Spiritual Direction

If you are interested in booking Doug or in Spiritual Direction, you can use the form below or check out my profile at Spiritual Directors International

Areas: Disabilities, Spiritual Trauma, Artists, Deconstruction, Queer, LGBTQIA+, Gay, Evangelical, ex-Christian, cults, arts, discernment, vocation.

I live from a conviction is that God is at work in the life of every human in some way, and the nature of that work is always love. It follows then, that a major part of spiritual growth as I understand it is cultivating trust in God’s love so as to lean into it, participate in it, and share it with others is some more and less obvious ways. I try to hold, or help you hold, the narrative thread of your spiritual journey while asking you questions that draw your attention to the story of God’s love at work in your life.

I love Frederick Buechner’s quote about vocation being where the world’s needs, and your joys intersect. So I try to pay attention along with you the patterns of joy and service that seem to bring you life and that bring life to those around you.

I have sometimes used a metaphor of the education and training of a sommelier, an expert wine taster, as a metaphor for spiritual formation. As we reflect and listen we can develop a nuanced ‘taste’ for how we have encountered God in life, so that even as we encounter new and unfamiliar spiritual experiences and circumstances, we can begin to recognize what is life giving, distracting, limiting, challenging or inspiring in our Spiritual Journey. We learn together how to move toward and cooperate with God’s love in us.

In practice, there are two main pillars to how I work as a Spiritual Director: 1) I simply pay attention to, I listen, to multiple ways you communicate about divine work in your life as you understand it (especially patterns as I try to hold a narrative “thread” or your journey for you and 2) I help you discover ways you can frame and integrate your current circumstances, whatever they are, into your spiritual story. Many directees I have worked with have experienced spiritual challenges limitations, and blocks, become life giving parts of their life of prayer and spiritual journey.

I have taught and written about learning to “pray what is,” that is to say, learning to engage all aspects of our life experiences, including spiritual challenges and blocks, as things that can be prayed, or offered as a way of cultivating a deeper relationship with God as you understand God. I grew up in a conservative Evangelical tradition as a gay man and struggled to find a faithful and life giving place in the Christian tradition. I happily work with members of the LGBTQIA+ community wherever they are in their journey, including disenchantment or “deconstruction.” I have helped some people move out of and some remain connected to Evangelical traditions and communities. I am an academic, and artist, and a writer. I have been involved for 20+ years in the regional Burning Man Art scene. I have had many directees connected to that community who do, and do not identify as Christians, or even theists. I have also worked with a small handful of people recovering from being members of cults. I respect and am comfortable with a wide variety of traumatic spiritual experiences and the process of building or recovering faith. I like to frame our relationship as always-in-discernment (for both of us) and am open to reconsidering or altering the director/directee relationships as suits you best from your perspective. You, of course, always have the first and final word of how you want to pursue a relationship with the Divine.

I love working with people with disabilities as well as members of the LGBTQIA+ community, especially transgender persons, anywhere eon their journey. I have studied and visited many intentional Christian communities including the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, several Catholic Worker communities, Taize in France, the Bruderhof communities, and several monasteries. I have been connected to L’Arche communities (communities for people with all levels of ability and disability) in different ways since 1996. I have been a Spiritual Director for over 12 years. I have a certification from Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. At the time I studied there there was an emphasis on the Ignatian/Jesuit tradition. I have been connected to a Benedictine Monastery for 25+ years. I have a MA in theology, an MA in Religion and Social Ethics from USC, and I am completing a Doctorate of Ministry in “Leadership for Wonder” at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. I am also a certified Master Practitioner of NLP. Currently my studies have been focused on providing Spiritual Direction for people with intellectual disabilities, including people who are non-verbal.