Quaestio Divina. Research as Spiritual Practice

Full text

The Way
, 53/4 (October 2014),
126–136
QUAESTIO DIVINA
Research as Spiritual Practice
Bernadette Flanagan
N IMPORTANT COMPONENT of most programmes of postgraduate
study is the closing assignment—the research, dissertation or thesis.
This assignment often assumes Olympic proportions for those who have
to undertake it so as to complete the award for which they are studying.
The perception of thesis-writing as an enormous undertaking usually arises
from the fact that it will be the longest piece of writing ever undertaken
by the student. In the context of the anxiety generated by writing such a
long piece of work, as well as the challenges of acquiring the technical
skills that undertaking research requires, it can be difficult to integrate
such a task with the content and focus of a postgraduate programme in
spirituality. However a number of recent developments are changing the
nature of the research experience and, as a result, the research project has
the potential to become a privileged occasion of spiritual transformation
for those undertaking it.
Educational Theory and Spiritual Transformation
Certain developments in contemporary educational theory echo the
instructions of Ignatius of Loyola in the twenty Introductory Annotations
regarding the Spiritual Exercises. In Annotation Two, Ignatius advises the
director of the Exercises that ‘what fills and satisfies the soul consists, not
in knowing much, but in our understanding the realities profoundly and
in savoring them interiorly’ (Exx 2). Similarly, in supervising research in
spirituality, the aim is to look beyond the topic, questions, methods and
conclusions to the Spirit at work in drawing the student into a particular
field of enquiry. New educational approaches can enable truth to be
relished during the process of conducting spirituality research.
Transformative Learning
One development of the past quarter-century that is having an impact on
the nature of the research experience is a movement in adult educational
contexts from transmissional to transformative learning. Transmissional
learning is associated with organized, teacher-directed instruction that
supports a quest for information, whereas transformative learning is
associated with facilitated, mentor-led processes that support the human
A

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search for meaning. The lineage of transformative learning is commonly
traced to Jack Mezirow, emeritus professor of adult and continuing
education at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York.
Transformative learning theory is preoccupied with precipitating ‘deep’
learning.1 In the mid 1970s, Mezirow’s interest in adult learning styles arose
from his study of women returning to college after years of being wives and
mothers at home. He discovered that, more than learning new information,
the women developed a different way of seeing themselves and their
world. Mezirow theorized that the ‘disorienting dilemma’ triggered by
their transition back into education could be a privileged moment of
transformation when facilitated with attentiveness and compassion.
John Dirkx, professor of higher, adult and lifelong education at
Michigan State University, advanced Mezirow’s work by developing an
approach to transformative learning proposing that, ‘Our journey of
self-knowledge also requires that we care for and nurture the presence of
soul dimension in teaching and learning’.2 Dirkx encouraged approaches
to learning that allowed underlying myths, archetypes and symbols to
emerge from the unconscious so as to develop a connection with soul
in the learning journey. Experiences of mystery—becoming a parent,
accompanying the dying, passing through loss of health, pursing a dream
or engaging in creative endeavour—open up a realm of being that is
barely visible to everyday consciousness. It is this realm that is critical
in both educational transformation and spiritual awakening.
Reflective Practitioners
As well as investigating themes of lived experience such as work,
relationships, challenging events and creativity, spirituality research may
also explore the practice of those who support the contemplative unfolding
of others through prayer, pilgrimage or spiritual accompaniment. In this
context, reflective practitioner theory can be a rich resource.
Reflective practitioner theory was introduced by Donald Schön in
his book The Reflective Practitioner in 1983. Schön was professor of urban
studies and education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In
his view, what is important about reflection, in any field of professional
practice, is that the practitioner is not just looking back on past actions
and theories, but rather consciously examining personal inspiration,
1 For ‘deep’ and ‘surface’ learning, see Ferenc Marton and Roger Säljö, ‘On Qualitative Differences in
Learning—II Outcome as a Function of the Learner’s Conception of the Task’, British Journal of
Educational Psychology, 46/2 (1 June 1976),
2 John Dirkx, ‘Nurturing Soul in Adult Learning’, Transformative Learning in Action: Insights from
Practice, 74 (Summer 1997), 80.

128 Bernadette Flanagan
experiences, actions and commitments, and using these to draw out new
knowledge and meaning, and achieve deeper levels of insight into their
practice. Thus, a person who has lived the Vincentian / de Marillac
charism for many years will enrich reflection on the contemporary practice
of spiritual accompaniment of those who are poor and marginalised by
employing his or her unique repertoire of insights. Similarly, a person who
has nurtured children from infancy to adulthood also brings a unique
repertoire of insights to bear on leading groups in prayerful reflection on
the maternal face of God.
Reflective practitioner research in spirituality has the capacity to
enrich ministry in a distinctive and original way. Education literature
emphasizes the significant role of a facilitator in supporting a transformative
engagement with ministry experience. Terms such as ‘animator’, ‘guide’,
‘mentor’, ‘host’, ‘catalyst’ and ‘co-learner’ describe the varied skills needed
and responsibilities undertaken by a research supervisor working within
this horizon.
Contemplative Inquiry
Drawing on his experience of higher education at Columbia University, the
contemporary mystic Thomas Merton wrote about his vision of education
in an essay entitled ‘Learning to Live’. Merton suggested that an intense
educational activity such as research could, at its core, be contemplative:
The fruit of education, whether in the university … or the monastery
… [is] the activation of that innermost center, that scintilla animae,
that ‘apex’ or ‘spark’ which is freedom beyond freedom, an identity
beyond essence, self beyond ego, a being beyond the created realm
and a consciousness that transcends all division, all separation.3
This conviction has worked itself out through recent developments in
contemplative education and contemplative inquiry.4 Mary Rose O’Reilley’s
book Radical Presence is typical of a stream of reflection on the relationship
between the tasks of educators—whether in teaching or research—and
the practices of spiritual companioning. Radical Presence asks, ‘What might
happen if we try to frame the central questions of our discipline as spiritual
questions and to deal with them in light of our spiritual understanding?’5
3 Thomas Merton, ‘Learning to Live’, in Love and Living, edited by Naomi Burton Stone and Patrick
Hart (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979), 3–14, here 9.
4 See Mirabi Bush, ‘Contemplative Higher Education in Contemporary Life’, Contemplation Nation: How
Ancient Practices Are Changing the Way We Live, edited by Mirabi Bush (Kalamazoo: Fetzer Institute,
2011), 221–237.
5 Mary Rose O’Reilley, Radical Presence: Teaching as Contemplative Practice (London: Heinemann, 1998), 3.

Quaestio Divina 129
Education, from the Chittenden Memorial Window, by Louis Comfort Tiffany
The cultivation of awakened personal presence in the setting of
research supervision can have profound outcomes. When any encounter is
underpinned by an active, lived presence, its impact can be of exceptionally
long duration; the encounter may even reverberate during the whole of
a lifetime. Contemplative inquiry also places demands on the researcher:
to cultivate the practice and art of structured attentiveness to mystery
in the research which is being undertaken.
Transformative, Reflective and Contemplative Research Methods
The question arises as to what types of research methods—step-by-step
approaches to investigating a research question—are adequate to the
vision presented by these developments. Three methods seem to offer
possible answers to this question: action research, intuitive inquiry and
auto-ethnography.
Action Research
Typically, action research is understood to be an investigation undertaken
at a particular time in an occupation or in the life of an organization with
a view to making discoveries that could improve the practice of those who
are researched. This type of research activity has become attractive in
recent decades as it promises to contribute to a constant improvement in
the core activities of socially engaged professions (for example, education,
social work, community development, journalism, health care provision)
and to increase the satisfaction of everyone involved in them. The
focus of a research project is determined by the hopes and reflections
of professionals about the improvement and enhancement of quality in

130 Bernadette Flanagan
their field of practice, and how this can be achieved by means of
comprehensive data gathering and the reflective pursuit of insight from
the data. Research in this framework does not seek an ‘objective’ truth
that exists outside the world of the researcher and is disconnected from
the action of everyday life. The professional practice of spiritual direction,
for example, benefits from gathering convincing evidence that a particular
form of intervention or practice has made a real difference in the lives
of directees; and careful reflection on data gathered can generate
further lines of enquiry.
In 2000, Prof. Peter Reason suggested that action research could, by
virtue of its commitment to wisdom practices, itself be considered a spiritual
practice. Reason’s view builds on his early work on the subject of ‘sacred
enquiry’, which emphasized the need to explore the depth experience
of beauty in diverse life settings, and to place healing at the heart of
encounter with the other.6 For him, action research includes a family of
step-by-step research methods—cooperative inquiry, participatory action
research, appreciative inquiry—designed to produce outcomes which
make the world more just, kind or compassionate and assist in enabling life
to flourish (whether for individuals or communities).7 Reason has found
resonances between the aims of action research and the vision of the
depth ecologist Thomas Berry, who perceived the universe as a communion
of subjects and not a collection of objects. The ‘Great Work’ of humanity,
in Berry’s view, is to live from this contemplative perspective:
No one is exempt. Each of us has our individual life pattern and
responsibilities. Yet beyond these concerns each person in and through
their personal work assists in the Great Work. Personal work needs
to be aligned with the Great Work …. While this alignment is …
difficult in these times, it must remain an ideal to be sought.8
Action research, for example with migrants or victims of torture
concerning their appropriate spiritual care, or into the spiritual enrichment
programmes delivered in elder-care centres, participates in the Great
Work, and so can contribute to fulfilling the vocational calling of those
who undertake such research.
6 Peter Reason, ‘Reflections on Sacred Experience and Sacred Science’, Journal of Management
Inquiry, 2/3 (1993), 273–283.
7 See Peter Reason, ‘Action Research as Spiritual Practice’, University of Surrey Learning Community
conference, 4–5 May 2000, available at http://www.peterreason.eu/Papers/AR_as_spiritual_ practice.pdf,
accessed 28 August 2014.
8 Thomas Berry, The Great Work: Our Way into the Future (New York: Bell Tower, 1999), 7, quoted
in Reason, ‘Action Research’, 19.

Quaestio Divina 131
Prof. David Coghlan, from Trinity College Dublin Business School,
has also argued that Ignatian spiritual reflection is an incipient form of
action research.9 He has identified how, in its essence,
… the Ignatian approach to spirituality views God as one who is
active in the world and who invites individuals and communities,
a) to seek and find God in the experience of their own lives and of
the world and b) to respond in action.10
‘The Ignatian cycles of prayer and action’, he continues, ‘can be juxtaposed
with the action research cycles of action and reflection’. Just as Ignatius
of Loyola brought prayer and action together in a mutually transformative
synthesis, so the contemporary action researcher explores the depths of
transformative longing at work in individuals and communities so as to
release that longing as an empowering gift.
Intuitive Inquiry
This is a strongly subjective research method which allows the inquirer to go
beneath the surface of a phenomenon being studied to the felt experience
of encounter with that phenomenon. It is particularly suitable for the study
of subtle human experiences such as the effects of spending time in nature,
living through a life-altering illness or becoming a parent.11 Rosemarie
Anderson, an internationally acclaimed teacher of intuitive inquiry, notes:
… what matters to the researcher may be an ordinary experience latent
with symbolic meaning: a transformative, anomalous, or peak experience;
or a social or personal phenomenon that invites inquiry for reasons
that only the researcher may apprehend, albeit vaguely, at the start.12
Intuitive inquiry is one among a broader collection of transpersonal
research methods that aim to support researchers who wish to study
transformative human experiences, including the spiritual dimension of
such experiences.13 These methods accept multiple ways of knowing as valid,
including feelings, intuition, dreams and altered states of consciousness.
9 David Coghlan, ‘Seeing God in All Things: Ignatian Spirituality as Action Research’, The Way,
43/1 (January 2004), 97–108.
10 David Coghlan, ‘Ignatian Spirituality as Transformational Social Science’, Action Research, 3/1 (2005),
89–102, here 95.
11 See Rosemarie Anderson, ‘Intuitive Inquiry: An Epistemology of the Heart for Scientific Inquiry’,
The Humanistic Psychologist, 32/4 (2004), 307–341.
12 Rosemarie Anderson, ‘Intuitive Inquiry: Exploring the Mirroring Discourse of Disease’, in Five Ways
of Doing Qualitative Analysis: Phenomenological Psychology, Grounded Theory, Discourse Analysis, Narrative
Research, and Intuitive Inquiry, edited by F. J. Wertz (New York: Guilford, 2011), 243–276, here 244.
13 See William Braud and Rosemarie Anderson, Transpersonal Research Methods for the Social Sciences:
Honoring Human Experience (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1998), ix.

132 Bernadette Flanagan
They emerge within the context of the Harvard professor Howard
Gardner’s ‘multiple intelligence’ educational philosophy, which asserts
that there are at least eight types of intelligence, all of which may be
engaged in the academy.14 While Gardner has not been a proponent of
spiritual intelligence, his work has created the context within which
research methods, such as intuitive inquiry, that refer specifically to the
spiritual meaning embedded in everyday human experience are more
widely accepted in the academy.
Within this framework, research may have a vocational character,
seeking to re-search that which has already been at work in a person’s own
life and those of a relevant sample group. Robert Romanshyn has observed
that this type of research is ‘a searching again of what has already made
its claim upon us and is making its claim upon the future’.15 It is often a
liberation from entombment in the dark places of personal history.
Auto-Ethnography
Ethnography is an important research approach for sociologists and
anthropologists, who are interested in presenting the contours of people’s
lives in their ethnic, social and cultural uniqueness, with a particular
focus on the everyday dimensions of life. Ethnicities, cultures or social
settings that are hidden or underrepresented in scholarly investigation are
of especial interest. For instance, the researcher may seek to understand
the culture of places and spaces such as factories or schools, or may be
interested in universal life experiences such as childhood, ageing, sexuality
or death. Whatever the focus of the ethnographer, the method is marked
by the intensity of the relationship between researchers and their subjects,
manifest in a deep commitment to developing strategies that allow the
living voice of the subjects to shape the narrative of findings.
Concomitantly, auto-ethnography is a form of self-narrative that
reflects on the self within its ethnic, social and cultural identity. Heewon
Chang, who is professor of educational and organizational leadership at
the Loeb School of Education, Eastern University, Philadelphia, has been
active in developing auto-ethnography as a method for spirituality research
in the academy.16 Such research is interested in how ethnic, social and
14 These intelligences are: linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, bodily-kinaesthetic, spatial, interpersonal,
intrapersonal and naturalistic. See Howard Gardner, Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences (New
York: Basic Books, 1999), 42–53.
15 Robert Romanyshyn, The Wounded Researcher: Research with Soul in Mind (New Orleans: Spring
Journal, 2007), 113.
16 Spirituality in Higher Education: Autoethnographies, edited by Heewon Chang and Drick Boyd (Walnut
Creek: Left Coast, 2011).

Quaestio Divina 133
cultural identity determines people’s quest for meaning, purpose and
authenticity, and their spiritual horizons in life.
Since spirituality shapes the public as well as the private self,
investigations of the public living-out of personal spirituality are also of
interest to the auto-ethnographer. In this latter vein, the research of
Elizabeth Tisdell, professor of education at the Penn State Harrisburg
Campus, has created the conditions whereby more and more ‘educators
and cultural workers are beginning to break the silence about the
connection between spirituality and education’.17
Spiritual Practices and Research
Developments in contemporary educational theory and in the range of
available research methods are facilitating new experiences of spiritual
growth in the process of undertaking academic research. A further field of
interest within this contemporary convergence between spiritual practice
and research is the possibility of applying structured spiritual practices such
as accompaniment to the research cycle. Kees Waaijman, emeritus
professor of spirituality at the Titus Brandsma Institute in the Netherlands
has been a leader in such developments, particularly through his writing
on ‘Methods’ in the seminal, Spirituality: Forms, Foundations, Methods.18
For Michael O’Sullivan spirituality research requires not only practices
such as spiritual accompaniment and the methods about which Waaijman
writes, but also what he calls the more foundational practice of authentic
self-presence. When researchers study lives, issues, situations, organizations,
traditions and trends they employ a range of practices rooted in and
expressive of their self-presence. These practices are, basically, attending,
inquiring, judging and deciding.19 When they function well, they are
practices of spiritual solicitude in relation to what is being studied, since
they enable the researcher to arrive at outcomes that give expression to his
or her dynamic and normative desire for beauty, truth, goodness and love
as ultimates in life. O’Sullivan calls this kind of self-transcending and
foundational self-presence ‘authenticity’: it is receptive, relational, reflective,
17 Elizabeth J. Tisdell, Exploring Spirituality and Culture in Adult and Higher Education (San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass, 2003), 20.
18 Kees Waaijman, Spirituality: Forms, Foundations, Methods (Leuven: Peeters, 2002), 59–946.
19 Bernard Lonergan gives the following list as operations: ‘seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting,
inquiring, imagining, understanding, conceiving, formulating, reflecting, marshalling and weighing the
evidence, judging, deliberating, evaluating, deciding, speaking, writing’. The operations of experiencing,
understanding, judging, and deciding are arrived at by denoting the various operations on the four
levels of experience, understanding, judgement, and decision by the principal occurrence on each level.
See his Method in Theology (Toronto: U. of Toronto P, 1990), 6.

134 Bernadette Flanagan
responsible and reflexive, and nurtured by connatural lived experience.
He declares that it can be verified as being correlative with objectivity.
Therefore for him it is imperative, for the sake of truthful, ethical,
aesthetic and loving research, that researchers devote time and effort not
only to learning methods for research, but also to cultivating what he sees
as the spiritual practice of raising the quality of their self-presence.20
In the same way, I believe that the stages of the lectio divina process of
reflection may usefully be applied to undertaking a research project,
transforming research into quaestio divina. While the origins of the practice
of lectio divina may be traced to the sixth-century Rule of Saint Benedict,
it was formalised as a four-step process by the Carthusian monk Guigo II
in the twelfth century. It involves reading (lectio), reflecting (meditatio),
seeking guidance (oratio) and being open to mystery (contemplatio).21
Lectio and Literature Review
The Russian mystic Theophan the Recluse (1815–1894) has provided
very specific instructions about the reading stage of lectio divina that I
believe are helpful when developing a literature review for a research topic:
You have a book? Then read it, reflect on what it says, and apply the
words to yourself. To apply the content to oneself is the purpose and
fruit of reading. If you read without applying what is read to yourself,
nothing good will come of it, and even harm may result. Theories will
accumulate in the head, leading you to criticize others instead of
improving your own life. So have ears and hear.22
The criticisms made here of mindless spiritual reading may have a wider
application to research reading for a spirituality topic. Such reading can
become abstract and disconnected from the lived question that is being
investigated. The literature presentation becomes devoid of personal
appropriation, an accumulation of theories with little wisdom being exercised
in selecting that which speaks to the heart of the research question.
Meditatio and Research Method
The French Cistercian abbot Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) attached
profound significance to the art of meditation. He developed his
20 See, for example, Michael O’Sullivan, ‘The Spirituality of Authentic Interiority and the Option for
the Economically Poor’, Vinayasadhana, 5/1 (January 2014), 62–74; and ‘Reflexive and Transformative
Subjectivity: Authentic Spirituality and a Journey with Incest’, in Sources of Transformation: Revitalising
Christian Spirituality, edited by Edward Howells and Peter Tyler (London: Continuum, 2010), 173–182.
21 Guigo II, The Ladder of Monks: A Letter on the Contemplative Life and Twelve Meditations, translated
by Edmund Colledge and James Walsh (Kalamazoo: Cistercian, 1981), 68–69.
22 The Art of Prayer: An Orthodox Anthology, edited by Igumen Chariton of Valamo (London: Faber
and Faber, 1997), 130.

Quaestio Divina 135
reflections while acting as spiritual adviser to one of his own monks,
who later became Pope Eugene III. In his five books on ‘Consideration’
he sets out a staged process for seeking after truth through meditation.
Together with prayer, he images meditation as one of the two feet on
which we proceed to discover what is not yet known:
Let us then ascend with meditation and prayer for our two feet.
Meditation teaches us what it is that we lack, and prayer obtains
it. Meditation shows us the way, and prayer makes us walk therein.
Finally, meditation lets us know the dangers which threaten us, and
prayer makes us avoid them.23
The necessity of finding ‘a way’—a path, route or map for the journey
being undertaken—may also have a useful application to scholarly research
on a spirituality topic. The discussion of the topic must avoid becoming a
love letter to the researcher’s pet subject. Instead, it is necessary to identify
a well-structured research method from the wide variety available today,
and undertake the research journey with critical awareness and integrity.
Oratio and Research Findings
In a Trappist reflection on prayer it is noted that in the act of prayer ‘the
person becomes quiet and thus open to the softer voice of God’.24 In
analyzing research findings it is essential that this quieting process can
occur so that the mysterious presence in the gathered data may be received
attentively. Recording research findings in spirituality requires listening
for the still small voice of Spirit within the spoken words, actions and
interactions of the informant. Indeed in interview-based research the
quality of the data itself may be influenced by the researcher’s capacity for
quieting. The ability to listen while showing a personal attunement to grace
at work in the world may have a powerful effect in evoking the confidence
of interviewees in sharing their own most authentic perceptions of the
dimension of spirituality being investigated. Reverent and attentive listening
often has an enabling effect in collecting data of profound significance.25
Contemplatio and Conclusions
Contemplation may be understood as a stance of presence, not only to
one’s own inner sense of mystery but also to the mystery in the situation
and needs of the world around us. A contemplative stance thus underlies
23 Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermo in natali sancti Andrea, 1.10, translation in Pierre Pourrat, Christian
Spirituality: In the Middle Ages (London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1924), 34.
24 James A. Jaksa, Voices from Silence: The Trappists Speak (Toronto: Griffin House, 1980), 13.
25 Janet K. Ruffing, To Tell the Sacred Tale: Spiritual Direction and Narrative (New York: Paulist, 2011), 117.

136 Bernadette Flanagan
and embraces every aspect of the research journey. Within this perspective,
all the reading, reflection, attentiveness, conversation, analysis and activity
involved in undertaking research can form a sense of personal encounter
with God. Since research can sometimes become a routine performance—
mechanical execution of another course requirement—the spirituality
researcher is ultimately challenged to become less and less controlling
of the conclusions of the research, and more and more committed to a
contemplative stance towards the meaning of the findings which may
even exceed the contours of the original question.
Epilogue
At the time when I was writing this, some students from an MA in Christian
Spirituality programme at All Hallows College, Dublin, where I teach
research methods, submitted their dissertations. Since what I have written
derives from what I taught, I asked them if, in retrospect, they considered
writing their dissertations to be a spiritual practice. Four of the students’
responses may offer an incentive to further consideration of the challenges
involved in developing research as a spiritual practice.
My research did move me beyond merely gathering information, it changed
my perceived spiritual outlook.
I had to ask myself if I really believed in what I was writing.
I think as I now reflect on the whole process of the research I very much
feel that it has taken me deeper into the area of what I was researching.
In summary I had to make room in my heart for this research. It caused me
to ponder on life and to consider what is really important for me …. It was,
for me, both a journey with the experiences of others and a journey to
myself. It gave me the opportunity to sort the wheat from the chaff in terms
of the information and misinformation out there about the subject matter
and connect with academic authors who clearly share the same passion
that I do. The result seemed to be more than the sum of its parts and I was
lighter as a result …. The process of engaging with a dissertation on
spirituality has the power to transform the consciousness of the researcher
as one cannot be distantly removed from the research, the researcher is in
the dissertation and the dissertation becomes part of the researcher.
Bernadette Flanagan is director of research at All Hallows College (Dublin City
University). She has published Embracing Solitude: Women and New Monasticism
(2013) and edited, with Michael O’Sullivan, Spiritual Capital: Christian Spirituality
in Applied Perspective (2012).