Tending to the Interior Life

Tending to the Interior Life — An Interview with Dana McWhirter

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Dana McWhirter completed the Prairie Jubilee Program in 2012 and has worked as a hospital chaplain and as a spiritual director. She is currently serving on the Prairie Jubilee council.

Dana’s journey to Prairie Jubilee began with a Bible study at St. Mary’s Road United Church in Winnipeg. She was intrigued by the way the study brought the Bible into contemporary times and wanted to pursue further education. On the suggestion of her minister, she contacted the University of Winnipeg and ultimately enrolled in graduate-level courses.

Bob Dueck: How did your course work at U of W lead you to Prairie Jubilee?

Dana McWhirter: I was taking courses and at some point, I had to decide what I was going to do with them. The U of W had some different options back in those days, including the program in Spiritual Discipline and Ministry Practice. [At that time, the Prairie Jubilee Program could be used for academic credit in the MA program in the U of W School of Theology, which has since closed.]

We had three ministers at our church, one of them being Susan Butler-Jones, who was an instructor in the Prairie Jubilee Program. Our other minister, Susan Tough, had taken the program. They were both very well-versed in what it was and could give a lot of guidance. I landed in Prairie Jubilee and completed the program with high hopes of doing spiritual direction.

Grace falls upon us periodically and, by the grace of God, people come to see me. Often it is pretty much exactly what they say: that there is a significant life event that causes a person to say, “I want a greater or deeper understanding to deal with the hurt or alternatively, to find someone to journey down the less-travelled road.”

A young woman came to me and said, “I just want to come here once.” Her mother had died the year before. When she was with all her siblings and her Dad, she had a definite experience of her mother. She said to me, “I think I’m losing my mind.” I said, “No, you’re not. This is your mother reaching out to you. I’ve met other people who have had a similar experience. I’ve read of other people having this experience. This is an indication of how much love there is between the two of you.” It was all she needed to hear.

Then there are people who are seeking someone to journey with them. A second young woman came to me for about a year-and-a-half. She was dealing with self-understanding of her sexuality and finding how that fit with her expectations for her life. She had assumptions when she was younger that she would meet a guy, they would be living life this certain way, they would have x number of children. She had an entire image in her mind about how her life would be. As she recognized her sexuality as lesbian, she needed someone to walk with her in that journey, to enter into an authentic and spacious conversation about her new understanding of her identity.

There are some people I have met with, for instance, ministers, who need simply to talk about their faith and their life experiences without ritual or tradition. It is deepening into their experience with the Holy, sometimes exploring dark spaces, sometimes joyfully recounting significant understandings of the human experience, doing the deep interior work this invokes.

How much would you say that spiritual direction forms what you have done as your work?

I have worked as a chaplain – I have the first level of the CPE program – Clinical Pastoral Education – which I did at Victoria Hospital. That was almost a full year and then the other work I did was at Fred Douglas Lodge [a nursing home] on Burrows Street.

The chaplaincy program is a great tie-in from spiritual direction and my supervisor at the Victoria Hospital said it served me very well in my chaplaincy there. I learned how to have a conversation with people in a hospital bed, to do a meditation with a patient with all the noise in the background and activity going on, to recognize when a person is in deep distress, and sometimes to be in deep listening as a patient shares his or her assurance about death and life after death. These are very beautiful and humbling conversations to have.

I said to one of the supervisors, “How are you going to know what I’m saying to these patients? It seems like you’re letting me go out there on a free rein. I thought you would be accompanying me.” My supervisor said “No, no. You just need to go and have a conversation. You’re doing fine.” Then I realized after a couple of weeks, “Oh…they are following me.” I actually caught one of my supervisors one time. I was talking to a patient when I heard a noise. I glanced over my shoulder and I could see him sneaking in behind the curtain.

So there is some accountability.

There is accountability. They do keep an eye on things. They aren’t letting people randomly wander around and talk to whoever they want.

On the other hand, as a spiritual director, in terms of accountability, you’re left largely on your own.

You are left on your own.

What do you feel about that?
While Prairie Jubilee teaches direction techniques, it is also the place where we learn guidelines, accountability to both the directee and ourselves to be authentic and provide space for conversation. It is the connection! Over the years I have used various resources. I do have my favourite ones, like Anam Cara, by John O’Donohue. The Star in My Heart by Joyce Rupp is another good one. It’s also important to read and study current writers, for example Brene Brown. People who seek spiritual direction are often drawn to certain writers or come from lifelong faith traditions.   A pastor or minister might have 20 years of study in theology.

So, it’s not knowledge that you’re topping up.

We do need knowledge, but we are also adding to the tool kit. Directees are looking to deepen into their experience. But how do you get to that place? You have to be able to talk to them, you have to be able to listen to what they’re saying, and “Oh, have you heard of…?” or “Oh, have you read…?” or “Are you familiar with…?”. Then we go into the experience; let’s go deep!

It’s important, as a spiritual director, to have that motivation to continue one’s own growth and development. I don’t think anyone who goes through Prairie Jubilee could walk away without feeling that deep need to be connected with Mystery. I need that day of silence on my annual winter retreat. I need to take a few days in the summer, in silence, to reconnect. My morning meditations, my yoga practice, there’s an intention tied to it. What is my intention as I go into this yoga practice, as I inhale and exhale? The breath work that we learn in Prairie Jubilee has always stayed with me. And that particularly has been useful in the hospital setting, to remain calm.  My meditations are an integral part of my day, starting with gratitude.

When something comes up during a spiritual direction session that you have to process yourself and you can’t really do in front of the other person, you have to keep yourself going somehow, right? You’re suggesting that conscious breathing is something that helps.

If something really rattles me, then all the preparation as we enter into silence with a directee, like “when a thought comes to your mind, just release it, let it go,” must be applied to my own experience. Breath work is the most effective thing for me because I will contract, almost holding my breath in those moments. So right away it’s, “Inhale, fill it up with life. Give this to God. Exhale, don’t hold on to this.”

Do you find that you need to work with that afterwards, after the session?

Sometimes I do.

Do you do that on your own, with your own practices? Or do you go see a spiritual director?

I do go to a spiritual director and I do talk with her sometimes about my experience as a spiritual director. But all the tools that are needed to get through a situation like that are taught in the Prairie Jubilee program. It’s really important in spiritual direction to continue to maintain those resources. Continue going to your spiritual director. If you’re doing BodyTalk, continue with your BodyTalk.

Sometimes I get nervous during spiritual direction, aside from being affected by the story I’m hearing – and that’s an ego thing for me. “Am I hitting all the right points on this?” But the point is to listen deeply. Get comfortable with silence. As those stories come out it’s not likely they’ll come out like a well-articulated novel. It could come out in a fluid, rapid emotional manner or it could come out staggered and stuttering and slow and with pauses. Later, your directee might say, “Nobody’s ever taken the time to listen to me.”

I can’t tell you how many times something big comes out in the last five minutes. But by then, I think it’s taken so much energy and courage for a person to get to that point where they come out with something really big, it’s just not going to be realistic to stay another period of time. And sometimes that’s all it takes. Sometimes they just needed to be able to open the door. And then they can go from there.

What would you say to someone who was considering signing up for the Prairie Jubilee Program?

I would say they are probably sitting in a space that requires attention and Prairie Jubilee is a great place to go to. They will be tended to and they will learn how to tend to others. It’s a very deep experience.

You will learn to become comfortable with silence. You will learn how to be comfortable with things that you may have been told, “ooh, that’s just ridiculous” – but it’s not.

Take care with your own self, be tender with your own self. A lot of people would say, “What?! No pain, no gain. What are you talking about?” So, it’s learning that. It’s learning first and foremost to tend to self so that you can authentically tend to others.

It’s normal to have a sense of uncertainty. Some students I’ve worked with have said, “I’m not really sure what I’m doing. I have all this material to read and we’re doing all these things, that – I’m just not really sure.” Then they’ll have an experience of the Holy and that will bring up questions about faith, friendships, work, and absolute beauty and love. That is real; that is deep connection.

I think they can expect to find an interior world that maybe they didn’t have a full grasp on, that maybe we never really have a full grasp on. We need to tend to the interior life. And that’s what Prairie Jubilee will teach you.

One word – to describe your experience of Prairie Jubilee. What’s one word?

I would say “home”. I feel like I have come home when I am there.