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Spiritual direction has been a huge gift in my life because as someone who's received spiritual direction at various points on the journey, not only from Thomas Merton, but from people like Douglas Steer and my friend Henry Nowen, Father Timothy Kelly, who was novice master at St. John’s Monastery in Minnesota when I spent a year there at the Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research. On my journey, people like that have helped me come back to true north, have helped me reclaim the best gift I have to give, which is true self, and have helped me walk back into the world through whatever wounds and hurts and fears and ego issues I may have brought to them to walk back to the world in service. That, it seems to me, is what all of you good folks are doing for people around the world, and for that you have my and our gratitude.1