The Thread of Becoming a Spiritual Director
FROM ARTIST AND SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR, SHAUNA KURIHARA
I have felt the pull to ministry for the majority of my life, and as I look back over the years and the different phases that I went through I can certainly see a thread connecting it all together. I often feel like my journey to becoming a spiritual director is long and winding, but the reality is that if I trace my life back through the thread, this is the point God was leading me to all along.
I felt “called” to ministry at summer camp in South Carolina when I was 14 years old. At that point in time the only context I had for being in the ministry was either becoming a pastor or a missionary, and as my father was a pastor I did not feel particularly inclined toward that. So I assumed I would be a missionary, and when I went to college in Nashville, TN I pursued a degree in “Religion and the Arts” because I wanted to fuse my love of art with the call I felt to ministry. While I enjoyed my classes, I really wanted some practical, hands-on skills for helping people which led me to discovering social work. I immediately added it as a second major and still to this day think it was one of the best decisions I have ever made.
The next season was the most convoluted, where I found myself simultaneously trying to follow the call I had felt into ministry while also navigating a huge crisis of faith that led me into 10 years of deconstruction. This season was filled with my mind expanding with new social ideas, my narrow theology being challenged, and wondering if I was allowed to still be a Christian if it looked different than what I was taught growing up. I found myself in refugee resettlement work, which further pushed and questioned my faith, and then found myself deeply burned out and ready for a change 4 years later. My faith was hanging on by a thread- perhaps the same thread that I can see holding my entire story together… I didn’t like the “church” and many of the “christians” I saw around me, yet I was too afraid to fully let it go. I decided that perhaps becoming a counselor was the next right thing for me as I always felt like the best and most full version of myself when I was holding space for people and their stories. I applied to a local MSW program that I should have had no problem getting into and joked to a friend that if I didn’t get in it would be an act of the Lord. Well, I didn’t get in.
I was confused, burnt out in my job, desiring the next right thing for my life, and trying to process the call I had previously felt to ministry while being several years deep into deconstruction. I found myself at a retreat center in Southborough, MA called L’Abri Fellowship, and was able to breathe deeply and truly feel safe in my body and with my questions for the first time in my life. L’Abri means “The Shelter” in french, and it certainly has been that for me. It was during my time at L’Abri that I was first introduced to this concept of spiritual direction. I had never heard of it before, but the workers at L’Abri provided spiritual direction for me, and I felt safe, heard, and held in my questioning. There was no agenda or need to have things figured out, but they gave me safety and resources, and it was during those weeks away at L’Abri that I started to believe in God again and in the reality that He actually loved me. I had a safe space to heal, to ask hard questions, to spend time in beauty, and to receive hospitality. All of these things that I received at L’Abri have become core compliments of who I am and my work as a spiritual director. I knew at that point that I wanted to be able to provide these same things for others some day, that spiritual direction was actually the work I was called to do.
After leaving L’Abri I looked into how to become a spiritual director, and quickly found myself overwhelmed. Even though I knew I was called to be a safe space for others, I realized that I was not yet in a place to be able to provide that for others. I had just put the crumbled pieces of my faith back together after 10 years in shambles, and I needed time to heal and re-learn who God is. After a couple years of healing that included more trips to L’Abri and finding my own spiritual director, I enrolled in Gordon Conwell for their Master of Arts in Spiritual Formation, with the intention of using that masters as training and preparation for becoming a spiritual director. During these two years of growth and learning, I found a vibrancy in my spiritual life that I had never found before. I was so thankful for the tools I learned, the community I was a part of, and the training I received. I graduated in 2021, and thanks to my spiritual director’s encouragement, began offering spiritual direction that fall.
As I started meeting with people, I felt full and alive and filled with the Spirit, more and more sure that this was the work that I was called to do. I also realized that even though God had called me to this and was giving me what I needed to do this work, I needed more training specifically in spiritual direction. My degree in Spiritual Formation was wonderful and a great foundation, but I recognized that I needed more training especially as it became clear to me that I was called to be a safe person for those who are walking through deconstruction, just as I had desired a safe person during my deconstruction.
I found the PAX Center while I was looking for Spiritual Direction certification programs, and after talking with Rama, hearing about the books that we would be reading and the things we would be learning, I knew it was the program and training that I had been hoping for. My two years in PAX, first in TL1 and now in TL2, have simultaneously cared deeply for my own soul and also given me the tools that I need to help care for the souls of others. While I don’t think that I was a bad spiritual director before my training through PAX, I KNOW that this has provided me with the skills that I came here hoping to find and I have been so incredibly blessed by the community that has been built within my cohort. PAX has been exactly what I needed in this season, and I am so thankful. I have since recommended TL1 and TL2 to several other friends who are interested in becoming spiritual directors, and have also sent friends to the list of PAX trained directors because I know and trust that they have been trained well to be sensitive to others and to the Holy Spirit. As I look back over the thread of my life, despite the twists and turns, it is clear that God was calling me here and leading me here all along. I don’t know what the rest of my story will look like, but I intend to follow the thread and see where God takes me.
Are you looking to become trained as a spiritual director? We’d love to meet you wherever you are on your journey. Learn more about year one of this program below. (Already a TL1 graduate? Head straight on over to our TL2 page!)