When we don’t know how to deal with death and suffering, we grasp at something that makes sense. Psychology has ways of explaining it well, but often times the spiritual sphere is left out or minimized.
Being unable to process death spiritually leaves us grasping for anything that makes sense
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Because so much is in motion, including the very foundation, when you're talking about death all around us, it seems to me that people are grasping for some objectivity, some ground, some foundation, and they're grabbing in good places and also an awful lot of bad places. They don’t realize it, but the need is so great for foundation, center, objective ground, that I think a lot of the false certitude, the false opinionatedness, the mental health issues that are rampant are all corollaries of this time, where people just aren’t used to living with this much in motion and this much that’s unpredictable. So there has been, in my experience too, more people asking for spiritual direction, more people just needing spiritual direction. Let me throw in now, it might be a question you're still going to ask, but a lot of people have substituted, well, certitude, of course, but process language and purely, now do hear the word purely, purely psychological language with no reference to spirit, because it's easier. And I think the job of a spiritual director is to hold on to spirit and introduce that as a livable, credible part of the conversation. And a lot of people are recognizing that, but a lot aren’t. I really have met a good portion, even in my own circle, of people who only use the language of health and process, and I’m all for health and I’m all for process. But when there’s no reference to spirit, it looks like a new way of taking control to me. 1