RIP: Joe Zepf

The other day I happened to see that Joseph R. Zepf had passed away at the age of ninety-nine. He was the best spiritual director I have ever had. He was wise, practical, and funny.

For his obituary, click here. I had no idea he had led such a rich life.

I connected with Mr. Zepf at some point in the later 1990s, during the period in between my times in religious life. In those days the Archdiocese of New York had a very neat spiritual direction matchmaking service. You went somewhere in Rye, New York and met with this sister. She asked you about your prayer life, its forms and rhythms and so on. She asked about your favorite saints and what spiritual books had most influenced you. Then she said, well, give me some time to pray and reflect on this. In my case she called a couple of weeks later, said that she was confident she had discerned the right director for me, and sent me to Mr. Zepf.

I met with him at a parish office in Port Chester, New York. I don't remember what parish it was. It was a bit of a drive from West Haven, Connecticut where I was living at the time, but very much worth it.

Those soon became the days when I was thinking about applying to the Capuchins. I had left the novitiate of the OFM at Christmas 1995 and though I continued to desire Franciscan religious life, the difficulties and confusions surrounding that experience had left me skittish about trying again.

One time I asked Mr. Zepf directly, did he think I should join the Capuchins?

"How should I know? If it's going to help you get closer to Jesus, then do it."

I entered the Capuchin postulancy in the summer of 2000. From where we were in East New York, Brooklyn, I was about the same distance to Port Chester as I had been in West Haven. Unfortunately, however, my Capuchin formators wouldn't let me keep Mr. Zepf. In their estimation, he didn't have the right credentials in spiritual direction. This annoys me a little bit to this day.

Lux æterna luceat ei.

Finding a Spiritual Director

I also wanted to share some good news. After some adventures and awkward moments--including asking a Cardinal of the Roman Church, true story--I think I have found a spiritual director here in Rome. When the time was right I had the inspiration to send an email in a certain direction, and right away I was led to someone who seems good.

We had a first meeting, which seemed to go well. He recommended that I no longer use the meditation period between Morning Prayer and Mass to pray the Office of Readings, but that I use it for meditation in the strict sense, what in the Capuchin tradition we call mental prayer.

He also recommended that I reread Thoughts Matter by Sr. Mary Margaret Funk. Also a very good idea. She writes:

This book is intended for a person who is looking seriously for the right path on the spiritual journey. According to John Cassian, a fourth-century monk, renunciations are required of us if we are on that journey. First, we must renounce our former way of life and move closer to our heart's desire, toward the interior life. Second, we must do the inner work (of asceticism) by renouncing our mindless thoughts. This renunciation is particularly difficult because we have little control over our thoughts. Third, we must renounce our own images of God so that we enter into contemplation of God as God.

Begotten in the Only Begotten

I always appreciate when St. Irenaeus's Against Heresies comes up in the Office of Readings; it's one of a handful of books given me to read in theology that I think improved my understanding of Christianity in a basic way. The passage given for Pentecost begins this way:

When the Lord told his disciples to go and teach all nations and baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, he conferred on them the power of giving men new life in God.

Reflecting on that, I found myself, as I do sometimes, praying for all of those who have been my spiritual parents along the way.

Looking for a Spiritual Director

The Fourth Sunday of Easter, already. The Sundays of Easter always seem to go faster than those of Lent, no? I appreciate this fourth Sunday because it's now that the great shift of the Easter season comes into focus: with the Sunday of the Good Shepherd we have moved definitively from the simple and bold announcement of the Risen Lord to a celebration of how this Lord remains present to us and with us. Of course this movement comes to its fulfillment at Pentecost, with the Gift Who is the Holy Spirit.

One way the Good Shepherd has been with me in these days is in my search for a spiritual director. Since coming to Rome I have known that a spiritual director was something I wanted to give to myself. In one sense it might seem like something not too difficult; Rome, after all, is lousy with priests and religious. Surely the Holy Spirit could find one of them willing and fitting for this relationship with me.

But the truth is that I have yet to find someone. I have prayed for God to show me the way to someone I might ask, I have made requests and sent letters, and so far I have not arrived at anyone. Right now I have two possibilities that I have followed up on with letters and I pray they have the effect that God wills for me.

According to a worldly logic, it could seem frustrating; an effort with no result. But the truth is that I feel fine with it; it is my faithfulness to the process that matters. I seek a spiritual director because I want to care for and cultivate a spiritual life; while I am seeking that care and cultivation lies partly in the search itself, in my faithfulness to following up on recommendations, to discerning whether some suggestion may be from the Holy Spirit, etc.

In a way it's like prayer itself. Does prayer yield clearer ideas of God? Perhaps not. But it does give us trust in the Mystery even as our entering into it renders it ever more mysterious. Does prayer make clearer the path that God sets out for us, our next steps? Not always. But prayer prepares us to trust the path even when we can see no more than the very next step, and strengthens us to take that step with a certain serenity.

The Cardinal or the Headbanger?

Partly because they're sweet in their excitement for me in my coming transfer to Rome, and partly because they like to make fun of my long history of rocky relationships with spiritual directors, the brothers have been suggesting to me whom I might ask to be my spiritual director once I get to my new assignment. Two candidates have emerged:

First, Raymond Cardinal Burke:




No doubt the brothers thought of His Eminence because I share some of his opinions, but also because I am currently under the care of one of his seminary classmates.

Second, our Capuchin brother Cesare Bonizzi, sometime frontman of Fratello Metallo:




The real compliment in all this is the recognition of the sublime synthesis that is my particular vocation, and I'm sure that's what the brothers mean to say by their suggestions.

Broken Fingers and Foolishness to the World

My spiritual director often speaks to me about the Cross, which is good because I remain hesitant to embrace it.

Over time I've collected a few of these sayings. Here are three that I try to keep close:

"The more you find the Cross problematic, the more difficulty you will have finding peace. It's that simple."

"Just because you embrace the Cross doesn't always make it understandable. It's still foolishness to the world, and to the world that still lives inside you especially."

"Crucifixion is a messy business. On top of the nails, you're going to get a finger smashed when the hammer misses. It's an awful mess."

Boundaries and Feelings

One time I idly accused a spiritual director of saying something just to make me feel better. He reacted somewhat sternly, and I wrote down what he said:

Don't say that; I would never try to manipulate you. That's violent and disrespectful. I just tell you the truth. Whether the truth makes you feel better is your business. I don't take responsibility for your feelings.

That has stuck with me over the years, and I have even used it myself. I've learned how important it is to have such boundaries in ministry. From what I can tell, taking responsibility for our own feelings is very difficult, and we are often eager to absolve ourselves of this responsibility by blaming them on someone else.

It might sound a little paradoxical, but it seems to me that disidentifying with feelings helps us to take this responsibility. To me this is one of the most important fruits of mental or interior prayer. Through prayer, which gets me in touch with the more interior levels of my being, I can enjoy the freedom of knowing and believing that my thoughts and feelings are things that I have, but are not me per se. Yes, my thoughts and feelings are part of me, but they float around on the periphery of my real self, the person whom God created and holds in being. I think much of our spiritual difficulty or confusion derives from an over-identification with our feelings, moods, and negative beliefs about ourselves. If these things are who I really am, of course I will go through my days thrown about, tired, and confused!

Once we have realized that we are not our thoughts and feelings these can be treated in a more objective way. Those that are good and useful--because they correspond to the truth--can be nurtured, and those that are false and destructive can be dismissed.

To refuse to take responsibility for someone's feelings--as my spiritual director did with me--can be 'tough love.' It can be very hard, because many people would rather have you be nice to them than love them. Real charity works to offer the tools the other needs to set himself free. It is not the palliative care of niceness.

Getting the Most out of Spiritual Direction

This post is a request from a new friend. go and check out his blog. On the one hand, I hesitate to write it; I am not a spiritual director, and I have no formal training nor credentials in the practice. On the other hand, I have nearly twenty years of experience in using spiritual direction in a mediocre way, and I can share my own reflections on how I have tried to improve its use for myself. My reflections are bound up with my own ideas about the nature, practice, and purposes of spiritual direction. As with anything in the spiritual life, take whatever helps you to consent to the grace of God, and leave the rest.

Some ways to get the most out of spiritual direction:

Prepare and follow through with your preparation. Take the time before each meeting to pray for your director and for the Holy Spirit to inform your conversation. Examine yourself and try to notice what is going on with you spiritually. Discern and decide what will be the issues and topics you want to bring up. Most directors will regard simple listening as their basic stance toward you and will follow your lead in the conversation. Therefore, if you don't get to talk about what's really important, it's usually your own fault.

Try to be continuous from one meeting to the next. Make goals, decide on where discernments and resolutions need to be with regard to time, and work from one meeting to the next. For me, taking notes has always been a help in keeping from going around in circles. I have a notebook for spiritual direction, in which I keep track to the progress of discernments and make note of insights which I might otherwise forget. You may find that note taking makes some directors nervous. They will get over it.

Go to appointments when you are your most usual self. This may only apply to people who are moody like me, or who experience a lot of ebb and flow in fervor and devotion, also like me. Discerning the grace of God and the life of the spirit are delicate and subtle works, and if we always go to our appointments at a time when we are tired, or after we've had too much coffee, the director may develop an incorrect sense of who we are. When I was a postulant I used to have spiritual direction on Friday afternoons, when I was at my most tired moment all week. My director's office was on Washington Square North, and to get there I used to walk through the park and see all the young people having fun. Needless to say, I didn't always give a fair presentation of where I was with my vocation. In my notes I'm always amused to look back at one in particular of Sister's pronouncements: "Well, if that's how you feel, of course you should leave the Order!"

Do not fear to talk about anything. If you really desire God above everything else, you have to get over the fears and shame that keep you from bringing sins and temptations into the light and asking your director's advice about them. You also have to let go of the fear of vanity that sometimes keeps people from revealing extraordinary graces. Supernatural experiences are not as uncommon as we sometimes think; people just don't talk about them so much. If something is keeping you from holiness on the one hand or pushing you into it on the other, bring it up. If you aren't ready to trust the confidence of your director with anything, you need a new director.

Work out for yourself the relationship between spiritual direction and confession. If your director is a priest, he could also be your confessor, though this is not necessary. For some, and at some stages and moments in the spiritual life, an engaged and thorough celebration of the sacrament of penance is all that is needed for spiritual direction. Consciences are revealed, pastoral advice is offered, new resolutions are made, and the grace of sacramental absolution comes to aid it all. If your regular confessor and your spiritual director are different people, however, it is important to make sure that the two are integrated somehow. What must be avoided is the development of separate personae for the two relationships. For example, you may be at spiritual direction discussing how well you are encountering the beautiful graces offered to you in daily life, while on another day you are beating your breast in confession as you reveal yourself as someone in a terrible struggle with an attachment to some serious sin that you don't bring up in direction. I am sure that the devil rejoices in this sort of spiritual disintegration of self. Both of these characters are you; bring your whole self to spiritual direction. The Lord promised to harvest the wheat along with the weeds.

Take it easy. The spiritual life demands that we be both loose and vigilant at the same time. We can't plan it out, or even control or anticipate an hour of conversation with a director. Because of God's eternity, grace always appears to us as adventitious, and because of His goodness, it is always surprising to our stingy souls and narrow minds. I am more and more convinced that God is looking for souls willing to do the work of the spiritual life. When He finds one, He puts it to work, believe me. But we must always remember the work is His and not ours. Our primary project is to train our consciousness to notice grace, and to train our wills in consenting to it. It's an adventure for sure, but one that demands the abandonment of control. Take it easy.

I hope this helps.

Related posts:

Finding a Spiritual Director

Should I Fire My Spiritual Director?

Should I Fire My Spiritual Director?

Before we can speak of how to go about terminating a spiritual direction relationship, we must ask the prior question: should I fire my spiritual director?

The interior inspiration to get rid of one's spiritual director must be discerned closely. It can be an entirely legitimate invitation from the Holy Spirit; there are, after all, many demagogues, madmen, and creepy weirdos out there claiming to have good spiritual advice. On the other hand, we should not fire our spiritual director just because he or she makes suggestions that we don't want to hear or invites us into difficult but salutary discernments.

So, if we feel like ending a relationship with a particular spiritual director for any of the following reasons, we should treat this thought as a temptation against our spiritual progress:

• Our denial about certain sins, attachments, or addictions is confronted, and we don't want to hear it.
  
• We are invited to discern attachments to cherished religious practices, and we don't want to risk growth because we are comfortable with our current practice.
• Our operative images of God are challenged, and we want to run from the interior panic and spiritual vertigo that necessarily ensues.
• We are told that what we really need is not spiritual direction, but to see a doctor or psychologist.

On the other hand, there can be legitimate signs that the inspiration to fire our spiritual director is from the Holy Spirit:

• He goes to sleep while you are speaking.
• He does not remember your name.
• He talks about fairies, imps, harpies, necromancy, or the city of Atlantis. Yes, these are all things I have either experienced or have been reported to me.
  
• He spends more than a minimal amount of time talking about his own experience, or seems to relish talking about himself.
• He is not at least as conversant with the spiritual tradition as you are. The director should be at least as well read in the tradition as the disciple.
• He does not seem to take you seriously; e.g. 'that's not a (serious) sin, get over it,''That's not real prayer, get over it,' etc.
• He has an observable negative emotional reaction to something you say. A spiritual director should be past the point when people can 'press our buttons' so easily.
• He seems overly attached to certain patterns of practice, and wants to impose them on everyone; e.g. 'You must say three rosaries every day,' 'The first Saturdays devotion will fix you,' etc.
• He makes suggestions that increase your dependence on him alone, especially if he is a priest; e.g. 'You should only go to confession to me,' 'I want you to attend my Sunday Mass each week,' etc. Some people want disciples for themselves, rather than for the Lord.
• He does or suggests anything at all that is sexually suggestive or creepy. Yes, it happens. Trust your instincts.

Finding a Spiritual Director

I was asked to write a little more on finding a spiritual director. It's not easy. Over the years, both inside and out of religious life, I have tried various strategies, with varying results.

Prayer, of course, is the primary strategy. To have a good spiritual director for a certain moment in one's journey is pure Providence, so it makes sense to ask God to provide someone.

Before I was in religious life I tried a couple of things. Twice I asked my pastor to recommend someone. With one pastor this worked out well, and I connected with a director who was very helpful. It took me several years to accept his advice, but when I did I was grateful. With the other pastor, it didn't work so well. He sent me to a priest who talked constantly and incomprehensibly on obscure topics, e.g the lost city of Atlantis, and I never went for a second appointment.

Here in the archdiocese of New York we used to have a spiritual director referral service--we may indeed still have it, I don't know. It worked out of the Center for Spiritual Development, formerly in Rye, I think. I have tried to use this ministry twice. The first time it worked very well. It's like a matchmaking service; you go to visit Sister and tell her about your prayer and what you are into and working on, etc., and she prays over it and matches you with a spiritual director. I connected with one of my best directors this way. The second time I used this service, some years later, I never got a call back. Perhaps my case had grown too dire by then.

Whatever you do in trying to find a director, stick with it. If your gut tells you someone is a lunatic, untrustworthy, or really not concerned about your soul, dump him and start over. It's worth it.

Update: There is another post I could write, perhaps titled, "How to fire a spiritual director," a topic on which I have much experience. It would certainly be a "Ha ha, only serious" kind of post. Let me know if I should write it.