Photo: Fr. Richard Rohr speaks to the Mennonite Spiritual Directors Network during their retreat May 8-10 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Photo by Jane Thorley Roeschley

For Mennonite pastor and spiritual director Jane Thorley Roeschley, the opportunity to meet with other Mennonite spiritual directors is why she attends retreats offered by the Mennonite Spiritual Directors Network (MSDN).

“These retreats provide the occasional opportunity to gather with other spiritual directors, and to experience worship in that setting was such a gift,” she said. “And the national retreats bring people from outside [the Mennonite church], and that is a gift too.”

Along with Roeschley, 76 directors gathered May 8-10 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for the national retreat to engage, discern, worship and listen with one another.

The theme of the retreat was “Attending to Love: Within and Without,” with guest speakers Fr. Richard Rohr, a globally recognized ecumenical teacher, author, Franciscan priest and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation, and Angela Reed, associate professor of practical theology and director of spiritual formation at Truett Seminary at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.

The retreat theme focused on how spiritual directors work with people within and inside congregations. Marlene Kropf, a member of the MSDN steering committee, described many people seeking spiritual direction as those who are “on the edge of the inside of the church.”

Rohr, a popular speaker and writer, encouraged spiritual directors to remember spiritual direction is leading others from either/or thinking.

“Stop labeling and stop judging,” he said. “When we operate out of meanness or hatefulness, we are not operating in love. Instead, implant love where our deepest knowing is as children of God.”

Reed, who co-authored Spiritual Companioning: A Guide to Protestant Theology and Practice with Marcus Smucker and Richard Osmer, focused on spiritual direction within the congregation, reminding the group that “our call is reconciliation between God and ourselves.” She defined practical spirituality as “holding space for the sacred.”

Raised as a Mennonite in Canada, Reed described the gifts of Anabaptist spiritual direction as: accountability and confession; an authentic spiritual life and practice of the director; both the director and directee are shaped by the life and ministries of a congregation—never spiritual direction alone, but within the context of congregational life; accompaniment in suffering and advocacy for hope and healing; nurturing a spiritual life that never ends in the self, but extends into mission and witness;  rooted and grounded in theological convictions.

In the mid-1990s, Kropf began a list of active Mennonite spiritual directors from across the United States as part of her work at that time as worship and spiritual formation minister for the denomination. The current list for people looking for a spiritual director is available here. Additional information is available at http://mennosdnetwork.weebly.com/