Today's historical sketch is on a very fascinating woman in the Episcopal Church named Margaret Guenther. She served as the Director of the Center for Christian Spirituality at General Theological Seminary and was a pioneering voice in the field of spiritual direction. I had the wonderful opportunity to co-author a book about Margaret back in 2022. Here are some interesting facts about Margaret, and some fun things I found in the archives!
-General Theological Seminary: Seminary in New York City founded in 1820. The Center for Christian Spirituality was founded in 1976, shortly after women were allowed to be ordained in the Episcopal Church. In 2022, my colleague Dr. Anne Silver (retired Director of the Center for Christian Spirituality) and I won a grant to write an Open Educational Textbook. We decided to write about the Center for Christian Spirituality, General’s most popular program. There were over 30 boxes of material in the archives, which I created a finding aid for. Our textbook is entitled Living Archives: A History of the Center for Christian Spirituality PDF view of the file Living Archives.pdf
-Spiritual Direction as defined by the Center for Christian Spirituality: “Spiritual direction is about companionship. In a Christian context, a spiritual director is someone who accompanies you as you explore your spirituality and grow in relationship with God. Spiritual direction can help you listen for God and live more fully into Christian faith. A spiritual director will invite you to reflect on your life in the light of faith, guide you in prayer and spiritual practices, listen to you and with you in discerning God’s purposes, and encourage your baptismal discipleship.”
-Margaret Guenther: Before entering the Episcopal priesthood, Margaret earned her PhD in German Language and Literature from Radcliffe. She earned her MDIV in 1983 from General Theological Seminary, and became the first female Director of the Center for Christian Spirituality in 1986. In June 1997, she retired from General Theological Seminary after revamping the spiritual direction program.
- In 1992 Guenther’s first book, Holy Listening: The Art of Spiritual Direction, was published by Cowley Publications. In it she offered metaphors of spiritual directors as hosts, as good teachers, and as midwives to the soul. She wrote of the spiritual director as an amateur in the original sense of the word: “one who loves, loves the art that she serves, loves and prays for the people who trust her, loves the Holy Spirit who is the true director in this strange ministry called spiritual direction.” She included a chapter on women and spiritual direction, and she wrote in a down-to-earth, distinctly female voice: “I can write only from my own perspective. First and foremost, this is the perspective of a woman, a woman who has been married for over three decades and who has borne and reared children.”
-How Margaret described spiritual direction: “I am not the star or even a major player, but rather . . . both of us are waiting upon the action of the Holy Spirit. . . . It’s not a performance and certainly no feat of professional bravura. It’s just sitting there in my quite comfortable chair, with no expectations and no agenda, and doing my best to honor the person in the other chair.” This was a new way to look at spiritual direction, beforehand it was seen as a special calling. Margaret described spiritual directors as “amateurs.”
-A fun quote showing Margaret’s sense of humor from the Center’s Newsletter 1994: “I’m not a professional fundraiser, but just a spiritual Strudel stretcher.”
No comments:
Post a Comment