Phoenix Spiritual Direction Center Honored Rev. Kelly Murphy Mason will be speaking as a mentor for the Apprenticeship Training Program at the 2023 Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago this summer. Dr. Mason was the guest speaker for the “Dignity of Women” program track, which recognizes women and girls as a core constituency around the world. In fact, the global ethic promoted by the Parliament recognizes that establishing gender equality is an essential part of protecting universal human rights.
As a Member of Parliament, Dr. Mason supports the usefulness of global ethics in promoting women’s participation and leadership in spiritual and religious communities. A diverse audience including Jewish, Buddhist, Catholic, Protestant and interfaith women attended Dr. Mason’s presentation on August 18, 2023, “Being As Fully Yourself as Possible: Spiritual Direction for Women’s Liberation and Empowerment Across Traditions.”
Feminist Perspectives on Spiritual Direction
Dr. Mason called on those currently providing various forms of spiritual care to women in their respective traditions to be mindful of the harmful effects of misogyny, sexism, patriarchy, and male chauvinism, especially as these are enshrined in traditional religious teachings and testimonies. Dr. Mason also called on people to be mindful of opportunities for the “dignification and deification of women around the world” by adopting a feminist perspective, and to cooperate in “promoting midwifery and motherhood in spiritual contexts.” She included materials from feminist theologians, denominational resolutions, spiritual authors, singer-songwriters, and women mystics in her discussion, and encouraged the use of “mirroring/magnifying” and “echoing/amplifying” as approaches to working with women who are pursuing their own spiritual growth.
Women especially need support and affirmation
According to Dr. Mason, contemporary spiritual directors increasingly see themselves as “serving spiritual integration, personal development, and personal evolution” by “welcoming multi-religious, multi-spiritual, and dynamic identities” and remaining intentionally non-prescriptive yet attentively provocative in their work with spiritual leaders who seek personal counseling. With women in particular, directors need to act in ways that are “essentially supportive and as affirming as possible,” she declared in her presentation. She called for greater sensitivity to women’s commonly experienced experiences of being silenced, belittled, erased, and not believed. Possible fixes, she explained, include helping women “situate themselves within sacred narratives” in spiritual communities and religious traditions, and then “trust the authority of their own voices and practice advocacy for themselves.”
In addition to serving as a mentor to trainee spiritual directors, Phoenix Center for Spiritual DirectionDr. Mason currently serves as Community Pastor of Spiritual Direction at Arlington Street Church in Boston, Massachusetts.Kelly Murphy MassonDr. Mason has dedicated his extensive career to leveraging spiritual and religious resources to support greater human flourishing and has served as a consultant to faith communities for nearly two decades.Kelly Murphy Masson) She argues that spiritual direction, which combines psychological knowledge with religious education, is particularly useful in the modern context, and believes that the evolving field of spiritual direction has special potential to assist individuals who feel that organized religion is lacking in certain respects. Dr. Mason is the founder and CEO of the Harvard Flourishing Network (Harvard University
Source: Spiritual Direction 101 – www.patheos.com
