Orthodoxy and spiritual direction

The former post spotlighted the insights of Fr. Martin Thornton regarding “spiritual direction,” but if I were to leave it there, without further comment from an Orthodox perspective, I would be somewhat remiss. One cannot simply transpose Fr. Thornton’s views into the Orthodox context without noting what cannot (and should not) be carried over from it. For example, Thornton mentions that a spiritual director is in a “professional” role and refers to those who consult him or her as “clients.” This sort of language is misleading at best and — quite rightly — occupies no place in Orthodoxy. As I noted in passing in that last post, neither do I like even the term “direction.” “Guidance” – the word preferred by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, as we will see below – strikes me as better, if only to avoid using a term (“spiritual direction”) that has acquired vaguely “New Age,” insipid, and ascetically flaccid associations since the 1970s. The problem I sought to deal with last time was that of “burnout,” which is a consequence of poor guidance, leading in turn to rigorism for some (rigor is fine; rigor-ism most certainly is not). Poor guidance, unfortunately, is easily found on media platforms, where regrettable facsimiles and caricatures of “spiritual authority” are rife. Orthodoxy, it should be stressed, eschews gurus and the digital age’s equivalent of “televangelists.” It also shuns, as I’ve noted, any idea of a “professional” spiritual director who hangs up a shingle bearing that job title on his office door or claims an academic “degree” in the discipline, or – for that matter – anyone at all who appoints himself or herself to the role. As I said, some of Thornton’s rhetoric could lead one to conclude that he treated spiritual guidance in that way. In fact, though, his actual views were much more expansive and classical than that, and (as I took pains to demonstrate) invaluable in a pragmatic way. Still, it bears repeating that he was not Orthodox, and so, for Orthodox readers, an Orthodox point of view becomes necessary as a follow-up to sort out and supplement what is valuable (I come back, as ever, to the analogy of eating the fish and picking out the bones).