Announcement!

Before coming to Regent in August 2023, I had spent several years engaging in online spiritual formation and spiritual direction training programs. A contemplative approach to spirituality conflicted with the Protestant work ethic I had imbibed since childhood—but I was increasingly drawn towards a different way of being with God. My experience in the training programs transformed my understanding of the Trinity, reinforcing the very real presence of God in my daily life. I grew to love group spiritual direction in particular. However, as the only European in predominantly North American cohorts, cultural differences arose and influenced my capacity to engage fully and feel comfortable navigating group dynamics. In one-to-one spiritual direction, I also sensed that the cultural values of the director influenced how they engaged with the challenges of my life story, particularly the value of individualism in North America, which is less pronounced in my native Northern Ireland.

My experiences caused me to ponder whether soul hospitality, as offered in spiritual direction, transcends or is shaped by the cultural background of the director.

My experiences caused me to ponder whether soul hospitality, as offered in spiritual direction, transcends or is shaped by the cultural background of the director. Given that most spiritual formation and direction training programs I engaged with referred to a familiar group of primarily white male authors, I sensed that white normativity was a feature of the spiritual formation world—as it is within North American evangelicalism in general. Richard Foster, Henri Nouwen, and Dallas Willard have made valuable contributions to the discussion of, and revival of interest in, spiritual formation—but theirs are by no means the only voices and perspectives out there. For Diane Stinton’s seminar “Perspectives on Majority World Spiritualities” in Fall 2023, I decided to explore the experiences of ethnic minority spiritual directors in North America. I sought to understand how they contextualized their practice of spiritual direction. Rev. Ineda Pearl Adesanya has argued that most spiritual direction training programs fail to address ways of contextualizing the practice of spiritual direction to reflect various communities’ needs, sensibilities, and values.

Stimulated by two seminal texts written by African American and Taiwanese American spiritual directors Barbara Peacock and Cindy Lee, Soul Care in African American Practice and Our Unforming: De-Westernizing Spiritual Formation, respectively, I focused on interviewing minority spiritual directors of African and Asian descent to explore how their experiences resonated with or diverged from the established literature. I interviewed two spiritual directors, a Taiwanese American woman (Christy) from the United States and a Black Canadian woman (Maria) living in Western Canada.¹  The former completed spiritual direction training in the United States, and the latter trained in Vancouver. Initially, I sought to understand how spiritual direction is perceived by Black and East Asian Americans and discovered that there are semantic and conceptual barriers to engagement among African Americans. Barbara Peacock suggests that “soul care” is the more familiar term, encompassing a rich legacy of prayer, spirituality, and accompaniment akin to spiritual direction. Among East Asian American communities, there appears to be less resistance to the concept of “spiritual direction”; however, the challenge for East Asian Americans is giving themselves (or their pastor) permission to invest the time to meet with a spiritual director. Though the concept is understood, the formational impact of the practice is not yet fully appreciated. Unfamiliarity, time constraints, and semantic dissonance can deter an individual from seeking spiritual direction, regardless of ethnic background. Still, for minorities, these barriers may be heightened by a lack of intercultural awareness and its role in fostering interethnic hospitality. 

Overlooking ethnic diversity also affects how spiritual directors engage with directees amid co-cultural differences. Presenting a European American perspective as normative is a form of silencing that, when present in training curricula, causes ethnic minorities to ask if their experience is welcomed, legitimate, and valued. Even so, though the tenets of spiritual direction are attentiveness, hospitality, and listening, existing training programs could be more attentive to diverse voices and experiences. In response to this need, Barbara Peacock developed the Peacock Soul Care Institute to train spiritual directors in spiritual practices and intercultural awareness. David and Cindy Wu also developed Mosaic Formation (mosaicformation.org) to provide spiritual formation resources and intercultural agility training to under-reached communities. I recommend exploring their offerings and engaging with their valuable perspectives.

Both interviewees identified the importance of collectivism as a foundation for their practice of spiritual direction. For Maria and Christy, hospitality is embodied as a way of being rather than an event. They both seek to create safe, sacred spaces for people to be “home with the Lord who loves them” (Christy). Their own experiences of marginalization have enabled them to be present to ongoing suffering and injustice in the lives of their directees. Their experiences of marginalization and minoritization also impact how they listen. East Asians are typically part of receiver cultures, which emphasize that it is the listener's responsibility to understand and interpret a speaker’s meaning, rather than the speaker's responsibility to communicate effectively. Cindy Lee labels the capacity to listen and read nonverbal cues as the “Asian sixth sense” (Our Unforming, 78). Christy noticed that she naturally adopted a posture of listening, staying silent, and “paying attention to the details” before speaking, particularly in contexts where she was a minority voice. However, she saw that her capacity to listen was helpful as she sat with directees: “The way that I listen and the way that I hold back and hold restraint and listen for the Holy Spirit and listen to the other person . . . that comes more naturally for me.” She now channels her attunement to others into the wise and discerning presence she offers. 

In After Whiteness, Willie James Jennings addresses the reality of listening for survival as a Black man in North America. He discusses how he was trained to pay attention to white people’s bodies and their moods, agitations, and discomforts—a further example of racialized hypervigilance. Reflecting upon childhood experiences of racism, Maria recognized that marginalization intensified her awareness of, and capacity to include, other voices: “I’ve really learned . . . every voice matters, and . . . we really need to shift as communities . . . so that we’re including the voices that are not heard.” Such awareness and inclusion demonstrate genuine soul hospitality and attentiveness to the image of God present in every human being. While attentive listening for these women may originate from the hypervigilance caused by racial trauma, through Christ’s healing, their capacities to listen have been redeemed and transformed. Maria and Christy’s experiences of receiving spiritual direction enabled them to recover perspectives and parts of themselves that had been silenced in overt and covert ways. Being heard and held by a director or group was a healing experience, which Maria described as being drawn out by God. 

Though Black and East Asian Americans share collectivist orientations, and the default posture of listening to the dominant culture, they differ in their sociocultural and historical experiences, primarily due to variations in their migration journeys and experiences in North America. The East Asian American experience of dislocation and achievement-orientation caused by economic migration contrasts with the disinheritance of enslavement and enforced migration, creating distinctive legacies which raise profound spiritual questions of identity and belonging. For Black Americans, the disinheritance notably addressed by Howard Thurman in Jesus and the Disinherited is a lived reality. Thurman reminds his readers that their grounding comes from remembering their identity in Christ. Reflecting on her own experience of disinheritance, Maria recalled the importance of the Negro spirituals in identity formation while fighting destructive inner dialogues. Music also became a crucial part of her healing. For Asian Americans, Confucian achievement orientation can lead to mental health issues and pressures to be successful. When this posture enters the church, it can lead to an activistic, performance-oriented Christian spirituality. Christy’s experience of group spiritual direction and relational, contemplative practices enabled her to develop a spirituality rooted in God’s unconditional agape love. Stirred by a growing sense of freedom and joy, Christy wanted to support other women from her community who were “stuck in this ‘I need to do . . . to be worthy’” mentality. 

. . . to ensure spiritual directors of all backgrounds can provide hospitable listening, developing intercultural sensitivity should be considered a crucial learning outcome of any training program in North America.

My interviews with these women revealed commonalities with my own experience of spiritual direction: the redemption of the painful elements of one’s story and the desire to share the joy received with others. Ironically, neither of the interviewees had consciously considered the role of culture and ethnicity in her practice before our interview, perhaps because it was not discussed in their training programs or they were accustomed to adapting to predominantly white spaces. Hearing them identify their contributions and distinctive perspectives provided a compelling case for addressing cultural and ethnic values and experiences in spiritual direction training. Those with communal orientations who have experienced the redemption of their suffering are perhaps best placed to lead the way in modelling genuine hospitality and soulful listening in North America’s distracted, individualistic context. By carefully considering and reassessing their perspectives and default postures, faculty demographics, and syllabi, North American spiritual direction programs would profoundly benefit from incorporating the perspectives of Barbara Peacock, Cindy Lee, and other women from minority ethnic backgrounds. Indeed, to ensure spiritual directors of all backgrounds can provide hospitable listening, developing intercultural sensitivity should be considered a crucial learning outcome of any training program in North America.