“To receive spiritual direction is to recognize that God does not solve our problems or answer all our questions, but leads us closer to the mystery of our existence where all questions cease.”

~Henri Nouwen

By Katie Rea — spiritual director, writer, and companion for those listening deeply to life as it is.

When I was in my first year of spiritual direction training, I found myself in a thoughtful conversation with a fellow member of my church. She asked me what I was studying at that time. I showed her my book on the Foundations in Spiritual Direction: Sharing the Sacred Across Traditions. In it, Beverly Lanzetta delves into how spiritual direction could be effective in the context of other religious traditions. It requires “deep listening and respectful sharing.”

In response, my church friend made a clear and confident statement: a Christian could not be a spiritual director to a Buddhist, and a Buddhist could not be a spiritual director to a Christian.

Her comment made me pause. Not because it felt unkind, but because it opened up a much larger and more nuanced question about what spiritual direction actually is, and what it is meant to serve. It also opened up the question of what spiritual direction was to me.

Spiritual direction, as Lanzetta writes, “is concerned with helping individuals with their relationship to their divine source” (p. 25). If that is true, and I believe it is, then the work of a spiritual director is not to replace, correct, or reshape another person’s understanding of the Divine, but to help them attend more faithfully to the sacred presence already at work in their lives.

So why couldn’t a Christian companion a Buddhist? Or could a Buddhist walk alongside a Christian?

At its heart, spiritual direction is an act of deep listening.

We serve with reverence, humility, and compassionate curiosity. A spiritual director honors the lived experience of the directee and trusts that God (the Divine, Allah, Brahma, Jesus, however named) is already present and active. The director does not stand between the directee and God. Instead, we help clear the space so the directee can notice, respond, and deepen their own relationship with the Holy.

We should honor someone else’s image of God even if it differs from our own.

I say this as a Christian who has spent years reading and learning about Buddhism. Though I know I still have much to learn. Yet, engaging Buddhist thought and practice has not diluted my faith. In fact, it has helped me clarify my Christianity. It has sharpened my understanding of presence, compassion, non-attachment, and suffering. It has invited me to examine what I mean when I speak about prayer, incarnation, and love.

Most importantly, it has expanded my imagination for what inclusion can look like.  It can be a practiced discipline of honoring the sacred story unfolding in another person’s life.

The question may not be whether a Christian can serve as a spiritual director to a Buddhist, or vice versa. The deeper question is this: can we listen without needing to control the outcome? Can we bear witness to God’s movement without insisting it look like our own experience?

For me, these questions sit at the very heart of spiritual direction, and at the heart of the Gospel itself.

So, is Cross-Religious Mentoring a Good Idea?

That is a question each spiritual director must ask themselves, with honesty and humility. For me, the answer is a clear and faithful yes. Others do not have the comfort level or sense of call to do so, and that, too, deserves respect.

Spiritual direction does not require mastery or certainty, but humility. And I am thankful for that because, while I like to think I have all the answers, I know I don’t. Yet, if we enter a session with integrity and deep respect for another’s spiritual path, cross-religious mentoring can open sacred space for mutual learning, deepened compassion, and trust in a God whose presence is not confined by our boundaries.

If this stirs something in you, whether it is curiosity, resonance, or even a bit of holy discomfort, I invite you to keep exploring. Notice where your own assumptions about God, faith, and companionship might be stretching or softening. Pay attention to the places where you feel drawn toward deeper listening, wider compassion, or a more expansive imagination for how the Holy moves in our world.

A newsletter by Katie Rea.

Foundations in Spiritual Direction: Sharing the Sacred Across Traditions – Beverly Lanzetta