Seeking the Soul with Jennifer Revill

By Associate Director, Rev. Michael Reed

Each month in 2024, we spend time "Seeking the Soul," as Rev. Michael Reed, our Associate Director, engages in profound conversations with Rolling Ridge’s program leaders. Today's interview features Jennifer Revill, a spiritual director whose journey took an unexpected turn from decades in airport administration at Boston Logan to a calling in spiritual companionship. Jennifer's unique perspective bridges the gap between the secular and the sacred, drawing insights from her time overseeing bustling terminals to now guiding individuals on their spiritual trajectories. As a member of the Rolling Ridge Listening Collective, Jennifer navigates the shifting landscape of modern spirituality, offering support to those seeking meaning inside and outside of traditional religious structures. You won't want to miss her thoughts on Spiritual Emergence, lessons from the film “Hidden Figures,” and how everyday spaces like airport terminals can become sacred.

Michael’s questions are in bold, and Jennifer’s responses are below in plain text.

You and I first “met” over email, when I would email you to connect you with someone who wanted to receive spiritual direction at the Ridge. Not only are you one of our directors and retreat leaders, but you’re the proprietor of The Mobile Mystic. Can you tell us about that, and what you do as a spiritual companion for others?

I want to be a trail guide and a companion to these spiritual seekers, meeting them exactly where they are, and whether they feel most spiritual in church, at work, on top of a mountain or anywhere else. I offer not only support and validation of their diverse spiritual journeys, but can provide a tool kit of ideas and practices to help them deepen their understanding of God, or the Greater Good. I do this in a variety of ways: consulting, events, speaking engagements, small group ministry, creative gatherings, and community awareness. I love working with poetry and journaling as prompts for the Spirit, and have also used collage and sketching to provide fresh modes for spiritual expression.

My life-long interest in the life of Spirit is the cornerstone of my work, and spiritual companioning is the most important element of my practice. There is a tremendous need today to create safe spaces for individuals to articulate, honor, and explore their spiritual nature and longings. My clients and directees come from a diverse array of personal and religious histories and backgrounds. I seek to discover and nurture each person’s unique one-on-one relationship with the Greater, in whatever way feels most vivid and true for them. It might be through simple conversations, through connecting them with their love of nature or art, delving into issues of interpersonal relationships, working with religious or spiritual practices including prayer, and in other ways. What doesn’t change from person to person is the caring support I hope to offer as each discerns his or her unique spiritual path.

In the last few years, I have also felt an authentic calling to move beyond the one-on-one container of traditional spiritual direction into more group- and community-based models for spiritual conversation. That’s where the Mobile Mystic comes in. I myself am not “the” Mobile Mystic; that’s simply a nameplate affixed to a concept. The word “mobile” suggests something in motion, fluid or changing. A “mystic” is someone who seeks direct experiences of the sacred. Mobile mysticism tags those individuals who are on the move through the ordinary, secular world, but are finding – or hoping to find – sacred experience in all corners of that world.

The “Web of Inclusion” exercise from a previous Spiritual Emergence Day Retreat, led by Jennifer Revill and Kris Girrell.

You spent decades working at Boston Logan in airport administration before making a major career change! What prompted the shift to work centered in spirituality? And what lessons or insights have you gained when moving from administration to the work you do now?
 
It’s true: for more than thirty years, the views from my office window were of the terminals and runways of Logan International Airport. As I was engaged in the work of planning and constructing facilities for the millions of people who pass through the airport each year, I frequently found myself seeking the deeper meaning of what I was doing. I wondered: Why was it important to understand how human beings interact with each other and with their physical environments? Can regular, prosaic places like airport waiting rooms be sacred spaces? Where is the soul when a person is just doing ordinary things in ordinary public places? And what is our collective responsibility for souls that we may, in any situation, find under our care? Also, as I worked on thousands of construction projects with rotating teams of colleagues, I found myself wondering about how the spiritualities of the individuals on a given team affected the outcomes of the projects for better or worse, and how we could support each other to create a more caring, creative, and spiritually healthy environment to nourish our work life.
 
I enrolled in the Merrimack College graduate spirituality program in 2018 to pursue a master’s degree in spirituality and spiritual direction. I did so purely because of my deep interest in the subject matter; I had no plan to make any sort of career change.

Then came the pandemic, and as a consequence of that upheaval, I retired from my airport job just weeks before completing that degree. It was an abrupt transition, yes, but with time I came to see how my career spent serving disparate groups of people had shown me that there are always opportunities for soul growth, and that spiritual reflection and transformation are possible in every place people spend their time. It turns out that my many years of interacting with, listening to, problem-solving with, and literally and figuratively creating spaces for thousands of people at Logan had direct through-lines to the work of spiritual direction and spiritual community-building. And thus began my second career.

One of the retreats you and Kris Girrell lead at the Ridge is “Spiritual Emergence,” happening again on Nov. 15th. You’ve said elsewhere that you’re particularly interested in the spirituality of non-religiously-affiliated people. Can you expand on that—and how Spiritual Emergence fits in?
 
Some of us find our spiritual homes within the beliefs and practices of traditional religious faiths, and happily stay within those faiths for a lifetime. Others may reject the religion of their youth, opting to create their own spiritual touchstones. And some others have never even experienced any religious structure in their lives, but still identify as spiritual people. I believe that no matter our circumstances, nor whether we can articulate it, all of us have a deep yearning to connect with something sacred, and something greater than ourselves. Our paths are wildly different, and not all of them lead to the door of a church, but at the core, our motivation is the same.
 
The human race is struggling to navigate global environmental stresses, as well as cultural and technological changes, any of which may separate our spirits from each other and our planet Earth. Spirituality is shifting, dissociating itself from traditional religious forms and often taking more diffuse privatized shapes, leaving us without traditional structures to guide us. Spiritual seekers are now, often, doing their seeking independently.

The Spiritual Emergence retreat is a place to reflect on where we are in our spiritual lives, where we hope to go, and how we can nurture our own growth now and in the future. It’s a chance to learn meaningful practices that we can use ourselves, but also to begin to cultivate a community of like-minded others to walk the spiritual route with us, if we so desire to.

To do this, we first need to know where we have been. As I grow as a spiritual director, I am more and more drawn to the notion of a person having a spiritual “trajectory.” The word has surprising power when used in a human context. Just think about that word.

Perhaps you have seen the film “Hidden Figures”? It’s the true story of the African-American women who worked as “computers” for NASA in the early days of the space program. One memorable moment in the film is when future Presidential Medal of Freedom winner Katherine Johnson figures out how to solve the differential equations that describe a space capsule’s orbit and reentry. Using that information, their “computing machines” (early mainframe computers) could then calculate its precise trajectory, starting with the launch and ending with a guaranteed splash-down at a known location. But the astronaut John Glenn, whose life depended on the calculations being correct, insisted that Katherine herself, with her human intelligence and care, do a final verification of the machine’s work. Only then did he feel confident that he could rocket into space and return home safely.
 
Of course, a person’s spiritual development does not follow a predictable trajectory like a space capsule. But I think using the trajectory idea can frame how we think about spirituality, perhaps with more nuance than the more commonly used terms “spiritual path” or “spiritual journey.” The word “path” suggests a way to follow that’s already been trodden by others; the word “journey” suggests a forward motion directly from one place to another place. I mean, has anyone’s spiritual life actually proceeded like that? But a trajectory contains both knowns and unknowns, personals and universals. And because we are not rockets, but people, all kinds of things change, all the time, which can significantly alter our spiritual life course.  Each of our trajectories is unique, and has the qualities that it has because of where we launched from, our era of time, our passions and interests and personalities and families, our location on the planet, and the larger contexts of our lives.
 
We can’t depend on a computer to analyze and compute where our souls are headed; only deep human empathy and insight can help us do that. Spiritual Emergence is a place where we can come together and share our past spiritual stories and hopes for our future.

Join Jennifer and Kris for the next Spiritual Emergence Day Retreat on Friday, Nov. 15th. Click here to learn more.

What prompts people to seek spiritual direction? Is it only people in crisis? Or do people come with different starting points and directions in mind?

For the individuals I have met and worked with in spiritual direction relationships, it has rarely been a crisis that spurred them to seek a spiritual director. Certainly, a serious health or family crisis could prompt a search for a caring listener to help one through an acute period of difficulty. But more often, it seems that it’s the normal strain of a human life, things seemingly ordinary and surmountable, that kickstart the realization that there is more to be known, and that there are critical connections to be uncovered. 

I also think that as people age (and presumably grow wiser) they become better at hearing the messages that their souls are sending them, and they begin to feel an urgency to think more wisely about life, God, and mortality while they still have time to do so. I am humbled, always, to see how common circumstances and concerns (a looming retirement date, a shattered friendship, a newly empty nest, or a medical diagnosis) can create an incredibly fertile ground for self-inquiry and for the deepening and broadening of the soul in its movement toward God. If pursued with care and nuance, spiritual direction is the “best seat in the house” from which to witness this kind of meaningful spiritual growth.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: If you are looking for a spiritual director, Rolling Ridge can help!  The process begins by completing an online form. Our Listening Collective team will work to match you with someone whom you can meet and discern if this is a good companion for your spiritual journey.]

If you could have a cup of coffee (or tea, or something stronger) with any spiritual leader, living or dead, who would you choose? Tell us why.
 
I think this is the most difficult of your questions to answer! There are so many, from so many different traditions and eras. But if I could go back in time, I would make my way to Concord, Massachusetts, and try to have tea with Ralph Waldo Emerson. So many of his writings, even in the distinctly formal language of the 19th century, still shimmer with insight today. The Transcendentalist view of life, with its belief in the essential unity of all creation, and the innate goodness of humanity, and its responsibility for its own relationship to the Divine, is an ongoing inspiration for me.
 
Emerson had his own ideas about spiritual trajectories: “Be not the slave of your past — plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with new self-respect, with new power, and with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.” Emerson is one of my most important spiritual and intellectual mentors.

As a professional organization, the Listening Collective enriches the art and skills of those called to deep listening and spiritual direction. Together, they share practices, stories, and resources, and feel the warmth of peer-led support and encouragement in the life-giving vocation of soul companioning. Learn more here.

One new venture we’re working on here at Rolling Ridge is the emergence of our Listening Collective, a professional organization for Spiritual Directors and Companions. Can you share from your own experience about what the Listening Collective does, and how it’s evolving?
 
The Listening Collective is Rolling Ridge’s affiliation and support network for spiritual directors. Its members include not only those who have been certified by Rolling Ridge’s own spiritual direction training program, Gateways to God, but other directors, trained elsewhere, who are looking for a community of learning and support for their vocation of deep listening.
 
I have been affiliated with Rolling Ridge as a spiritual director for about three years, and I was thrilled when the opportunity to join the Listening Collective was offered to me. Among the many benefits is the opportunity to be part of a peer supervision group with other spiritual directors. As any spiritual director knows, supervision is a foundational part of one’s practice, providing not only spiritual support for each director, but a reality check on the pragmatic issues of one’s practice. The peer group is composed of directors who have all faced the same questions, challenges, and joys, and who can hold a comforting space around each other as we talk through the nuances of our practice and the growing edge of our companioning skills.
 
The Listening Collective is continuing to expand its membership and mission, and hopes to build its network of spiritual directors through in-person gatherings, retreats, and trainings over the coming year. It has recently created a lead team of several affiliated directors to assist with membership onboarding, matching directors with directees, and coordination/finding synergies with other programs at Rolling Ridge. We are gratefully and hopefully working toward the creation of a regional center for spiritual direction which will serve directors and directees alike.

Are you interested in receiving spiritual direction?  Click here to express your interest.

Learn more about Jennifer’s work at www.themobilemystic.net.