Schools have become a more diverse workforce. This has led many learning communities to introduce formation opportunities. These enable all teachers to participate in enhancing the Catholic school's mission.

Buchanan (pictured) said a growing number of schools across the globe support staff's formation through spiritual direction.

He also said spiritual direction could be an effective, non-threatening option for all staff members. That includes staff who don't identify as Catholic but are committed to working in Catholic schools.

"Thirty per cent of the people in Catholic schools across Australia don't identify as Catholic," Buchanan said.

They have a right to be formed, he said.

"If we are truly a Catholic school or a Catholic institution or a Catholic faith-based community, we have a responsibility to support all members of the school community in their formation," he said.

He added that these teachers' contributions to the school also shape the school's Catholic identity.

Drawing on the spiritual direction skills would have positive benefits, he suggested.

It would allow an approach to formation that "enables a teacher to make sense of who they are as a person dedicated to a vocation and the practice of being a teacher in a Catholic school," he said.

A vocational profession

Buchanan said most teachers at a Catholic school consider their profession to be a vocation.

"Their vocation is education, the education of the next generation of people, the formation of young people through education of what it means to be human.

"When you're involved in a ministry or a vocation or a profession as challenging as teaching, you are constantly giving of yourself to others, and you need to be nourished and supported."

Buchanan said formation opportunities in schools tended to be one-off annual days or week-long retreat experiences.

Employing professionals with skills in spiritual direction would provide more consistent ongoing support, he said. It would help teachers whose educational endeavours are the cornerstone of a Catholic school's ability to achieve its mission.

"A spiritual director is not there to evangelise, though that's not to say that evangelisation may not happen," he said.

"But their primary role is to journey with each individual teacher, to help them reflect upon and connect their professional commitment and experiences with their own sense of vocation and humility."

Source

• Catholic Leader

For six years I have been working at developing and enhancing a digital and in-person practice, mainly for people I accompanied who moved interstate or transferred overseas, or those with a disability and who found the travel awkward; the tyranny of distance made it impossible for us to meet.

While I was attracted to the concept of connecting with my long-distance companions, embracing this new approach was quite daunting; I am not a digital native.

Clients too need to be comfortable.

From a business practice perspective, like many others lockdown here in Australia would prove challenging.

Prior to the pandemic, I met with between 5-10% of people through digital technology, these were mainly people with disabilities who were housebound, or people living in rural Australia or overseas.

However, times changed very quickly in the last month or so.

Now about 85% of those whom I previously met face-to-face have switched to meet through digital technology.

I am very pleased for the sake of my clients and the practice that I sought help and can offer people a flexible approach to counselling, supervision and spiritual direction.

Videoconferencing

For some years Telemedicine practitioners, some teachers and business people regularly used videoconferencing professional life and it prompted me to re-imagine how I might do likewise.

As a country, we are technologically advanced with computers, devices and ADSL internet connections, but it is the recent introduction of the fibre internet which made it really possible to digitally accompany people.

Global is the new local

Several years ago, as I began to re-image how I might offer a dual practice; both digital and in-person I turned to a Kiwi colleague who opened my eyes to see that "the global is the new local" and that I no longer needed to be physically limited by time and place in which I meet with clients.

"Global services are as accessible as local services," the colleague said, and that living in Western Australia, I can easily meet with people in different countries but in the same or similar time zones.

Suddenly my small Perth practice was conveniently able to be in downtown Hong Kong, Singapore, Seoul, Tokyo, Bangkok and Manila, and even despite the 4-hour difference, I also meet New Zealand clients.

As I became more familiar with accompanying people in a virtual environment, for me the digital meeting space was very much like meeting in person.

On-line confidentiality

While appreciating the convenience of accompanying people in a digital environment, I was concerned about how to protect their confidentiality.

Many popular and generally free videoconferencing options may be convenient, but questions linger about their security and privacy measures.

I was advised to be sure that signing up with a service did not give the service permission to mine my or my client's data and on-sell it.

My colleagues sobering words were, "If it is free, you are the product."

His advice prompted me to sign up to a paid secure, encrypted service. And for six years, applying secure procedures I have been using www.zoom.us

I selected Zoom after extensive inquiries and testing a range of similar services. I conducted these tests in rural Australia and international settings.

Zoom is not a panacea for all ills, however, with proper security settings applied, I found the video and audio quality to be excellent; as someone listening to people and looking for visual signals both the audio and video quality is very important to me.

Zoom is also easy for clients to use and while ease of use is one thing, I am very pleased to learn that Zoom recently put increased emphasis on their security and improved it somewhat.

As well as features such as a virtual waiting room, password protection and locking the meeting, Zoom's new version 5 now offers robust security enhancements; adding AES 256-bit GCM encryption. This encryption improves the user's audio and video privacy while the data is in transit.

Optionally, on a paid account, I can select the countries the data is sent through, making it possible to avoid certain countries.

In summary

As a practitioner, if you are yet to offer spiritual accompaniment digitally, I warmly invite you to consider using this outreach and use a quality solution that is safe, secure and simple to use.

As a client, if you know someone you would like to see for supervision or spiritual accompaniment and they are not local, my advice is two-fold.

• Firstly, consider using video conferencing technology.
• Secondly and most importantly, ask the practitioner what video conferencing platform they use and what security measures it has.

Living in Australia in Coronavirus times I appreciate I am far more protected than in some other countries.

Part of adjusting to the 'new normal' means working from home and being able to meet the vast majority of my clients and indeed attract a few new ones.

Having developed a digital approach supported by suitable procedures, I hope digital technology continues to help me serve my clients and support them in their lives. At the end of it, whenever that maybe, I will be interested to see how many digital clients switch from the convenience of their place to in-person appointments.

Source

• Stephen Truscott SM, PhD is the Director of the Fullness of Life Centre (Inc.) Perth, Western Australia www.fullnessoflife.org.
• Stephen assists individuals, groups and organisations through counselling, spiritual accompaniment, professional supervision, retreats, organisational reviews and vocational assessment.

For some they discover the desire within their relationships, through their yearning to develop or deepen the quality of these relationships, whether with individuals, within groups or within the wider global community.

Others desire is born out of their commitment to bring about justice within the social systems in which they live and work.

While it seems, another group discover in their passion for the natural world the desire to ground their deep concern for the well-being of the environment in a spiritual context.

Traditionally the desire for spiritual direction is a means to reflect on their inner-self, through meditation or the search for deeper meaning in their lives.

It's different for each of us and whatever the presenting factor, a director helps the person to explore their human experience to encounter their spirituality within their lives.

In spiritual direction spiritual accompaniers companion people to attend to the life-giving presence of what is ultimate in their life as they perceive it and it is in this sense that we know spiritual direction by many names: spiritual accompaniment, spiritual companioning, spiritual guidance, spiritual mentoring, etc.

Finding a spiritual director

Traditionally a person seeking spiritual direction meets in-person with a local person but these days that's less necessary.

Knowing where to start looking a spiritual director is probably just as difficult as finding one.

Then again, for some people who have enjoyed a long association with their spiritual director, either they or their director is shifted. The tyranny of distance now makes it too difficult to continue meeting. What might they do?

Alternatively, either through the onset of illness or disability, it becomes too hard to travel for spiritual direction.

Another possibility is people might transfer overseas where local directors neither speak their language nor understand their culture. Whom might they approach as a spiritual director?

These questions assume spiritual direction can only happen in-person, in a face-to-face environment. Once that was true but no more.

So where do they find a director?

The traditional face-to-face environment within which people seeking spiritual direction is changing.

Spiritual seekers, young people in particular live in the Digital Age which has modernised communication processes.

Internet that has issued in unimaginable possibilities of connectivity.

The potential of this radical communication's platform has penetrated every part of society and this connectivity offers those seeking spiritual direction a virtual meeting place.

Local means global

In the digital age, the global is the new local.

Location no longer limits the time and place in which people meet a spiritual director.

Global services are as accessible as local services.

The Internet opens endless choices for everything, including spiritual direction.

Supervision, counselling even making a retreat is possible over the Internet

Privacy

While meeting with a spiritual director in a virtual environment is convenient, is it safe? Is it confidential?

Some spiritual directors use a range of popular and free services, however we all know that nothing is free.

When something is offered free to us we know we are the product. Our data, our information, our friends, our location are some of the elements free solutions put up for sale.

But wait, there's more!

Some major solutions actually record what is said and these recordings are available to society surveillance agencies and the like.

Opening ourselves is a relationship of trust. Opening ourselves to our self is often hard enough, however it is unwise to share our souls with the world.

Making wise choices

The Digital Age makes it much easier to search for a spiritual director; the person can be in across town, in another city, even in another country. The world's our oyster.

However, when looking online for a spiritual director as well as getting the right person be sure to ask if they meet over a 256bit encrypted video solution.

Failure to use a highly encrypted communication solution means it is most likely means others will know as much about you as you do.

It is like engaging in spiritual direction with a microphone at the local shopping mall.

If a spiritual director doesn't advertise their video communication solution is secure, it's probably not and if they don't know or have scant regard for online security, keep looking.

The experienced and skilled spiritual directors at the Fullness of Life Centre Perth offer a secure, encrypted service.

Please consider visiting www.fullnessoflife.org for further information.

• Stephen Truscott SM, PhD is the Director of the Fullness of Life Centre (Inc.) Perth, Western Australia www.fullnessoflife.org.