offer guidance rooted in a deep understanding of spiritual practices and traditions, ensuring that the direction you receive is both informed and effective. Additionally, openness and receptivity are key traits to look for. A director who is open to your unique spiritual path and receptive to the movements of the Spirit in your life can help you discern and respond to divine guidance more clearly.

As an example, I was first trained 30 years ago by the Dominican Sisters for 2.5 years in Columbus Ohio and then later I went through another 2-year spiritual direction training to brush up on my skills with the Haden Institute in Hendersonville NC. Along with that training, being a MCC, (master certified coach), enneagram teacher, emotional intelligence coach and other things means I can bring a wealth of knowledge to a session.

Remember, spiritual direction is a personal journey, and finding the right companion can make all the difference in deepening your relationship with the Divine. Take the time to prayerfully consider your options, perhaps meeting with a few directors to discern the best fit. As you embark on this path, trust that the Spirit will guide you to a director who will support and challenge you in your spiritual growth.

I feel very strongly that spiritual direction offers a sacred space for individuals to explore their relationship with God, seek guidance, and grow in spiritual maturity. And that area of our being is one of least informed quadrants of the 4 we have, mental, emotional, physical and spiritual. Through the compassionate companionship of a trained director, individuals can discern God’s presence in their lives, integrate their faith into daily experiences, and embark on a transformative journey toward wholeness and holiness. Whether you’re seeking intimacy with God, clarity in life decisions, or simply a deeper understanding of your spiritual path, spiritual direction provides the support and guidance needed to navigate the complexities of the spiritual journey.

Follow my other blog posts at the Spiritofeq.com/blog/

If you are interested in spiritual direction and would like to talk about it my email is jim@spiritofeq.com