 Hey, friends, welcome to behind the scenes divine intimacy radio. I'm excited to talk to I don't know couple of women who are changing the world, which is really exciting for me and have been friends and cohorts in this spiritual battle for a long time. Yes, for a long long time. Yeah, so we're going to have a great show today about spiritual direction and the problems in spiritual direction. So, you know, so many of you out there, I know who are devout like, do I need a director? You know, what is it? How does it all work? And so we'll talk about that and talk about some of the common problems that you might see. So some of you might have a director and realize that there are some issues that need to be addressed or whatever. So we're, we're having two ladies on who are been doing this for a long, long time. They've been practicing and working in this field since since before we were married. 2005. Oh, yeah. Well, they were. Yes. Yeah, I mean, they were in school at that time. But anyway, let's get rolling. All right, let's get rolling. Okay, let's see. Nine o'clock so we can get rolling before we jump in, though. Do you want to tell folks about the Avalos Summit real quick? Yes. Okay. You don't want to miss this. Our 2023 Avalos Summit. The theme this year is the theme, the Marian mystery and the triumph of the Immaculate Heart. The speakers are amazing. The venue is amazing. It's at the shrine of the most blessed sacrament in Hansville, Alabama. The dates are October 13 through the 15th. Check out all the details at spiritualdirection.com forward slash events and all of our upcoming events including our Divine Intimacy and Marriage Retreats. Check that out. You're not going to want to miss it. Yeah, great. And Jordan, just can I ask the ladies a quick question? Can they hear me right now? What I want to know is, do you have time to do, what's your time cut off? We kept it open. Oh, perfect. All right. Very good. All right. Mr. Jordan, you want to, oh, we're already live so we might as well. Okay. Now, right. So let's start the normal show. On your mark, get set, go. This is Dan and Stephanie Burke. Welcome to Divine Intimacy Radio, your radio haven of rest. Your hermitage of the heart. Your monastery of the mind where we lift our hearts and minds to heaven to draw upon the wisdom of the saints to help us to navigate this difficult tumult that is called life. And today we have some very good friends that I can't believe they've never been on the show before. Makes no sense to me. But recently it was like I said, hey, they need to be on the show. We need to talk about this. So, Stephanie, why don't you tell our listeners about our guests? Okay. So two dear friends, Tisa Fleming. She didn't put her last name on here. I had to think about that. Tisa Fleming, she is married, mother of six, grandmother of 14 and a part time attorney. She attended Catholic schools until college. Jeanette Barbican is single recently retired from nursing and she holds advanced degrees in religious studies, nursing and counseling. They both were trained as spiritual directors at the Cynical of Our Lady of Divine Providence from 2005 through 2007. So they finished the year you and I got married. There you go. Together they founded the Heart of Christ and began training spiritual directors in 2013 and have since trained over 160 directors and counting. So welcome, Tisa and Jeanette. Hi down. Hi, Stephanie. It's great to have you guys with us. I'll say before we jump in the name of their spiritual direction school and we'll say this many times is Heart of Christ spiritual direction school. And we they have our highest endorsement and we work together a lot. We have a deep relationship with the Abel Institute and Heart of Christ and they are our go to school. Now there are other good schools out there. They both graduated from a good school, Our Lady of Divine Providence and we've been really blessed to watch other faithful and holy schools surface and we support them. But Heart of Christ is more deeply kind of intertwined with all that we do because we're very much one in heart and mind with how Tisa and Jeanette approach spiritual direction. So as we jump in, ladies, maybe be good place to start. What is exactly is spiritual direction? Well, spiritual direction in its simplest description might just be simply walking with somebody else, helping guide them, helping them see what they can't see in their own walk toward the Lord, helping them become holy. Helping them to become holy and holiness means coming to union with God. That's right. Union of heart, mind, will, all of that. So the director is in charge of all this, right? The director is the most important person in the in the relationship to me. Absolutely. I understand that the director is the Holy Spirit. Right, right. That was a good shift. So the answer is no, if you were thinking it's the human, but right. So explain that a little bit. Why is, I mean, is the director the boss of the whole thing or the servant of the whole thing? How does that work? Well, the director is more like a facilitator. Some people have described it as like being the midwife. You know, when we're interviewing people who come into the program, she often talks to them, tells them about how we approach training them. And it really relates to how we approach spiritual direction as well. Do you want to explain that? So that what we try to do in our program is to discern what the Lord has put into the mind and heart of this person and the desires that are from him and help cultivate and develop and form that so that then they can go into the field and become very good spiritual directors and be and do likewise to look into the soul of the person in mind and heart of a directee and see what is God doing here and how can I support and follow and encourage that and facilitate that growth. Very good. Well, so I think that gives us a good foundation. So spiritual director, if I could summarize as a relationship between a trained director, someone called the spiritual direction, the directee, which is the person that's being helped and the Holy Spirit. The director is the servant of the directee and the Holy Spirit, right? And correct me, they're the servant to help the directee understand where God is leading them. Is that a good summary? Yes. Well, God is doing how to listen and how to discern the spirit of God. Very good. Very good. So you want to hit the hit. I mean, our topic today, I mean, is is about common problems with spiritual direction. Sure. Do you have? I mean, what are your thoughts? Do you know what I'm curious? I'm going to ask you this question that I'm going to ask them. What do you what do you think are the most common Stephanie problems with spiritual direction? The Stephanie problems. The Stephanie problems. Any problems? Well, you can just do a full stop right there. Right. Stephanie is a problem. Stephanie is a problem. Yeah. But what what because you've been directing for a long time. You've been to the heart of Christ and also to Lance Terry as well. What do you think are maybe the top one or two problems that you've seen in spiritual direction? Well, I would say the number one, the number one thing that I think is the most important is we're kind of making us an assumption that the director is praying. So you have to form them in that. But there is a the single most important thing that needs to be happening is that the director needs to be under direction themselves and they need to be praying. They have to have a deep well of prayer in order to be able to draw near to someone to listen to see what the work of the Holy Spirit is. If so, you know, I liken it to, you know, if you know anything about people who deal with money to figure out if there's counterfeit money, what they do is they handle the real thing over and over and over again so that when they touch a counterfeit bill, you know that it's counterfeit almost by touch or almost by sight because they're so familiar with the real thing. And so when we have a deep relationship with the Lord as in a director, then when we come to have that conversation with our director, we're accustomed to the voice, the movements, we recognize the Lord. It's a little bit like John in the boat saying to Peter, it's the Lord. So we want to follow the Lord where he's leading. We want to follow what he's doing. But we have to know him in order to recognize him. And so I think that's, you know, and we'll probably get into how do you find a director? How do you interview and all that? But that's one thing that's super important is to know to have a deep well of prayer to work through. So why don't we just start on the side of the directee? So what are some errors on the part of the directee that we as all of us are directees? Because all of I know that for a fact that all of us have spiritual directors. So what do we need to do to avoid? What do we need to avoid and what should others avoid when they start to be placed themselves into spiritual direction? Well, probably one of the first things to look at is having a realistic understanding of what spiritual direction is. Because a lot of people come looking for a spiritual director without even really knowing what it is. It's just like the next thing to do. Or I heard so and so doing it. So it sounds really great. So I'm going to do it. And they come with goodwill, but with wrong expectations. So they might come expecting their director to be a guru and teach them and be the one who's going to educate them. And that is a piece of spiritual direction, but that's not the primary one. Or they might come looking for counseling. We find that a lot. They think they're going to solve our problems. And God does use spiritual direction to solve problems, but that is not our focus. And we work really hard with our students to not become problem solvers. Do you want to jump in with me? I received that, so let me just let me keep going. Okay. It'll come back. So the biggest issue is just coming with the right expectations of what actually is supposed to be happening with a spiritual director. Right. What they're looking for in that relationship. And that is one of the questions we ask people when they ask us to find them a director is what are you looking for in spiritual direction? Right. So that we don't get, you know, because sometimes we get people and say, no, that's really, we can't help you there. That's, that's, you need a counselor. You don't need a director. Yeah. And I think this isn't about your book necessarily, but I think that's why you wrote navigating the interior life was to understand what is this idea of spiritual direction. Cause you had started, you were in spiritual direction. I was in spiritual direction. We both had priest as a spiritual director at that time. Yeah. And, and like, what is this? How do I get the most out of it? How do I properly dispose myself? How do I come with the right perspective? How do I prepare? And what should I expect from the director? Right. So I think part of it is just an understanding. And I liked the Tisa mentioned some people just see it as the next thing to do, but we really need to, I think it's important to discern that and to kind of wait on the Lord. Because when he wants you to have a director, he's going to make it pretty darn obvious. It's like you kind of reach a roadblock. You've been praying. You've been being persistent, but I need more. I need somebody to help me navigate all this stuff that's happening in my prayer and in my heart, in my mind, so that I stay on the right path and I grow in virtue. Great. You can pick up navigating the interior life out on spiritualdirection.com shop EWTN's religious catalog. But we're about a minute or so away from the break. So maybe we could just start with this question and we'll have to pause and then come back after the break. But what are some of the errors that directors make in spiritual direction? What are some of the most common errors? What's it one right now before the break? What's on the top of your list? Well, one is that they're not praying themselves. And I think you were alluding to that, Stephanie, earlier a few moments ago, that directors need to maintain their own spiritual life and their prayer life and their growth and development in the art as well as in the relationship that they have with the Lord. And if they don't, they're just giving, you know, just accolades. Nothing is really happening. The words can be there, but they'll be empty. So we really need to continue to grow in our own spiritual life in order to be able to help others grow in theirs. All right. So we're with Tisa Fleming and Jeanette Barbakine. They're the founders of the Heart of Christ spiritual direction school. You can find them at heartofchristspiritualdirection.com. And when we get back from the break, we're going to continue our conversation about what are the most common errors that directors make in spiritual direction. The first one we mentioned is not praying themselves, which is kind of, I can't, I, that doesn't really, it sort of wrecks my brain. It does, but it happens. And I mean, it's like, okay, well, you know, how is that possible? Yeah. So when we get back from the break, we'll continue the conversation. All right. So we're 1236. So we're fine. You want to tell folks about the gift of the Holy Spirit? You don't have to read the whole thing obviously, but. Okay. For those that would like to grow in their knowledge and in this mysticogy that's deepening of the understanding of the Lord and this beautiful life that he's leading us along, there is a course called gift of the Holy Spirit and the divine indwelling. Just even saying that title stirs in me. It makes you happy. It makes me happy. So it's at avala, avala-institute.org. It'll be taught by Dr. Pinto, one of our beloved professors. It's a graduate level. It starts Mondays, September 11th. Sorry, Monday, September 11th. So check it all out at avala-institute.org. Again, gift of the Holy Spirit and the divine indwelling. There you go. So let's head back in and your markets that go. Welcome back. This is Dan Stephanie Burke with Divine Intimacy Radio. We're talking to Tisa Fleming and Jeanette Barbican, the founders of the Heart of Christ Spiritual Direction School, a school that we endorse 157%, which is no matter what, better than an A. So we're totally behind what they're doing. And we're very excited to join together with them in the avala-institute to promote this incredibly important gift and service to the church. So before the break, we were talking about errors that spiritual directors make. You know what, Tisa and Jeanette, I just don't get how that could be possible, right? So how is it possible that a director wouldn't be praying? Because if you're not talking to Jesus and you don't have intimate, you know, relationship with the Lord, which means you can't be following Him all that well, how would you ever conceive of trying to help somebody else? Exactly. Yeah, it's pretty simple. Yeah. But then if you look at the church and look at people who are in third orders, look at people who are committed communities, the people who really love the Lord and they really think that they're following the Lord and how many of them are doing their mental prayer with consistency and love every day. Right. How many of them fall away and don't even realize they're doing it because they're too busy working for the Lord. Right, right. Our pastor used to tell a story. He still tells it sometimes about how one point in his life where the Lord was, he had so many different things that got put on his shoulders, got so busy, and one time in prayer the Lord said to him, you used to be my friend, now you just work for me. Wow. Wow. And he was pierced to the heart and immediately changed many things. But that's how we are. Yeah, we drift away. No, it shouldn't happen, but it does all the time if you're not consistent. The atmosphere around us drives us in that direction. Away from it. If you're not vigilant, that is what will happen. Yeah, I see. I can't remember when I did it. It was either when I was writing, navigating the interior life or it was just some research I was doing for spiritualdirection.com. I started looking for spiritual direction schools on the Internet and I found a guy called himself a director and I'm just going to call him. I'm just curious, you know. And he was a Protestant guy. And I said, so can you help me with my prayer? Yes, of course. I can help you with your prayer. I said, well, how is your prayer life going? And he said, well, I'm still working that out. I thought, wow, and he has a shingle and everything, you know, putting himself out there. And he then just revealed to me that he didn't really have a deep prayer life and he didn't really, you know, and so I thought, so how, I didn't say it because I wasn't, you know, trying to be mean, but yeah, I mean, it's just, it's crazy to me that people would do that. So that's maybe a big one or a really big one. What's another error that directors make in spiritual direction? Directors or directives. I think at this point because, yeah. Yeah. Well, I think directors talk too much about themselves a little bit in direction sometimes. They tell too many stories. It becomes their, you know, their platform in a sense, but really we should be dying to ourselves and we should be getting ourselves out of the way so that we can listen for the Holy Spirit for the person that's sitting before us as a directee. Yeah. And I think directors get caught up in that sometimes. Yeah. Talk about themselves. Yeah. Absolutely. You know, I think it's a, it's a desire to kind of fill or to connect or to give examples to kind of inspire the other person. I think on the other side, there are directees that sometimes desire that. They may desire the relationship and they're almost uncomfortable being frank, just putting their life out there. I have found that sometimes my directees are a little, at the beginning are a little unnerved at how quiet I am. Cause I say, okay, well, you know, tell me what's going on. Tell me how your prayer is, you know, and I'm sitting there and it's like, Oh. I don't know what to say. I don't know where to go. How do I do this? But so it's, and of course you guide the person, but I think that's just really part of the thing is to get as directees, not only directors to get out of the way and listen to be extraordinary listeners, but also for directees to come prepared, to come prepared, to come and say, this is how my prayer is going. These are how my sacraments are going. This is what I'm struggling. These are where the movements are. I think the Lord, you know, this happened in my scripture or whatever my study. And to be, you know, Frank, there's a quote that Jesus spoke to Faustina that's in the diary. And I looked at it to see if I could bring it up and I don't have it. But he said, he said to Faustina, be careful that you are absolutely Frank with your spiritual director. He said, I don't give spiritual directors to everybody and I've given special lights to this director for your soul as to all souls. So if you're not Frank, if you're not coming basically prepared and I'm, you know, I'm, what do you call it? Then I'll just take him away. And so I think we have to understand that this is sacred ground that we're dealing with, the sacred ground of the heart, the soul of an individual. We need to approach it as directors in that capacity. And then the directee themselves need to approach it with this importance of, I'm going to bring myself and be vulnerable and put this here and we're going to see what the Lord's doing, you know, in trust and in confidence. Vulnerability is very important. Yeah. So that if people aren't transparent, we can only work with what we're given. And if they're not transparent and totally open, St. Teresa talks about that of Jesus, you know, to be totally open with your spiritual director because we could be misguiding them in some way, small as it may be if they're not open. Sometimes I, you know, I heard one person who has their own program in Pennsylvania say, sometimes he asks the director, what don't you want to tell me? Let's start there. That's great. I like that. It's very, it's very, it works. Yeah. No, it absolutely works. And what's funny, I love the way, I love the way that's put. I had a direct D who would tell me a bunch of little things and then the big one would happen at the last five minutes. And it's like, wait, wait. So next time we come because it was a pattern. I said, you need to flip your list upside down and start with the bottom one because that's always the one that you're like kind of afraid to throw out there. I've heard that from priests like in confession too. Yeah. I, you know, I, I, I kicked a bunny and I, I kind of got mad at somebody and murdered someone. And then I, you know, I didn't get the, I had the wrong, you know, they hide the big things in the middle of all the little things that have to deal with it. That's hilarious. You know, one thing I think you guys do really well that I want to speak to. And then just have you reflect on it. I think that it's an exceptional competence of your approach and heart of Christ is, I think one of the biggest problems with people who think, well, I should be a director. Like I had a guy once, I won't say who it was, but I, I, I'd like to be a director. He told me, how do I become a director? I said, would you have a direct, you have, you have one? No, but I, I'm just pretty good at organizing things. And, you know, my life's, you know, I'm just, I really just, you know, I'm great at it. You know, whatever I do, it works out pretty well. And I'm thinking, wow, you should not be a director. Well, but to me, the fixer is like a huge problem. And, and you guys work pretty hard to, to help people to overcome that instinct. Talk about that a bit. Well, we do, we work at, cause it's, it is also true that many people that are drawn to spiritual direction training, they have a heart of compassion and want to help people. Yeah. So it comes naturally to try to fix the problems that come up. But what we try to get them to do, instead of trying to fix the problem is trying to reflect back to the person, what they're hearing about it, and get them to connect it with the Lord. In other words, it's all right with us if they bring up their problems they're having in their marriage, problems they're having it in their work, problems they're having with their kids, but we're not going to try to solve that problem. We're going to try to solve. So what's the Lord telling you in this? How is using this to help you grow closer to him? How is he using this for your holiness? That's right. So we try to get them to redirect that compassion to helping them see what the Lord is doing. Yeah, that's absolutely right. So it sounds like, and you correct me, so I'm just tossing this out there and you tell me, it sounds like anybody can be trained to be a director, or you have to have the charism. Like where are you in that kind of spectrum? Tell me about is there a charism of spiritual direction? Does it play a part? Or can anybody basically be trained in time to become one? I don't think it's a matter of trained in time. I don't think we can necessarily tell from the beginning who has the charism or who's being called into it. It's more like as they try to walk it out and as they open themselves to us and allow us to form them, we begin to see or not see where this is going. And it is true that sometimes we have people come and it just isn't working. This isn't where the God wants them. And we talk about it and they go find something else. Is there actually a charism of spiritual direction or are there charisms or gifts that people tend to have like discernment of spirits or just have particular kinds of gifts of the Holy Spirit that give them insights into a soul? Or is there a charism that we would call the charism of spiritual direction? I've never thought about it that way. We've got the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit will call out of us what He wants us to do in any given situation. So in some sense we all have the capacity if we have the Holy Spirit. That's kind of what I was getting at. And we're baptized and confirmed we have the Holy Spirit. Yes, it's in there. What's God going to call out of us and in what setting and in what way and are we docile to that? That's really what it comes down to. I think by virtue of our baptism and our calling as Christians we're all called to help other people to grow toward the Lord in some way or another. There's more basic ways that we help them. Hey, let's go to Mass or evangelization or whatever. And then there's more in-depth ways like with spiritual direction which requires training. But I just want to tell everybody if you think you might have a call especially guys. Women are so much more open naturally than guys and we really want to encourage men, deacons out there. Priests have gone through this program. Yeah, to check out Heart of Christ and to do that all you have to do is go to heartofchristspiritualdirection.com heartofchristspiritualdirection.com and you will find answers to questions. You can talk to Tisa and Jeanette if you're wondering if you might be suitable for the program or find out details of the program. And we're so grateful for all the good work you guys are doing in the church and helping people to become holy. And thank you for joining us today on Divine Intimacy Radio. It's a pleasure. Thank you. Awesome. Until next time, may the God of peace make you perfect in holiness. May he preserve you whole and entire spirit, soul and body irreproachable at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.