Louisiana Inscape

The Imprint of God’s Wisdom in the Ministry of Spiritual Direction

     I recall a most meaningful journey across the Atchafalaya Basin many years ago. I was on my way back from picking up my friend, author Mary Elizabeth Marlow, at the Baton Rouge airport for a talk on spirituality she was to give in Lafayette. A native of Virginia, Mary Elizabeth was making her first trip across the swamp, and I had the privilege of seeing the basin through her enchanted vision. She was simply stunned by the beauty she beheld and described the landscape as mystical. After spending a week immersed in our culture and in the soul of our people, Mary Elizabeth, who by the way has given conferences all over the world, mused that we folks from Louisiana have it all: a beautiful land, a deep heritage, a great sense of family, and a profound spirituality.

     Perhaps it was that sweet memory which stirred in me at our LASD conference this past March when I heard presenter Don Grayston speak about the concept of “inscape,” a term used by Thomas Merton in New Seeds of Contemplation and coined by Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins to describe the unique, distinctive, and inherent qualities which designate an individual’s dynamic identity. Merton saw the inscape of living and growing things, of inanimate beings, of animals and flowers and all nature as the imprint of God’s wisdom and His reality in them—the very thing which constitutes their holiness (30). The concept, for me, hit the bull’s eye of what we do in spiritual direction.

     As directors, we share the privilege of bearing witness to the powerful revelation of a Directee's inscape, of watching a seed take root, a branch wither, or a bulb buried for months or even years emerge  through the soil of their inner landscape.  Just as my perceptive friend observed the uniqueness of our native topography and culture, don’t we witness the expression of a Directee's unique textures, patterns, or character, each imitating God in his or her distinctive way? As Merton would put it, we creating the truth of (another’s) identity” (30).  As I see it, we participate as gardeners in the harvesting of the true self!

     As the seeds of new life for the LASD burst forth, (can you tell that I am writing this in the spring?!) it is my privilege to offer our newsletter its name, Louisiana Inscape.  May we, as directors, come to awaken fully to the imprint of God’s wisdom embedded in our own souls so that we may “actively participate in His creative freedom, in our own lives, and in the lives of others” (32).

~Robin Hebert