What Is Spiritual Direction?

My first encounter with spiritual direction was unintentional. After engaging in a spiritual conversation with the owner of the Texas Hill Country bed and breakfast where I was staying, she gave me a copy of a poem by Rumi, a 13th-century Persian poet and Sufi mystic. “Don’t go away, come near. Don’t be faithless, be faithful,” the poem said. Titled “The Root of the Root of Your Self,” the poem invites the reader to discover his or her truest and deepest self as a being made in the image of God’s majesty by letting go of selfishness and fear. I later found out this owner was a trained spiritual director, and 16 years later I still have and treasure the copy of the poem she gave me. Another had discerned a new spiritual path for me and had given me permission to look inside my soul, discovering the vast treasure that awaits us all when we start a divine adventure.