"...Get the dust off the Bible and redeem your poor soul..." - Hank Williams.
That seems to be Liz Hoare's main advice to spiritual directors. Read the Bible, soak it in, "inhabit" its landscape, open yourself to the Spirit hovering over the scriptural waters. The best way to use the Bible in spiritual direction is to use the Bible regularly in your own life. Then during spiritual direction you may be led to incorporate Biblical stories or themes in your discussion, or you may be able to recommend certain verses or passages for meditation or reflection.
I was a little disappointed by the book; I was hoping for more play-by-play advice on how to use, advise, or recommend the Bible during a spiritual direction session. Or perhaps a case study approach, with analysis of how a spiritual director's use of Scripture proved helpful or not. This book is more about describing spiritual direction generally, while emphasizing the key role Scripture plays in Christian formation. In fact this is a wonderful intro to spiritual direction.
On the other hand Hoare digs into different Bible reading traditions - lectio divina, Ignatian method, the Anglican version of the daily office, Evangelical commitment to Biblical authority - and she highlights the richness and good fruit these practices can produce. She encourages directors to encourage Scripture, but not to demand certain beliefs about it, or to demand certain interpretive styles. Hoare also recognizes that some people have been hurt by Biblical words, or by others who used the Bible in an abusive way. So directors should offer Scripture and Scripture reading practices gently and with no strings attached.
Perhaps her best example of using the Bible in spiritual direction comes in chapter 6, when she discusses Biblical themes that frequently come up in spiritual direction - questions, desert, silence, guidance, risk, fear. Maybe we could say that using the Bible in spiritual direction is an associative practice; we connect things or experiences from our lives to the Biblical world, which connects us to a wider landscape, a different perspective, a diverse tradition, a community.
Read the Bible, that's my take-away. Read Scripture regularly and then trust that the Spirit will prompt me to use it wisely during spiritual direction.
notes
- inhabiting a landscape
- scriptures as authoritative
- aim of spir dir to hear and respond to God
- at the end she would gather up all the fragments of conversation and offer it to God with me
- concerned with the whole of life
- throughout the story of God's involvement with humanity, one person has been used time and time again to point the way to another
- integration
- you have set my feet in a broad place
- scriptures as God's self-revelation
- many silences in Scripture that are worthy of attention
- we are not the best people to comment on our own spiritual progress
- inhabiting the Scriptures, the Scriptures inhabiting us
- need to be doing for themselves what they are seeking to help their directors to learn
- the desert dwellers believed that discernment and self-knowledge were central to interpreting scripture and that experience deepened interpretation and took them into new realms of spiritual growth and understanding. prayer and scripture mutually informed each other and faithful praxis led to growth in holiness
- God's word interact with our lives, prov 6.22, 'when you walk, it will lead you; when you lie down, it will watch over you; and when you awake, it will talk with you.'
- atmosphere
- spir direction in the Bible
- neither can control the scriptures, have a life of their own
- Holy Spirit the real director, also key to memory
- belong to community
- corporate enterprise
- God's word is always personal, but never private
- interpretation is always advocacy
- listening, performance
- not to be used to browbeat or force
- words of life turned into words of death
- story to understand our story
- we have committed ourselves to something we cannot yet see
- metaphor, imagery
- repetition
- deepen rather than deaden insight
- like panning for gold
- desert
- waiting
- spir dir very risky
- directors, vs mentors, guidance, anam chara, soul friend, etc, different models
- seeking a word "rhema", speak a word to me
- lectio divina
- ignatian prayer, finding God in all things, imaginatively putting ourselves in scripture, memorizing Bible verses or praying verses, daily office
- midwife, hospitality, teacher, gardeners, doctors, intercessors, friendship
- prayer
- road to emmaus, hearts burning
- "scripture and experience unite in the person of Jesus"
- pray as you can, not as you can't
- emphasis on listening, not necessarily reading
- scripture and prayer out loud, art, dance, "sigh's too deep for words", icons, eucharist
- paying attention to scripture together
- in God is our collective homecoming
- by wise and judicious use of scripture it can help to foster a language to see God in all things and articulate our experience with a companion along the way
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