Author: Rachel Degen

Written by Christine Dietz, Therapist & Spiritual Director

As a child, I was a mystic and a writer. I loved to wander outside, make nests in the tall grass, dream on the big pink granite rock in the field. I wrote poems and stories in school, when I was supposed to be reading about Dick and Sally. The adults in my life seemed to think that a bright child who read the dictionary and wrote poems should be directed toward math and science. I resisted, but my dreamy afternoons on the rock in the field were soon over. So, apparently, was my writing voice. My creative writing efforts in undergraduate school received a lukewarm response, and I changed my major to sociology. My father, a scientist, was pleased.

Fast forward to 2001. Exhausted from my battle for tenure at the University where I taught, I stumbled into the office of an expressive therapist. The years of writing a dissertation and journal articles had taken its toll. I said, “I have lost my creativity and my spirituality.” I didn’t know it then, but my spiritual journey had begun. Two years later, I was training to become a spiritual companion and leaving academia.

This year, I will celebrate my 20^th anniversary as a spiritual companion. My definition of spiritual companionship is, “To walk with others as they become who they were created to be.” As people open themselves to being present, listening to and acting upon the movement, impulses and images of the Divine within them, I notice that they often become more creative. Some turn to writing – stories, essays or poetry. Others to photography or art. Is there an inherent link between creativity and spirituality?

I love the creation stories in Genesis. Genesis 27 says, “And God created humankind in the divine image, creating it in the image of God—creating them male and female.” (The Contemporary Torah, Jewish Publication Society, 2006). According to this story, we are created in the image and likeness of God. We are both the result of and part of the creative force that brought forth all that is. Creativity is our birthright. In her article, “Creativity as Spiritual Practice,” Rabbi Adina Allen describes the creative process as a partnership with the Divine.

“What this relationship requires of us is an openness to the creative process: a willingness to venture into the unknown, the ability to be present in the moment, an openness to our intuition and allowing ourselves to follow where it leads us, and a deep humility in knowing that nothing we bring into the world is ours alone.” (Source: My Jewish Learning).

This is exactly what happens in spiritual companionship.

In 2016, I offered “Wisdom Stories: A Class for Elders in Training,” an exploration of personal autobiography, at the Center. I emphasized that everyone was a writer, free to ignore the “rules” they had learned about how to write and what was “good.” I offered writing prompts, which they were free to ignore, and words of encouragement from Natalie Goldberg, Julia Cameron or Anne Lamott. As listeners, we focused on how their stories touched us, and what spoke to us, without praise or criticism. In 2018, I offered another 8 week class. The group asked for more. I offered another 8 weeks. The group asked for more yet again. And so I said, “let’s try this as a spiritual direction group.”

Seven years later, we continue to meet monthly. I have stopped offering prompts – the writers follow their own interests and instincts. They have stopped trying to follow the “rules,” expressing what is emerging inside them. Their voices are more powerful, authentic and free, as a sense of play, deep grief or a new form emerges. We notice that, when one writer expresses their deep truth it resonates with all of us—we’ve been there, too. And often, we notice a core theme or experience connecting the writings in a particular session. Each time we meet, I feel awe, wonder and gratitude at how this process opens us to the presence of the Divine and our creative expression. And my frozen creativity is beginning to thaw.

Please, if you will, enjoy an example from one of our writers, Ken Rummer, who felt called to share his expression in a piece titled “In the Fog.”

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Christine Dietz, LISW, DMin, PhD, is a psychotherapist and spiritual companion dedicated to helping individuals reconnect to their innate wholeness and renew their sense of hope and possibility. With over 40 years of experience in hospitals, community mental health, and private practice, she specializes in supporting those navigating anxiety, depression, life transitions, chronic illness, grief, LGBTQ+ concerns, and spiritual direction. Christine is a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker and spiritual director with an MSW from the University of Iowa, a PhD in Sociology from SUNY Buffalo, and a DMin from the Graduate Theological Foundation. She is also a graduate of the Lev Shomea Training Program for Spiritual Direction in the Jewish Tradition. Passionate about storytelling, Christine is a writer, avid reader, and amateur photographer with a deep interest in spirituality, particularly Jewish spirituality. She enjoys teaching adult education at her synagogue and currently works part-time at Mind and Spirit Counseling Center, offering telehealth services to individuals from all faiths and spiritual traditions, as well as those with none.

Written by Paul Witmer, Co-Director of PrairieFire

“Sometimes the best map will not guide you

You can’t see what’s ’round the bend

Sometimes the road leads through dark places

Sometimes the darkness is your friend”

                                             Bruce Cockburn, Pacing the Cage

As we make our way through these darkened days of the Winter Solstice, I find myself contemplating anew the Dark Night of the Soul.  In addition to being a spiritual classic in the Christian contemplative tradition, written by St. John of the Cross, it can also describe a part of the spiritual journey for modern mystics.  So, I thought I’d share some thoughts about the Dark Night, and how Spiritual Direction can be a great tool for navigating what many have experienced as desolation, desperation and the perceived abandonment of God.

First, some clarifying remarks about the Dark Night of the Soul, and what we understand in modern psychology as Clinical Depression.  They are not the same.  We sometimes throw around the phrase “Dark Night of the Soul” to describe a period of depression or long bouts of melancholy.  It can be both, but it’s important to recognize that the spiritual journey that includes a sojourn through the Dark Night is not the same experience as clinical depression.  A Spiritual Director with good training and awareness can help distinguish the difference, and hopefully refer you for mental health counseling, treatment and the proper care of a physician if indeed it is clinical depression you are experiencing.  AND, that same Spiritual Director, with awareness and compassion, may sense that the Dark Night you are navigating is more of a spiritual experience to be explored, rather than a mental health condition to be medicated or otherwise treated.

It’s also important to recognize that therapeutic counseling and treatment can work in tandem with Spiritual Direction.  These are good conversations for you to be having with all the providers involved in your care.

So, what is the Dark Night of the Soul in the spiritual tradition?  Great mystics in the Christian Contemplative tradition have explored darkness in the spiritual journey.  In particular, the Spanish Mystics, St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avilla (15^th century contemporaries and Spiritual Directors) are known for their work with what they called la noche oscura.  Gerald May, M.D. has a great work, The Dark Night of the Soul: A Psychiatrist Explores the Connection Between Darkness and Spiritual Growth. (2004, HarperCollins). Here’s May on that very connection:

When we speak of darkness today, we are often referring to something sinister, as in “powers of darkness” or the “Dark side.”  As I’ve said before, this is not what Teresa and John mean when they used the Spanish word for dark, oscura. For them, it simply means “obscure.”  In the same way that things are difficult to see at night, the deepest relationship between God and person Is hidden from our conscious awareness.

In speaking of la noche oscura, the dark night of the soul, John is addressing something mysterious and unknown, but by no means sinister or evil.  It is instead profoundly sacred and precious beyond all imagining.  John says the dark night of the soul is “happy,” “glad,” “guiding,” and full of “absolute grace.” It is the secret way in which God not only liberates us from our attachments and idolatries, but also brings us to the realization of our true nature. The night is the means by which we find our heart’s desire, our freedom for love. (May, p. 67)

The work of Spiritual Direction is an invitation to go deeper, and with the Dark Night, the invitation is to go deeper into darkness—not sinister or evil, but obscure, unknown, unseen—and I might add unfelt.  I doubt Bruce Cockburn is singing about the spiritual experience of the dark night, but his words sure ring true for me: “Sometimes the best map will not guide you/ You can’t see what’s ’round the bend.”  Where the best maps might fail you, a companion who’s been on the path before can be a life-saving presence and guide. And, to take this particular metaphor one step further, we might say that a Spiritual Director can share the tools of your tradition that can serve as a compass.  So, map or no map, you might never lose contact with True North. (Though sometimes, even the sense of True North can be fleeting in the darkness.)

This path of obscurity can be a place of great learning and insight.  It’s also no damn fun at all.  Just in case I’ve romanticized the idea too much, this is important to name. It can be a place of desolation, desperation and abandonment. But it is often at the end of our rope that we find the capacity for deep trust and a willingness to let go into the goodness of God. It may be that the rope we’ve been clinging on to so desperately is nothing more than half truths and idols—things that are not God.  Thus, May describes this process as one of moving into freedom.

My own journey has included serious struggles with clinical depression that were appropriately treated with counseling and medication, for which I’m grateful.  And, there were literal long nights of insomnia and fitful solitude that were calling me into a place of deep spiritual exploration, so Spiritual Direction was a lifeline that helped me navigate the unknown path ahead for me.  I remember leaning heavily into the companionship of the Psalmists who I felt had walked this desolate road before me.  “Tears have been my bread all night long,” (Ps. 42) and “In the night, my heart also instructs me.” (Ps. 16)

Somewhere along the way of obscurity was the painful but necessary realization that my ideas about God, and even my deeply felt experiences of God were not God.  This is a hard place to be and not a good place to be alone.  So, the gift of Spiritual Direction and a companion by my side was the supportive presence that made possible my growth into freedom.  Sometimes the road leads through dark places/Sometimes the darkness is your friend”  And sometimes, a friend of a friend can hold your hand along the way.

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Paul Witmer, Co-Director of PrairieFire, is ordained in the United Church of Christ. Paul has served as a pastor for more than 30 years in rural and suburban settings, including a new church start in the 90s here in Iowa. He has extensive experience teaching contemplative practices, leading retreats, and working with folks in twelve-step recovery.

A trained Spiritual Director, Paul also works with many in developing deep listening skills and growing on the spiritual journey, which has included many years of teaching and leading with the PrairieFire program. As an artist and musician, Paul is especially drawn to the arts as creative expression and experience of the Divine.

Paul currently serves as the lead pastor for Women at the Well, a prison congregation of the United Methodist Church at the Iowa women’s prison in Mitchellville, Iowa. Paul is a graduate of Southwestern University (Georgetown, TX) and Eden Seminary (St. Louis, MO). He resides with his wife in Urbandale, and between them they have five grown children and four grandchildren.