Agency

By Rev. Elizabeth Rechter, Executive Director

As one begins the journey to becoming a spiritual director, one of the most important understandings is that agency lies with the directee, the one being companioned, not the director. For many in our program, some rewiring is required in order to take on this mantle authentically. Our work is to listen, deeply, and in this listening space, God’s story can be heard through the companioned one. 

When I sit with my director, she asks me to tell her the portion of my sacred story that is most on my heart. As I share, she listens with me with the ear of her own heart. She doesn’t try to solve problems, but helps me hear my struggle for myself. She hears my pain and my rejoicing, and helps me linger here. Her questions come prayerfully and require no answer, but often help to clarify. I am always aware that this is my time and my God-story, and she helps me hear it more deeply. 

Like with every spiritual practice, I don’t judge the practice on the basis of how peaceful I feel at the end of our time, or if all my problems are solved, but rather on how it shows up for me in my life. Because my director honors my agency in our time together, my agency out in the world is strengthened too. Spiritual direction honors the experience of God in my life, so I am more attuned to this relationship as I walk the earth. 

We all benefit from being heard to our depths. The more we know our depths, the more we know God. And the more we know God, the more we know ourselves. 

As troops marched into Ukraine this week; as racism continues to weather unceasingly the human community; as the number of homeless citizens increases among us; as the climate crisis shows up in reminders all around us, I feel at a loss to know how my life can help. Perhaps you are feeling it too.

Merciful God, you see us sometimes strangers on the earth,
taken aback by the violence, by the harshness of oppositions. 

And you come to send out a gentle breeze 
On the dry ground of our doubts, 
and so prepare us to be bearers 
of peace and reconciliation. 

- Brother Roger of Taize

But I keep coming back to agency. As my director tends to my sacred story, I think this is how God beholds us. God trusts our agency. God has endowed each of us with divine agency. God’s agency alive in us is why we weep for others. What then will you do? 

What do you want to do? Who do you want to be? This is what I hear my director asking me. I listen for what comes forth as she holds the space. When I show up next month, she will ask me about it, and hold me accountable to my longings and my agency, listening deeply. 

Etty Hillesum, a Dutch Jew, died at the age of twenty-nine at the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz, Poland. After her death, her journal was found and published under the title, An Interrupted Life.  Trusting her agency until the end, shortly before she was taken by train to her death, she wrote this prayer: 

God, I don’t think there is anything you can do to help us now. 
You must help us help You. 

Blessings for the Journey,

Elizabeth+