Spiritual direction is a sacred and secure space where you are accompanied on your own unique spiritual journey. It gives you a regular time and place to explore the movements of the spirit in the everyday experience of your life, meeting regularly with a director who has training and experience in accompanying others.
As a Jesuit centre, we work in the spiritual tradition of St Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits and writer of The Spiritual Exercises. Ignatian spiritual directors are trained to listen attentively and to help you to explore your awareness of God’s presence and activity in all your daily life. A director can help you reflect upon your prayer life and broaden and deepen your practice of prayer, and your director will also be interested to hear about all the other areas of your life too. They will not tell you how to behave and what to believe, instead, they will seek to deepen your relationship of personal encounter with the living God who loves you more than you dare to imagine.
The Jesuits in Britain are moving towards a single national portal for all spiritual direction requests in England and Wales.
If you email the Jesuit Institute, they will send you a request form and then refer you to a director from the nationwide list of Ignatian-trained directors.
You may also wish to explore other broader options such as the London Centre for Spiritual Direction's public directory of nearly 200 spiritual directors, the Catholic Diocese of Brentwood, and the Catholic Archdiocese of Southwark.
If you are especially looking for a director who can guide you through a 19th Annotation retreat in daily life, then you should contact the national referral service at the Jesuit Institute. They will send you an initial request form to complete and then follow this up with you, sometimes with an online conversation. Please bear in mind that any new director would probably need to meet with you for about 6-8 weeks before they could discern whether a 19th Annotation retreat seemed right for you at the current time in your life, and whether they were the appropriate director to guide you through it.
If you are interested in making the Full Spiritual Exercises by way of a 19th Annotation Retreat in Daily Life, please contact the Jesuit Institute.