Spiritual Direction/Discernment

First - thanks to the 10 of you who are officially following this blog!

I'm at the Episcopal Seminary in Alexandria VA, VTS, for today and tomorrow meeting with the people for whom I serve as a spiritual director. It is a joy for me to be able to work with seminarians from around the country. As a spiritual director, I am a companion with others as they seek to deepen their relationship with God.

Of course, deepening our relationship with God, or one could think of it as expanding our vision of how God is already deeply in relationship with us, is something every Christian can do/hopes to do/might want to do. We are always growing in faith and our understanding/experience of faith. One way to do this is to meet with a spiritual director one-on-one, but most people don't have a spiritual director. So how can one "do spiritual direction or discernment" in any situation. I recommend practices described in the book Sleeping with Bread by Dennis, Matthew and Shelia Linn.

I think the full title is Sleeping with Bread: Holding What Gives You Life.
The authors describe how children at the end of WWII were given bread to keep with them at night so that they could feel secure, knowing that they would have food in the morning. What is it that gives us life and helps us feel secure? Answering that question requires discernment, prayerful consideration of our situation in life, what is happening in the situation, what do we hope will happen, and how God is involved with it all.

While matters of discernment can seem complex, the Linns make to easy to at least get started. They suggest that at the end of the day, we consider what is that gave us energy and also what drained our energy that day - what gave us joy or did not give us joy. Much of the time, what gives us energy and joy is something we are called to. Those things that drain our energy maybe be bad for us in some way or at least not what we are called to do. This is a great exercise to do with children. The Linns make the point children can understand what it is to feel good about something and as they reflect with their parents about what is going on in their lives, they are learning about this thing we call discernment - which gives them (and us) confidence to choose wisely among the many options life presents everyday.