The Current
We're seeking inspiration toward deeper discipleship through conversations with people working toward justice, cultivating deep spiritual practices, forming community and connection in significant ways, and helping one another heal from trauma. As we follow Christ to the margins of society, to the wounded and grieving, and into the hard work of peacemaking, we find that we are not alone on this journey. Join us to resist despair, and to regain some hope in the world, in the church, and in Christ.
Most weeks, Pastor Chris Nafis is talking with scholars and practitioners who are inspiring and faithful, and some weeks Pastor Chris is engaging with the book of Acts. Each week, we find the Spirit calling us deeper into the death and resurrection of Jesus, into a life with God, and into loving one another well.
This is a ministry of Living Water Church of the Nazarene, which gathers in San Diego's East Village, the epicenter of homelessness in this city. We are committed to meaningful worship, community formation, and service. Join us sometime :)
The Current
The Art of Accompaniment with Dr. Rebecca Laird
Dr. Rebecca Laird takes us on a journey through spiritual formation, direction, and the enduring legacy of Henri Nouwen in this deeply personal conversation. Drawing from her years as Dean of the School of Theology and Christian Ministry at Point Loma Nazarene University, alongside decades in pastoral ministry and spiritual direction, Dr. Laird illuminates the pathways to a more meaningful spiritual life.
"Spirituality is usually about lived theology," she explains, distinguishing between abstract theological concepts and the concrete reality of how faith manifests in our daily existence. Through practices like the Prayer of Examen – taking time to notice where we experienced connection and disconnection throughout our day – we begin to recognize patterns and make intentional choices that invite greater meaning into our lives.
The conversation explores Henri Nouwen's remarkable journey from academic prominence at Yale and Harvard to finding his true home at L'Arche, a community centered around people with disabilities. Dr. Laird shares personal memories of Nouwen, revealing how his ability to articulate "the contours of the heart" created profound connections with readers from vastly different backgrounds through his unique pastoral writing style.
At the core of spiritual direction is the practice of accompaniment – walking alongside another person while helping them recognize what God might be doing that they're too close to see themselves. This requires genuine curiosity about people and attention to the "persistent questions" we all wrestle with: Who am I? Where do I belong? How can I serve? What is prayer?
For those seeking a more meaningful spiritual path, Dr. Laird emphasizes three essential disciplines: engagement with community, connection to scripture, and practices of the heart. "If you're seeking discernment but you're not doing those things," she cautions, "it's like saying you want to get stronger but have an aversion to lifting weights."
The conversation concludes with powerful reflections on building authentic community across socioeconomic divisions, moving beyond one-way service relationships toward mutual growth and dignity – a journey that begins when people discover they have meaningful gifts to share, regardless of their circumstances.
Hi and welcome back to the Current. This is Pastor Chris Nafis of Living Water Church and today I am delighted to have joining me on the show Dr Rebecca Laird, who is the Dean of the School of Theology and Christian Ministry here at Point Loma Nazarene University, where we're recording this episode. She has also been the spiritual director, done a lot of work in pastoral ministry, lived in community, been active in marginalized communities and just a generally wonderful and amazing person and pastor and professor. We had a great conversation about Henry Allen, about spirituality and spiritual direction, wisdom, all sorts of things. I hope you'll enjoy this conversation as much as I enjoyed having it here. It is All right. Well, dr Laird, thank you so much for giving me a little bit of your time and being willing to just kind of invest in our community and in the listeners of this with some of your expertise and your experience and your wisdom. So thanks for joining me.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:Wow, my pleasure.
Chris Nafis:Thank you for asking yeah, not everybody knows. I mean, you're a very famous person, obviously, but not everyone knows who you are. Could you kind of introduce yourself a little bit for us and just tell us your background and what kind of work you do, and that kind of thing? Sure.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:You make me laugh. My world is a world that's connected to commitments, to spiritual formation, urban ministry, education, and so I am at the end of my formal career as the Dean of the School of Theology and Christian Ministry and I am Professor of Christian Ministry and Practice, so I've spent years in pastoral ministry. Before that I worked in resources, in books, in spirituality publications, and so my whole career over the course of 40-some years has been to help people grow deeper in their faith, and sometimes that's taken an educational route and sometimes that's taken a resource route or a ministry route, but it seems to me to be all of a piece.
Chris Nafis:Okay, yeah, and so I've known I actually haven't taken a class with you or anything.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:I've helped, kind of lecture in some of your classes you have. Thank you for that.
Chris Nafis:I've sat in on one of your workshops on spiritual direction, which was really interesting, and so I just kind of know your work, mostly through other people being involved in student ministries. I know some of your pastoral history and then I know you're doing this deep spiritual direction work and so you just have all these different avenues that you're investing in people, right.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:Yes, yes, I have felt like a commitment to and a call to ministry was to say yes to being about the gospel wherever I ended up. So I've worked in a variety of types of churches, both suburban and very, very urban, and then I've been in educational spaces, both in church education, church-based education or formation, and in higher ed. So the institutions change, but the core commitments have not changed that much.
Chris Nafis:Yeah, and you're one of those people. You know, there's like certain people that everybody, every time they say their name, everyone's like oh, they're so amazing, they're so wonderful. And like, you're one of those people that anytime I hear. Dr Laird, everybody's like, oh man, she's the best, we love her and she's been so helpful in my life. And you know, it's just, you're just one of those like people that just I don't know invest so deeply in others, and so I appreciate your ministry.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:I will say that I find people interesting, and when you're curious about people and are interested in seeing where's the spark the spark of calling, or the spark of love or the pain it's always a good thing to be in conversation with people.
Chris Nafis:Yeah.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:So that makes me happy, and I'm glad when that makes other people happy too.
Chris Nafis:Yeah, for sure well, and maybe that's a good place to start with talking about like kind of spirituality and spiritual direction, because you know, maybe that's the entry point for sometimes, like so, when you're thinking of investing in a person, like either in a spiritual direction sense or a student that you're mentoring, or kind of in investing in along the way, you know, like how, what's your approach? Like what are you looking for, what are you looking to ask, to instill? You know, those kinds of things, sure, sure.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:I think my own awakening post-college, when I was taking early classes in seminary. I was working full-time in a publishing firm, so I took one class at a time. And I remember taking a class on the history of Christian spirituality and they assigned us to read Elrod of Riveau from the 12th century. All about spiritual friendship, spiritual direction. I had never heard the term before and it was like what is that? Where can I get some of that? Did they do that in my tradition and if so, what's that look like? And I think that was coupled with an even earlier understanding which I think most people have, which is they want to know more about themselves, about God.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:Where do I find meaning? Where do I go when I'm stuck? Can God be in the hard things as well as the good things and much of church life? Growing up as I did in the church, I knew God was everywhere in sort of an abstract kind of way. But to know that, where do I find God or the holy? In the mundane details of my life or in the things that seem like total disasters? Right, I didn't know.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:I kind of thought that was true, but I didn't know where to go with that, and I think the quest for to go with that, and I think the quest for spirituality is often that how do I make sense of my life? Where do I connect with God? Where do I find meaning? And so I'm always interested in those questions and I think when I'm teaching I try to bring questions and ask people to live into them, and that's where God takes over right. You don't have to ask people to go a certain place. It's an encounter with those sort of existential questions, because we all have some of them, and spirituality is that place where we allow for that, within a framework of trusting that we're not just navel gazing or sorting out ourselves psychologically that there's actually something bigger than that going on. You know that there is a God, that there is intention in the world, even when it seems like proof is not there.
Chris Nafis:Yeah Well, especially being here. So we're recording this at Point Loma Nazarene University where, you know, in the Wesley center, and this is a place of theological education and those sorts of things. I guess what strikes me is, I feel like even in my own work, my emphasis tends to be more on theology and doctrine and big ideas and calling and those kinds of things, and I feel like those don't necessarily rub up against spirituality in a bad way at all. In many ways they can become enmeshed, but they can also be very separate, right, and so our personal spiritual journeys can sometimes feel detached from the abstract ideas that we're talking about in sermons or in church or in Bible study or in taking a theology class. I don't know, would you distinguish spirituality from like theology? You know what I mean. I don't know if I'm getting at the question I'm looking for.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:Sure, there's certainly a speculative and abstract way of doing theology, and we often do that to former minds, and that's good. Spirituality is usually a little bit more about lived theology. How does that abstract idea actually get concretized? How does it get lived out in my own world? And if there's real disconnects between the ideal of what I've been wrestling with, sort of intellectually, and the reality of my life in that tension is often where spirituality comes in, and it's again not just thinking, it's also sometimes learning how to practice or live in your world in a way that brings some more congruence between what you say, you believe intellectually and the way you live your life. So there's a moral dimension to it as well as a practicality.
Chris Nafis:Yeah, yes, I mean this may be a really broad question, but what does it mean to live a meaningful spiritual life, like a reflective life, that is, taking those kind of spiritual questions seriously in a way that's enriching life? Is that too big of a question?
Dr. Rebecca Laird:to question? I don't think so. I guess what comes to my mind is just simply an illustration, to say sort of a simple practice that's been done by Jesuits and others for a really long time. Is the prayer of examine right To stop at the end of every day, look back over 24 hours or so and say where did I find love and goodness and consolation and meaning and where did I find the disconnects and where did I feel like I was unhooked from the life source?
Dr. Rebecca Laird:Questions like that, living a life that asks that kind of reflective musing at the end of the day, that's very prayerful and Meaningful Life, is more rooted in that kind of reality of saying, oh, I keep finding that every day when I see the ocean, when I'm walking from here to there, I feel a little bit revived and I feel like you know it gives me energy for the rest of the day.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:You notice that then you lengthen that gazing time from just walking fast from your car to actually saying this is me connecting with the beauty of nature all around me and that's a part of how I find meaning. And then, if you find also places which, oh, every time I don't look at the ocean or I'm too cranky or I haven't eaten or whatever. I find that I get snappy with people and I don't like to do that, so I keep doing that. So how do I infuse my life with the kind of choices that I do have control over? Because there's a lot we don't have control over choices that I do have control over, because there's a lot we don't have control over.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:But when we do pay attention to the mindful ways of living, then all of a sudden the meaning part isn't just sort of waiting for some big, huge, transcendent moment where it's like my life has meaning because, blah, you know big thing, it's like no, my life has meaning because every day I get to walk in beauty. My day has meaning because when I take care of myself, I can receive that person at three o'clock in the afternoon with happiness and joy and maybe make a connection rather than, you know, just getting cynical and dismissive because I'm open to the opportunity of the day and the moment. So I think meaning is found in looking certainly at you know what's it all about? Questions, but also being very aware of how do I choose to live this day, based on who I am, not some sort of model of what I think I should be, but with the hope of growing into the fullness of who we are.
Chris Nafis:Yeah, man, and I can see how, like so, we've been doing not the exam, but a similar morning prayer practice that we've kind of encouraged our church folks to do. I don't know how many people are actually doing it, but our family's been trying to do it imperfectly. But in the morning we're kind of thinking back on the day before and looking back at, like, well, what wisdom can I learn from my experiences yesterday and where do I need to ask for forgiveness and where do I need to set my intention for today? What am I looking to do today? And you can see how that practice over time can help you to be more present in your days. It can help you plan better for the meaningful practices that are going to give you life, all the things that you're saying. You can see how just having that moment of check-in can actually guide your whole life if you let it Right. And that's a big uh, a big part of sort of being spiritually aware of, like, how you're doing and where you are. Um, yeah, I want to ask.
Chris Nafis:So one of the it's helpful in these conversations I've found to have some kind of framing work, and so the thing that I pitched to you when I asked you to come on here was to talk a little bit about Henry Nowen, because I know you've worked with him some and you've edited books or helped edit books that are written in his name and you've written forewords and those kinds of things. So can you I mean, not everybody knows who Henry Nouwen is Our church, the Watershed Gathering at our church, the church board just finished, or we're about to finish, one of his books on living a spiritual life it's called Life of the Beloved Spiritual being in a Secular World, which is really good. His writing is so just, graceful and simple but deep at the same time. I guess I'm doing what I'm going to ask you to do. Could you kind of introduce Henry Nouwen a little bit, tell us who he is and what his writing has been?
Dr. Rebecca Laird:Sure, sure, classic contemplative spirituality together with the burgeoning world of psychology and pastoral theology. So he came from the Netherlands to first the Manninger Clinic and then Notre Dame to do this sort of really new work of trying to express in modern language the connections between you know, the call to connection with one another and the issues of vulnerability and intimacy. So he was bringing two language systems, if you will, that are about pursuing meaning, together. He called himself a hyphenated priest, psychologist right, because he, in being the person he was called to be, didn't really fit tidily in either category, which led to, I think, the beauty of his writing, because he wanted to be pastoral, he didn't want to be clinical.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:When he wrote his first books they were more clinical and it was only when he started writing pastorally that people began to say what you're saying and this is a quote from somebody that I heard say you're basically writing the contours of my heart, how did you know? And only when he wrote from a personal and pastoral perspective did he connect with his readers. And he really did. And so, being early in pastoral theology in a way that was very psychologically astute, not seeing them as completely separate, he was able to weave together the Christian spiritual tradition and self-reflection in a way that's been very meaningful to many people. That led him to an appointment at Yale where he was for many years very productive years. Then he went on to Harvard and so he'd reached in writing in his second language. I always want to say he's writing in his second language, I didn't even know that.
Chris Nafis:I don't think I knew that because he's such a good writer. Oh, he's amazing, yeah.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:He was writing in his second language, that he was very productive and wrote all these beautiful books. But he got to Harvard sort of the pinnacle of the academic arena in the US and in many places in the world and he found himself very lonely. He said there's a lot of people here but nobody wants to pray with me. Everyone wants to debate. Some of his theological colleagues looked down on him and his classes because he was filling these big classrooms to overflowing because people wanted to talk about prayer. And they're going. You're giving grades for people in prayer, right?
Dr. Rebecca Laird:At Harvard Elite intellectual institution, and so it was a place that didn't feel like home and that really set him on a journey of saying where do I belong next? And I think this is where many of us that would resonate with words around the downward path or, you know, solidarity with under-resourced peoples or whatever. It's where Henry kind of comes into the story, because he thought he would probably move to South America, to Peru or something, and he went and tried to live among the poor and wrote some beautiful books. But somebody helped him recognize his job wasn't to live among the poor but to announce and give voice to those who didn't have voice. And so he began writing differently and eventually it ended that he received a call to come be a part of a L'Arche community or community that centers the disabled, and then he spent the last 10 years of his life at a large community in Canada.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:I met him when I was a young 20-something. I was an editor at Harper Row Publishing, which has now got other names Harper, san Francisco, etc. But it was a mainstream religious publisher. So I got the amazing education of working with all sorts of. So I got the amazing education of working with all sorts of extraordinary thinkers and writers as the person who either photocopied or helped with the files or, you know, worked with the copy editors or managed the kind of processes. But Henry was one of the authors who came through. So I got to know him and worked on some study guides and various things.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:Then Simultaneously my husband, who went to Yale, was a student of his during his Yale years and so he knew him too, and so Henry was somebody we met in common separately but had in common.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:So Henry would come to San Francisco at our little urban church that my husband was pastoring and I like to say he would preach at St Mary's and they'd give him a $5,000 honorarium and fill the place and then he'd come over to us and hand the check over and have dinner with our homeless folks, and that tells you a lot about who he was, and he was very interested in our ministry at the time and so we stayed in touch with him and he died in 1996, so it's been quite a long time now.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:But he was on sabbatical in New Jersey where we were living at the time. So I actually did the last interview with him for a little publication I was working on and we heard that he had died just days after, so I could still hear his voice in my head. And not long after that I went to a spiritual director's training program and people had heard that I knew Henry Nowlin because we were talking about him in light of his death. And all these people came and told me stories like the one I remember so distinctly was a woman saying she'd really struggled with infertility and through that journey Henry was the only person through his writing that could get to her, could give her consolation, and I thought what's this Catholic priest?
Dr. Rebecca Laird:who was never married and didn't have any kids and doesn't know anything about your life.
Chris Nafis:What was it?
Dr. Rebecca Laird:that made him sort of her spiritual director. Out of that came sort of the sense of call, I would say, to put together the first book of Henry Nowen's writings on spiritual direction from a class that he taught at Yale in spiritual direction that my husband, the pack rat, still had his notes from.
Chris Nafis:He still had all his notes and you guys pulled them out and were able to consolidate some of his writing on spiritual direction specifically.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:Yes, and that was the first book and we worked with the Henry Nowen Archives they're at the University of Toronto and so, with the archivist pulling together articles he'd written and various kinds of things, as my husband likes to say, we helped Henry write a few more books than he would have if he had enough time.
Chris Nafis:What a gift to the world to have more Henry Nowen. I mean he wrote a lot of books.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:He wrote 40. He wrote 40.
Chris Nafis:Well, what was it for the, for the woman, what was it that was so significant in her spiritual?
Dr. Rebecca Laird:well, I just think that, like the comment that I I referred to by somebody else, it's like he knew the contours of suffering and vulnerability and I think for this woman that experience was so isolating and people didn't understand or she didn't have people to talk to. That somebody who speaks to vulnerability and the uh, he speaks a lot to the temptation to self-rejection, and so I think it was that kind of um humanity. I mean, that's the thing, henry, I was known to say that he had learned that what's the most personal is actually the most universal, not in the particular details, but in the existential connection.
Chris Nafis:Yeah, which is how a Catholic priest, male Catholic priest, can connect with someone struggling with infertility, probably a totally different age than him. Oh, absolutely, absolutely Pretty absolutely Absolutely.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:Pretty much every woman in her twenties and he would have been a man in his late sixties if he had lived Right and I was like what's the connection? And it is that touch of being really connected to your humanity which he was.
Chris Nafis:And if you read him like you really can feel that in the writing like you can. He kind of understands loneliness, you know, which is something that I think almost everybody deals with in today's age. Maybe people have always dealt with loneliness, I don't know. It seems like it's it's a bigger burden on contemporary people than it has been in the past and he just knows those kind of spiritual wrestlings and wrestling with kind of faith and faithfulness and calling and finding meaning in the little things and being present, and just all those things are such universal experiences and he just brings them out so concisely and so beautifully that when you read them you feel like he, like you said, you feel like he's in your head or something.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:Yeah, he started looking over your shoulder. He knows what your life is like.
Chris Nafis:Yeah, so what have you taken away as, like, a spiritual director or someone who's kind of your work is to do the same kind of pastoral work that he's doing in his books? And you're a writer too, but how do you like? What do you take away from that? What did he teach you?
Dr. Rebecca Laird:I think two of the things that I really take away from Henry. One is when he did spiritual direction, it was mostly through writing. He did some at the large community and daybreak through what they called spiritual accompaniment, and so I love that word, that you're just really accompanying somebody and helping them as they sit in the presence of God to recognize what God may be doing, but they're too close to see it Right. And so you join people on this human journey and you get to kind of be the scout to pay attention to what others are bringing. They're the ones walking the journey, but sometimes you need a little friendly distance, somebody else to help you see things. And so I think that's true of spiritual direction, direction writ large, but now and really had that sense of accompaniment.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:Um, you know, the few times I was with him one-on-one, there wasn't too many, it was usually between here or there, it was in groups. Uh, one time I remember being in a car with him and he was a terrible driver because he preferred to talk, not drive, and so I remember just being like look at at the. You know he was taking me at the train station. I was like, look at the road. But what I remember. He was so curious about me. I was a mother of two small kids, working part-time. My husband was a graduate school. There was nothing very interesting about me. He thought I was so interesting and I try to bring that to people because people are interesting and he brought that real. He saw people as gifts in his path, somebody to learn something from. So I think that enthusiasm for people comes from him.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:He also in the book that we wrote on spiritual direction from his writings he starts with sort of identifying persistent questions when do I belong? How can I be of service? Who is God to me? What is prayer? Questions that you kind of cycle through over and over again who am I? And I think it's been really helpful to have that in the back of my mind of saying what persistent question am I hearing from this person? What is it that they really seem to be wrestling with? Is this an identity thing? Is this a calling question? Because often we're thinking about a concrete decision to be made but there may be some bigger flow or bigger question that's at play, just because they're there in our lives. We need to serve, we need to use our gifts, we need to belong, we need to have some healing from our pain, and so I think having some awareness that everybody's got a persistent question or something, that's the big deal right now that being able to listen with people, for that is a part of the gift that he has offered.
Chris Nafis:Yeah, that's really helpful actually, and I'm taking this in for myself and my own pastoral work. You know, for those you know, so, like as a pastor, I'm like this is what I need to learn how to do better. You know, for many of the people that may be listening to this not sort of in that role necessarily, but are in their own spiritual journey, trying to figure out you know, how to make big decisions, or how to live a life where they're more present, or how to break a bad habit or many bad habits, or you know, or how to break a bad habit or many bad habits, or you know, apart from maybe just praying the exam and having those moments of check-in Like how would you suggest people go about fostering a more meaningful day-to-day spiritual life?
Dr. Rebecca Laird:Yeah, yeah, the core that Henry Nouwen would put forward is to say if you're going to really seek to discern, you need to be a part of a community. You've got to be engaged with the discipline of the church, which you would say is community Christian people. You have to be connected to the discipline of the book. You've got to read the book somehow and connect with the discipline of the heart. You've got to have some way of praying that. If you're seeking discernment but you're not doing those things, it's sort of like saying you want to get stronger but you have an aversion to lifting weights. Well, if you don't lift weights, then what are you going to do? Are you going to do push-ups? I don't want to do push-ups, I don't want anything. Well, you really don't want to get stronger than right, right. So there are some core practices and then, from that, questions of discernment. You know, he, there's a whole another book on discernment.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:so if you want that, that yeah, yeah, the book on discernment is sort of, um, that if you're attending to your uh you, you sort of accept the fact that god wishes to be known and wants to guide you. And so are you paying attention to the people on your path. What are people saying? Yeah, right, if you actually want to do something and you ask people for their feedback about what you're good at, or when they see you falling off the wagon and picking up habits that have been things you've been trying to break, what do they see? When do you do that? What are others noticing? You know they'll help you recognize your stresses or your your weak points or whatever.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:So what are people saying? And maybe, what are other people saying? Are you asking other people who've actually changed that habit? You know what. Are you listening to people in your path? Are you asking other people who've actually changed that habit? You know what. Are you listening to people in your path? Are you looking for some sort of magic solution that's only for you, because most of the time, we're less unique than we think.
Chris Nafis:Yeah, I mean, I feel like so many of us are just bent. We're so stubborn, we don't want to do the thing that everyone tells us to do. We want to find our own path. We want to do it differently and sometimes like getting over ourselves a bit and just doing the thing.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:That's right.
Chris Nafis:Yeah, yeah, go ahead.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:That's discerning people in your path, sort of what time is it both in your life? Is this a realistic time for you to do that thing Right? Sometimes people are like I want to. You know, run off and join the circus. And then he said you got three kids right. How many do you have? Three boys? Yeah. Maybe, if you tell me you want to run off and join the circus, I'll say what time is it in your life?
Dr. Rebecca Laird:Chris, I already live in the circus Dr Laird, so but to sort of say there are times in our lives and there are sometimes yearnings that will come to pass or there'll be a moment for that. But is it now? Is it too soon for that? So, paying attention to the time in your life, the people in your path, you know, some of those kinds of discernment questions really do help be a bit of a sorting hat. And it's not magic like the sorting hat is in Harry Potter. It's really discerning. Sorting because that's what really discerning is sorting with the love of God, to figure out what's the next step for me, Reminds me of.
Chris Nafis:we went through some of the wisdom literature a few years ago and I remember preaching on one of the passages in Proverbs where, you know, wisdom is personified and it's like wisdom is crying out to you from the street corners, it's calling after you all over the place.
Chris Nafis:But if you won't listen, you know, if you're not going to do the hard work of actually listening to the wisdom that's around you, from your experiences, from being reflective on what you've been through, from the people around you who want to speak life and wisdom into your life and kind of taking the time to engage in those practices. Yeah, like you said, it's like trying to get strong without working out. You know just probably not going to work.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:No, and I find that sometimes in spiritual direction, people will come back and keep asking the same kind of thing and sometimes they just have to keep talking to themselves until they actually hear themselves. But sometimes it's the role of the director is to say you keep asking the same question, but every time you commit to doing something, you don't take that step. What's that about? Yeah, right, because sometimes discernment isn't easy and sometimes the next steps that we take there'll be a sense of rightness. But that doesn't mean that it's not going to be without effort.
Chris Nafis:Yeah, yeah, cause sometimes the question is, what do I do? And sometimes, like you, know what you're supposed to do.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:What other support do you need? Or do you just are you ready for a gentle nudge? Yeah, yeah.
Chris Nafis:How do you know?
Chris Nafis:So I mean, this is a question I I'm trying to learn more for myself. You know, like I feel like today again I don't know if this is an issue for today or if this is an issue of all time but I feel like it's really hard to even talk to close friends about like hard things, to kind of be a little confrontational in seeing patterns that you think, like this person keeps telling me they're frustrated about this and I can see what they're doing and it's not working. But you know, it feels like we're always supposed to just be always encouraging one another and always kind of affirming one another, and I think there's something beautiful about being in someone's corner and always having their back. But sometimes you know, we have to be able to tell someone something hard that they don't want to hear. You know, I think that is probably the role of a spiritual director more than most. How do you do that, like, how do you do it gracefully and lovingly and how do you do it in a way that can be heard and not rejected?
Dr. Rebecca Laird:Yeah, yeah, I think that sometimes it's easier in a spiritual direction relationship than it is in a friendship, because people are intentionally coming to you for that. I tend to offer hard things with a little encouragement as well not be too blunt. But the folks I work with around here will say sometimes in the morning, if you've not had your coffee, it comes out really straight, really blunt, it's like whoa. So that can happen. But I think often you just sort of say we've talked around this and do you really want a direct response on this? And if they say yes and usually people do, because they've been coming to you to try to sort things out and then you say you may not like this, but I'm going to just tell it to you straight, I'm going to say it in as kind of a tone as I can.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:But I have to be really honest. I think most of the time people receive that as a good if there's a relationship of trust and usually that is you don't do that early on because you wouldn't know what to say early on. You have to know somebody for a while and they have to know that. If they don't hear it that way or they want to disregard what you say, that that's their privilege too, the person who's in spiritual direction or in any relationship. The agency belongs to them. People don't have to do what I think is right they don't, they don't, and sometimes they do much better.
Chris Nafis:Sometimes they override you in there, sometimes they actually know themselves.
Chris Nafis:Yeah, but I think that's helpful to be able to give that word, because sometimes it really takes courage to say something that you know you need to say right, but to be able to be courageous and say know you need to say right, but to be able to be courageous and say the thing you need to say, but then also to let it go and say, all right, I've put it out there, I've kind of done my part in this, and now it's up to the person to kind of find their own way.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:And I will love you, whether you receive this or not. Yeah, you receive this or not. Yeah, I just feel like in the context, I'm sort of speaking as if I'm speaking to someone, but in the context of this relationship and this commitment, I need to say this, and what you do with it is yours well, on the flip side of that, like as someone who maybe receives a word of uh, challenge or um confrontation, you, how do you receive it?
Chris Nafis:Well, because I feel like there's different ways to receive it poorly. One, you know, I think sometimes we tend to beat ourselves up and be so hypercritical. Someone says a word of slight non-approval and then we just beat ourselves to death. And other times we're we're in such denial about the reality that we just can't hear it. You, um, you know, how do we foster a kind of a presence and a being that is open to that kind of wisdom?
Dr. Rebecca Laird:I think the daily practices are a part of that, right. If you're learning how to be reflective, if you're learning how to pause at the end of the day and look back, you'll'll see things. They're like oof, not so great. I blew right past that person. That was a cruel word, oof, right. So if you're in a reflective mode and you are willing to see those places, in the small things and sort of in the privacy of your own being, then learning how to take feedback begins to be a part of your assumption about life. There are things that I can't see at the time. There are things that I'm too close to see and that this trusted person who prays for me and who loves me, if they're going to say this, then I'll at least have to go think about it, right? And I do think that a good spiritual director will know somebody to know whether they err on the side of scrupulosity or on the side of you know, small criticisms are going to go beat themselves up. You're going to be very careful and to say I know you.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:You might take this word and go home and use it as some sort of way to you know, beat yourself up with. Let's not take that tact, you know, if you start to feel like you can beat yourself up, is there another way to think about how can you hold that Right? How could you hold this information? Because you're helping the person not only hear the information but to sort of figure out what to do with it. If there's somebody else who's like easy to just sort of dismiss that they don't like stuff, and if they hear a negative thing, they're just going to say, ah, she's just full of it, right, I don't need to listen to her. It took a lot for us to get to this. You know, will you make a commitment to think about it tonight? Take 10 minutes to think about this, right? So if you know somebody these kinds of things, if somebody's really hard on themselves or a little too easy on themselves, you usually have some sense of that.
Chris Nafis:Yeah, so you can kind of adjust the. Yeah, I think we all kind of do that just naturally with friends. We know people who have different tendencies and we can kind of adjust our communication in mind of that. Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:Encouragement's more fun.
Chris Nafis:Encouragement is absolutely more fun. Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:I actually. I would also say I have a philosophy. I think it came out of some of my graduate work in picking a methodology I worked. It came out of some of my graduate work in picking a methodology. I worked with appreciative, inquiry kinds of methodology and it's sort of looking at a situation, a person, an institution and trying to identify where is this thing growing. You know, it's sort of like if you see a plant in a room, it's going to grow to the light. How is this person growing? How can you be a part of that? And a plant can grow and flourish and bloom. Even if there's dead branches over here. You don't have to try to make everything tidy. And so in trying to help people grow in the direction of where God's energy is found or where they come to life, it's easier to help people grow and as they're growing, then sometimes the snipping away of some of these other dead branches doesn't matter so much.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:But, if people are in a season when they don't feel there's been any greenness or any growth or life's been so hard and I think encouragements is often tend that way, you know, lean into that yeah yeah, yeah, it's not so like in our context we have a lot of people that are very they're in crisis a lot, you know, in life and sometimes people need both.
Chris Nafis:They need encouragement because it can be so disheartening to experience homelessness, for example, or to struggle with addiction and have relapses. It's so tempting to just despair and give up and I think we need that encouragement. But then also, I think people often need to be challenged too, because in the you know, in the harsher experiences of the world, you know, we end up developing a lot of bad habits because of our sort of limited resources, limited ability to cope. You know like we pick up things that are unhelpful and that are kind of continuing to cycle us in, and I don't know you've been in those contexts a lot. Do you have any advice for a church like ours as we try to find our way towards discipleship? You know a bit about our church.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:Yeah, I do, I do, and I love your church. I love the one-room context of you know, come and bring all the things, whether you need to plug in your phone or you need food, or it's a rainy night or it's worship time or whatever. You know, I think, and this is basic stuff. But when people know you really care, that's job one right. How do you get through a horrible day? Somebody offers some humanity to you. And then the long-term things it's accountability and knowing that most people mess up a few times before they get it right. All that kind of love and compassion serves well.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:But if people are caught in the depths of multiple challenges, they need multiple people. It's the mosaic of care. I think that helps, and a spiritual director can help with a piece of it. You need the social worker and you need the clinician and you need the housing advocate. There's no easy solution to that, but I think encouraging people to sort of say this is your, your team, your group, and it's not just to help you, but that you are you're. You're a gift to this group too. Everybody here needs to give, and and you need to give. Where are you offering something back, buddy?
Chris Nafis:Yes, right, yeah, for sure.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:And I think that's when we mentioned the L'Arche community before. One of the things I really learned from L'Arche is that it's a with and not one person can't be on the receiving end all the time and one person or groups of people being on the giving end, because that's warped, it's with and that's hard sometimes for people who are struggling so hard to just survive. But I think when that is touched, every once in a while you see the gift in somebody and they get to offer it it when they've just felt like they have nothing to offer. That is, in my experience, often when the growth begins. You know it's that growing toward delight, but you've got to have your switch turned on For sure, and I think I mean that was so like our church was for those.
Chris Nafis:Many of you who maybe listen to this know this because you're part of the church. But we were kind of born out of this desire to get over this one-way relationship of like we come downtown and feed you that's right and you receive, and to say how can we be brothers and sisters?
Dr. Rebecca Laird:in.
Chris Nafis:Christ together and how can we serve alongside one another and be served alongside one another. And I think you know there's been seasons in the life of our church we've done that really well and others where it's been a bit of a struggle. But I think keeping that door open, inviting people to serve and encouraging people to step into that invitation I mean, in some ways, you know, having someone volunteer for something is more full of life and growth and spiritual richness than any kind of like blessing you can give from your word of mouth or anything the community can do to support you is to offer that chance, because there's so much dignity and empowerment in that. So hopefully we can continue on that legacy and pick it up in areas that it's kind of dropped off for us.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:Henry Nowen at the end of his life, when he went to L'Arche, one of the things he began to recognize was that, rather than he kept getting big speaking engagements, but he said, rather than announcing the people at L'Arche, he was going to take people with him. So he took, at the last couple years of his life, all of his speaking engagements. He took one of the core members, one of the people with disabilities, with him speaking engagements. He took one of the core members, one of the people with disabilities, with him and they would steal the show and afterwards no one would remember what Henry said.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:And it bothered him because he was used to being sort of people hanging on every word, and now they weren't necessarily. They were thinking about what Bill said or they were thinking about what the core members said, and he recognized that that was also. The call of his spiritual reality at that time of his life was to um, you know, he said he wanted to announce the poor and lift up the voices that um were voiceless and one of the ways to do that was to take somebody with a different voice with him and then to get over himself Right and step aside, right Step aside and let the spotlight change, and let the deep wisdom that often came in a package that people would never have listened to if he wasn't standing next to them, let that be God's messenger.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:And it was a big ego learning.
Chris Nafis:Yeah, I can see how that would be a challenge, and I mean, someone like Nowen is so transparent that he would share it with everybody else in ways that are helpful for us. So you know, I've taken a lot of your time here. I really appreciate you coming.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:Thank you for asking. I like talking about these things.
Chris Nafis:Yeah, for those who haven't read much henry now, and is there any book or books that you would recommend as like an entryway into?
Dr. Rebecca Laird:the depth of his. Well, I think everybody has their. That has the summary of his vision, right? You know, henry wrote a lot of books but the themes are pretty persistent and once he began to write about our belovedness, that that's the core of our identity. That really articulates almost everything else he's talking about, and so I think the prodigal son probably speaks to that one as well we have.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:The ones I worked on were Spiritual Direction, spiritual Formation, and one of the reasons that book has been helpful is it has a lot of art in it, because now it was a great lover of art. He traveled with a little icon of Rublev's Old Testament trinity and he loved Van Gogh. So almost everywhere he went he'd get sunflowers and put them in a vase. He needed beautiful images and things around him. So that brings some of the visual aspects of spiritual formation, because spiritual formation needs to have some embodiment and it needs to use your senses and not just your brain. So Nouwen's books that do bring some of that together and that spiritual formation is one of those. He's written some books. He wrote a book on icons Behold the Beauty of the Lord. He's written some books. He wrote a book on icons Behold the Beauty of the Lord, describing how praying with an icon is not an idolatry, but it's praying as if there's a window to God in front of you and it's beautiful so he looks through some of these ancient icons, so he had different seasons.
Chris Nafis:Yeah.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:And it depends on whether you like the sort of more interfaith early exploration or the psychological engagement times or whether his sort of refined time at L'Arche where he really understood the interior life and community.
Chris Nafis:Yeah, I even wrote a book of his on fundraising.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:It is a spirituality, fundraising. If I have to read something on many things. I even wrote a book of his on fundraising. It is a spirituality of fundraising, yeah.
Chris Nafis:If I have to read something on fundraising, which I think I have to do, might as well read Henry Don's to some other person, but it's deeply relational.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:Yeah, it is. I mean, that's what it's all about. Is people need to give?
Chris Nafis:Yeah, Well, thank you.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:Any to say before we close it out. Just thank you for the opportunity. I just think that I love what you do at Living Water and I know that anybody who's trying to look for the dignity of God and the gift of God in others, particularly those who wear, as Mother Teresa would say, sometimes the distrusting disguise you know I'm all about that, and Henry was too, so I think that's why he resonated with me. So fun conversation, Thank you.
Chris Nafis:Well, thank you for your time, for all your encouragement over the years and free work. Absolutely All right. Okay, we'll catch you next time. Thanks for listening all you current people and yeah, thanks again Dr Lange.
Dr. Rebecca Laird:My pleasure, my pleasure, my pleasure.
