Spiritual Conversations For The Unbundled: What Helps When You Have Spiritual Questions But No Obvious Place To Take Them?

There are plenty of us who would not describe ourselves as conventionally religious and yet still find ourselves carrying deeper questions than ordinary conversations make space for. And, it's harder to find the right person to have those conversations with – someone who will give you their full attention.

You might be wanting to talk about meaning, grief, change, prayer, doubt, purpose, forgiveness, identity, calling, or the odd but unmistakable sense that the universe is trying to tell you something. You carry these questions with you while you're walking the dog, sitting in traffic, recovering from burnout, staring at a hospital ceiling, or watching blackbirds scratching away in the leaf litter.

• If I was still and undistracted, what do I think I'd hear?

• If I trusted that I'd be held, what would I risk doing or sharing?

• What truth keeps tapping me on the shoulder?

• What part of my life is feeling wrong?

• I don't know what I want, but I know it isn't this.

• If I was a blackbird, would I like worms?
  

The trouble is that many of us no longer have an obvious place to take this kind of thing. We don't have somewhere to have spiritual conversations.

Broadly speaking, and probably in another era, more of us had some kind of shared framework, however imperfect, for reflecting on life’s deeper layers. There were places, practices, seasons, language, songs, rituals and communities that helped hold sorrow and joy, faith and confusion, guilt and gratitude. Those places did not work for everyone and they certainly did not always work kindly, but they did at least give many people a place to bring their questions. Now, a lot of that has fallen apart, or become complicated, or simply stopped feeling like home.

So we improvise. We borrow a little from podcasts, a little from prayer, a little from therapy, a little from nature, a little from old faith, a little from whatever helps us keep our balance. Maybe we journal or light candles and occasionally sit quietly under a tree. We still have the same spiritual needs but we've unbundled them from one single place and we attempt to meet them here and there. This might actually be real and honest. It beings freedom and less of a need to pretend; you are less likely to squeeze your life into language that no longer fits.

Still, freedom has its own little sting in the tail. When there is no trusted place for reflection, all these scraps can remain just that, scraps. You may have glimpses, practices, instincts, even moments of awe, but no steady conversation in which to notice patterns, make sense of experience, or explore what matters. No place to have your ideas or bias gently challenged. The deeper parts of life become oddly homeless. They appear in fragments, then vanish again under lifemin and the general racket of being alive.

This is one reason spiritual direction can be such a relief, just knowing it's there even helps.

Spiritual direction is a place for a deeper spiritual conversation

Spiritual direction is a regular, spiritual conversation with someone trained to listen carefully to the deeper currents of your life. Your spiritual director will get to know you, your language and how you make meaning from your experiences. It is a relationship in which to hold prayer, silence, doubt, desire, faith, loss and the strange ways the Divine flickers in ordinary life. That time your gaze was pulled from the book you were reading, out of the train window, just in time to see something awe-inspiring (true story).

Many people imagine they need to arrive with a tidy spiritual identity, or a proper vocabulary, or a framed certificate in Being Deep. In reality, people often come because something in life feels unsettled, tender, significant, or unfinished, and they would value help noticing what is really happening. Spiritual direction does not require polished certainty. It tends to work much better with honesty. Do come as you are. We prefer it that way 😉

When might spiritual direction be helpful?

A practical answer is often more useful than a polished one, so here are a few signs.

• It may help when you keep circling the same questions and cannot think your way out of them. You have probably already done a fair amount of thinking. You may have read books, listened to podcasts, had walks, made notes, and stared pensively into the middle distance. Yet the question remains alive. Spiritual direction offers something different from analysis, it creates room for attention, reflection and accompaniment.

• It may help when your life feels spiritually significant, but you are not sure what to do with that. Perhaps you are grieving, changing, deconstructing, recovering, beginning again, or sensing a pull you cannot quite name – or can name but are frightened to follow. Perhaps prayer has gone dry – or become unexpectedly alive (or weird enough to need a witness).

• It may help when you are carrying things that do not fit neatly into therapy, friendship, or church conversation. Therapy can be vital, and friendship can be a grace, but neither always offers the particular kind of reflective, spiritual, discerning attention some questions need. Spiritual direction can sit alongside both, doing its own work. I feel that when I have a spiritual director, even one I only see a few times a year, I carry with me a sense of being held, thought about, prayed for.

• It may help when you feel spiritually alone. This is more common than people admit. You do not have to be in crisis to need company. Sometimes you simply need a place where your deeper life is not treated as eccentric oddness.

We invite you to have a spiritual conversation with us

You may have questions, longings, or experiences that deserve a bit more care than modern life usually offers. You can talk about what has been happening, inwardly and outwardly. Your director will listen, asks thoughtful questions, notices themes, and helps you stay with what matters.

The aim is to help you attend to your blessed life more wisely, kindly and deeply, so that you can recognise what is life-giving, what is draining, what is opening, what is closing and where grace, meaning and the Divine are present.

Have a look at our directors and see who you might want to have a spiritual conversation with.