Spiritual direction (3): the conditions of the unconditional

The necessity of the purgative way

The authentic Christian spiritual tradition isn’t sentimental. Offhand, in fact, I can’t think of any authentic (i.e., non-Californian) spiritual tradition that is. It’s very nearly a given that if it’s sentimental, appealing to what an acquaintance of mine refers to as “feelz,” it can’t be considered spirituality in any serious sense at all. With that …