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SDI Learns From…Ron Rolheiser, OMI, 2009. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVpxL9WImIM.
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FirstDirector:: SDI - The Home of Spiritual Companionship
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Title:: SDI Learns From…Ron Rolheiser, OMI
Year:: 2009
Citekey:: sdi-thehomeofspiritualcompanionshipSDILearnsFromRon2009
itemType:: videoRecording
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Abstract
Spiritual Directors International learns from Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI as he describes how meeting regularly with a spiritual director would help people in three life stages. Ron also answers the question, If Im just a beginner at prayer, is spiritual direction for me? Visit www.sdiworld.org to Seek and Find spiritual directors in your area to interview. .
Notes
Transcript
How did you become a Roman Catholic priest? My name is Ron Rollheiser. I’m a Roman Catholic priest, and I’m at the Aubrey School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas. Roman Catholic. I’ve been a priest for 36 years, and during that time I’ve worked in spiritual direction at all kinds of different levels, from teaching it at a graduate level to being a director all the time, at some level of that. Good question. What would somebody expect to experience in spiritual direction?
You know, the question hasn’t got one answer fits all here. See, it depends at what level you’re going in. So let me just kind of give you three levels. See, if someone's entering spiritual direction at a time of their life where they're still kind of searching and trying to set life together, you know, that's kind of what I call the level of essential discipleship. See, what you expect then in spiritual direction is somebody to help you get the fundamentals. And so that’s not abstract. Today a lot of people will say, like, I’m out there, and you have all these churches and all this spiritual literature.
I walk into, for instance, a spirituality bookstore, and it’s like walking into Tower Records, all these albums. You don’t know what’s behind all of that. And they say, what’s essential? What’s accidental? What do I have to see? So initially spiritual direction is a lot about laying foundations, laying fundamentals. This is necessary, this is optional, this is deep, this is fluff, you know, to help you set your life together.
Okay, that’s at one level. There's a second level where you're entering spiritual direction and your life is essentially together. You’re no longer sorting out the big who am I, what does life mean, is there a God, are all the churches the same, where you’ve already got basic commitments in your life, and you’re already basically a generative person, and you have discipline. See, discipline from the word discipleship is essential. Discipline, you know, your life is together, more or less, and you’re trying to give it away. See, then spiritual direction at that level is a lot about deepening. I’m praying, but how do I pray deeper?
I’m serving, but how do I serve deeper? I think I’m unselfish, but what are my hidden areas of selfishness, and so on. See, that’s level two. Then there's still a level three, and that is senior, true elder, what I call radical discipleship. That’s people who have been, their lives have been together and they’ve been serving for a long time. That’s the stage where we’re praying ready for death. You know, it’s not a stage we’re in yet, thank goodness, but I mean that’s the stage when you’re 70, you’re 75, you’re 80, where your health is failing, and then the spiritual direction is a lot about letting go.
See, very simply, the first part is about getting life together, the second part is about giving your life away, then the third part is about giving your death away.
Like, how do I die? How do I exit my family, my community, in such a way that I’m leaving them a legacy of faith and decency and that they can be proud of the way I died, not just of the way I lived.
The simple question is everybody. You know, the same as, let me use a simple kind of analogy. Who would benefit from talking to health professionals? Everybody. I mean, we have some gut instincts about, you know, taking care of our athletic image of the body. I should eat right, jog, do this, do that. Whereas a professional, a professional trainer, a professional doctor, they can simply help you to avoid certain things that maybe you don’t know about.
They’ll move you faster. You don’t have to invent a wheel by yourself. And so really, literally everybody, ideally, ideally could benefit from having health food professionals or health professionals or trainers in a gymnasium, simply they’re experts who have trained, who understand, who know thousands of stories, so everybody benefits. A number of things. First of all, there is no bad way to pray. There’s no wrong way to pray. The only thing that’s required is to pray with sincerity and showing up.
In fact, all the great spiritual writers in all the traditions, they'll always say 95% of having a prayer life is simply showing up and doing it. But the third part there, I’m glad you brought that up in terms of people saying, I’m not spiritual, or I don’t pray. No, that’s a question of language. First of all, everybody’s spiritual. See, and spirituality doesn’t necessarily mean, at a certain point, it can be a faith tradition and a church practice and so on. But spirituality, the way I define it in the holy longing, it's what you do with your spirit, and your spirit is your energy. So that everybody has a spiritual life, everybody’s doing something with their energy.
And so people shouldn’t be intimidated. Nobody should ever say, I’m not spiritual. Now they might more accurately say, I’m not a church person, or I don’t go to church, or I’m not cultivating a faith tradition that’s still a long ways from saying I’m not spiritual. The same as when you can’t say, I’m not bodily, I’m not physical, or I’m not psychological. Nobody can say, I’m not spiritual. We’re spiritual, the same as we’re bodily. Sometimes we try to forget about our bodies, it doesn’t let us do it.
The same thing we can try to forget about our spirits, it doesn’t let us do it, it’s there. And I think the confusion there, and it’s a sincere one, that people see spirituality as, they identify with church, or some faith tradition, or practicing a faith tradition. That’s a way of working with your spiritual life that doesn’t define the spiritual life. Good question. It’s a stretch, but it’s real. And that is, see, peace in the world is when people stop, and countries and everybody else stops being violent to each other, stops being aggressive, stops taking what isn’t ours, when we move to respect and so on. Those are spiritual values.
Peace is only going to come, see, peace isn’t just the absence of war. Peace has to be a harmony that comes out of respect, tolerance, ultimately loving each other, forgiveness, the forgiveness of historical hurts. Well, that takes an inner spirit. So it’s not just, I’m not going to go to war because I can’t, they have superior guns. That doesn’t make for peace. That makes for a temporary regrouping. Peace is only going to come about when there's enough hearts at every level, from the janitor through the president of the country, that are at peace themselves.
So that you can’t have a, see, what you see at the collective level is only a reflection of what’s inside people. So that if spiritual direction helps bring people to eternal peace and private peace and interior peace, then there’s some hope for peace in the world. We can’t achieve outside what we haven’t achieved inside.