Copyright: © 2000 Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada. This document may be freely reproduced for non-commercial purposes with credit and mention of the Lift Up Your Hearts web site http://www.worship.ca/ as the source.

Pneuma is a journal on spiritual direction and formation in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada.

Ann Strand
of the Spiritual Directors Network

My faith journey has been a long one, spanning all the years from the time of my baptism in a small Wisconsin town(Mondovi) at the age of 23 days to the present time about a month before my 70th birthday. What a journey it has been: a happy secure childhood with three younger sisters, and loving parents, always a Lutheran church community around to nurture and sustain me, the joy of a now 50-year-old marriage to Jack, the added joys (and some tribulations) of parenting five children -- a son and four daughters, who have also given us the gift of seven grandchildren, ages twenty-five to two (including our beloved Kira who died of leukemia at the age of eight and a half). Then there were the opportunities that came my way: one year at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, the year before my marriage; the move to BC in 1969 where I finally finished my BA in History at UBC at the age of forty-eight; and then my M. Div. from VST, internship, and then ordination at the age of fifty-seven. And after eleven and a half years of ministry, first at Benediction Lutheran in Tsawwassen and then at First Lutheran in Vancouver, I retired in January 1999. I am presently serving as an interim pastor at Our Saviour in Richmond.

During these years of many joys there were also struggles, not the least of which, my wrestling with faith questions which began early in my life and continue to cause me to wonder about and ponder the things of God. Thanks to good pastoral care over the years, I was able to learn to "love the questions" as the poet Maria Rilke so nicely put it and to accept my questions and even my doubts to be the work of God's Spirit gently nudging and calling me to something more -- often to new ways of seeing and understanding.

Through all the joys and sorrows and complexities of my life, I have been grateful for those special friends who have been with me on my journey. Long before I heard of spiritual directors, there were those who filled that space in my life. They were friends who were able to help me discern God's presence and purpose in my life.

Contempletive prayer and meditation do not come easy for me, and my first experiences with spiritual directors were sometimes difficult because I never seemed to "fit" into the prayer models that were suggested for me. It only served to make me feel guilty for not being quite as "spiritual" as other people I knew. A change came when I began seeing my present director about six years ago. From the beginning of our time together she listened well and developed a good understanding of my strengths and weaknesses and of my particular personality type. She has been thus able to help me to accept myself as I am and also has guided me to find what for me are life-giving ways of praying and listening to God. But it is also true for me that my spiritual life is mostly fed and nurtured through the Word and the weekly gathering around the Eucharist. It is here as I come with my sisters and brothers in the faith where God's presence is most clearly known to me, whether I am the celebrant or a member of the gathered community. It is through the corporate nature of the Church as the Body of Christ where I am most deeply and joyously blessed.