What is spiritual direction?

Humans have always sought spiritual friends with whom they can share their inner journeys, someone who can listen deeply to gentle movements and longings that may not even yet have language. Someone whose presence creates an atmosphere of curiosity and care. Spiritual directors don’t tell people what to do; they listen on behalf of the seeker to how the sacred is unfolding in their life.

Do I need to be religious to meet with a spiritual director?

You don't need to pray a particular way, attend church, or hold any fixed belief to do this work. You're welcome to name what's sacred to you in the way that makes sense to you — God, Shekinah, the Divine, the Great Creator, the Holy, Spirit, Mystery, or no name at all. What matters isn't the vocabulary. It's your own lived experience of something larger than the visible, whatever shape that takes for you.

I didn't always understand spiritual direction this way. My own path opened during formation, when I began to discover contemplative practice for myself — and found, to my surprise, that it offered something I hadn't known was possible: a direct, ongoing, private relationship with the sacred, not mediated by an institution or a fixed set of practices. That discovery still shapes how I understand this work. My role isn't to guide you toward my experience of the sacred. It's to help you notice and trust your own.

How does spiritual direction differ from therapy?

Therapy and spiritual direction can overlap, and they can also be wonderful companions to each other. But they're not the same practice. Therapy tends to focus on healing, mental health, and the patterns of mind and behavior that shape your life. Spiritual direction focuses more specifically on your relationship with the sacred — where you notice the holy, where you feel called, where meaning and mystery show up in your ordinary life.

Some people come to this work already in therapy, and find the two practices genuinely complement each other. Others have never been in therapy and we do rich, generative work together all the same. Having a therapeutic background isn't a requirement, and it isn't a guarantee of fit either — what matters more is whether we're able to build real trust and go deep together, which isn't something either of us can predict in advance.