Seeking God

Summary: Spiritual formation is about encountering God, not gaining knowledge. 

It has been about 18 months since I finished my spiritual direction training. That training was an Ignatian program, although we were not trained to give the whole exercises as Trevor Hudson has done. Ignatius' exercises have plenty of depth for a wide variety of introductions, and I think Hudson's choice to use Ignatius and Dallas Willard as conversation partners was a good choice.

Good spiritual writing is hard. Not just because it is hard to use human language to describe both mystical realities and an indescribable God but because it is hard to say something “new.” I put new in parenthesis because very little is actually new in spiritual writing. Culture is always changing, and the situations and emphasis are changing. But the rough concepts do not change much. Dallas Willard is helpful but can be a bit dense and hard to understand. Ignatius is distant in time and requires help with translation to a modern context. Trevor Hudson has written a fairly short and readable book about what it means to seek after God and how to do that.

I have not read many spiritual formation books this year because I needed a break after spending a couple of years in my spiritual direction program. But I have no problem saying that this was the best spiritual formation book I read in 2022, even if there was not a lot of competition this year.

I listened to this as an audiobook because that was the cheapest method of purchase, and I was reading this as part of Renovaré's book club. I always appreciate the resources that the book club includes. There are in-person or online discussion groups if you want to participate. There are weekly podcasts, often with the author. And there is a good variety of new and old books. This year the books are Seeking God, GK Chesterton's Orthodoxy, the newest book from Richard Foster, Learning Humility, and The Narrative of Sojourner Truth. The audiobook was fine, but this book is better read slowly. And I think probably better in print. It is a book that would benefit from rereading as well.