Cross-Cultural Spiritual Direction: To Construct a Borderland

Jung Eun Sophia Park, SNJM, Ph.D.

Once
By mistake
She tore a map
in half.
She taped it back,
but crookedly.
Now all the roads
ended in water.
There were mountains
right next to her hometown.
Wouldn't that be nice
If it were true?
I'd tear a map
And be right next
to you.

As the well-known Palestinian American poet Naomi Shihab Nye describes, a woman happened to tear a map and then taped it back together; now the line is crooked, so an unanticipated stranger can be a companion. Of course, in today's world, this event is not just one individual person's imagination. Rather, it is a common experience: to encounter the "other" in this way. In today's global world, one of the most remarkable phenomena is multiculturalism, and it designates cultural diversity in a society. Although the meaning and implication of multiculturalism are very ambiguous, people are already beginning to live in this multicultural way. That being the case, the consequential question regarding multiculturalism is how to deal with differences within the same culture. In a culture that includes different cultures, the cross-cultural aspect should be considered seriously unless multiculturalism means just separated cultural groupings. In this article, I want to apply the topic of cross-cultural encounter to spiritual direction, utilizing the concept of borderland. First, I will characterize spiritual direction as a borderland in which a spiritual director and a directee experience mutual transformation, without losing their own identities. Second, I will give an example of creating a borderland in a spiritual directors training program. In so doing, finally, I will delineate necessary elements for creating a borderland in spiritual direction.

Spiritual Direction: To Create a Borderland

There are many metaphors for spiritual direction. My preference is dance. Each dance can be different according to the rhythm and the partner. Thus, a good dancer needs to have the sensitivity to be aware of the rhythm of the dance itself as well as the unique rhythm that the other carries. Cross-cultural spiritual direction is a dance with a stranger who does not seem to have a rhythm familiar to me. It means that a spiritual director and directee who come from different cultures in terms of denomination or even religion itself, as well as any one or all of the following subcultures: ethnicity, gender, age, and class, sit together in front of the Holy Spirit and appreciate, understand, and examine how the Spirit guides the directee's life.

Very often, cross-cultural spiritual direction is considered simply as the case when the spiritual director meets a directee from another country. In this case, the director may see this as the sole difference, but in reality the range of foreignness can be much more diverse and complex. First of all, the spiritual director should examine what stage the directee is in: alignment with his or her home country; negating the home country; or in between the home country and the hosting country. Also, the directee's relationship with the mainline culture and/or with the diaspora community in the hosting country can determine the directee's spiritual life.

Furthermore, cross-cultural encounter is never limited only in terms of ethnicity and race. Cross-cultural encounter happens at almost every spiritual direction, considering the subcultures to which people can belong. Then, any spiritual direction, in a sense, is cross-cultural, and this element should be counted as an essential part, not as an addendum.

The concept of borderland is useful to enhance understanding of the crosscultural aspect of spiritual direction. The borderland itself is a place in between the two different national borders. Very often in this area, the border becomes porous, the division blurred, and in this way, the two cultures interact and create an alternative, a third culture. This "third space" is never dominated by one culture, nor simply a sum of the two cultures.

In cross-cultural spiritual direction, the space that a spiritual director and directee create is the third space, where two different cultures encounter one another. As a matter of fact, in studying borders, we can see how violent the border area can be. In general, border towns are dangerous and highly violent. For example, the Texas-Mexico border is notorious for its high rates of shooting by drug cartels and of human trafficking.

However, the same area creates a new culture, which can be transformative and life-giving. This transforming borderland is a heterotopia, which praises difference, rejecting any universal notion and embracing multiple and opposing messages. Hispanic, immigrant poet and feminist Gloria Anzaldua, in her Borderlands/La Fronterra, explains how her own inner conflicts prompted her to be an agent of transformation. The various disagreeing inner voices function as an agent of her own transformation, as well as that of the others. It is likely that a subculture that itself includes conflicting and dissonant elements has the energy to transform the whole culture.

In this borderland, mutual transformation happens, and it is of great merit to cross-cultural spiritual direction. In other words, cross-cultural spiritual direction assumes bi-directional, mutual transformation rather than a spiritual director's service to the directee. On the one hand, as Homi Bhabha contends, the residents who live in the borderland or the third space can experience empowerment and transformation when they can articulate their situation. Then, it is very clear that spiritual direction can be an agent to help a directee to articulate experiences, which include personal and internal conflicts as well as social and structural conflicts. In this way, the directee experiences empowerment.

On the other hand, for the director in a cross-cultural spiritual direction session, one of the most common experiences is to hold all the disagreement and oppositions created through the encounter in silence...