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I still remember the moment, although it happened nearly 15 years ago. I was an evangelical seminary student in my 20s, preparing for the Christian ministry and struggling through classes in everything from exegesis to administration to pastoral care. Struggling, too, with my call and with a prayer life that seemed to consist mostly of talking to the ceiling. One of my professors, a gentle and quiet man with a background in spiritual formation and psychology, had just delivered a talk on prayer and personality in that morning's chapel service. Maybe, I thought, he might have some answers to all the questions I was asking. Hesitantly I made my way down the hallway, knocked on his door, blurted out my confusions, and stumbled unawares into one of the church's oldest practices: that mentoring along our faith journey that goes by the name of spiritual direction.

Although I did not know it then, I was also stumbling into a larger trend among late-20th-century Protestants in returning to devotional practices with roots deep in the Christian tradition. Browsing the aisles in the "inspirational" section of the bookstore, it is hard to miss titles such as Celebration of Discipline, Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home, The God of Intimacy and of Action, Soul Friend, and The Holy Longing. While it has points of contact with psychotherapy, Christian spiritual direction is a different undertaking altogether. Spiritual directors focus on helping their clients attend to the presence of God in their lives and explore ways in which they might open themselves up to that presence more fully—everything from trying new forms of prayer to seeing God in the everyday to (if the situation warrants it) psychological or pastoral counseling. Together, they probe exactly the same sorts of issues that were troubling me all those years ago: What has God called me to do? How should I go about doing it? And how do I know that I am really doing His will when I try?

The Bible shows some mentoring relationships (Paul and Timothy, for example), and church fathers such as Basil, Jerome, and Augustine wrote letters of spiritual counsel and encouraged believers to seek out, in Basil's words, a trusted counselor "who may serve you as a very sure guide in the work of leading a holy life." (Basil also argued that "to believe one does not need counsel is great pride.") But the roots of today's practice of spiritual direction are most readily found in the practices that developed in the deserts of Egypt, Syria, and Palestine around 300-400 A.D.

Called abba ( "father") and amma ("mother"), men and women who went to the desert to devote their lives to meditation as hermits soon found themselves dispensing counsel to spiritual seekers. (Much more has come down to us about the men than about the women, though sayings of four famous ammas are included in the famous collection Sayings of the Desert Fathers.) Most seekers stayed and began to live in community with each other, and out of these communities came the monastic tradition. But some, even then, took the words of advice back into their secular lives. Among the most famous of the early abbas were Evagarius (345-399), whose teaching formed the basis of our concept of the seven deadly sins, and John Cassian (360-435), the author of Conferences (a sort of "greatest hits" of spiritual advice from abbas all over the desert.)

Eastern Christian spirituality quickly became rich in these relationships, producing a sizable collection of works that encouraged Christians to use a spiritual guide and described how to go about finding—and being—one. No different from the manuals and devotional helps populating today's bookstores, many focused on methods and practices of prayer, not least the Jesus Prayer ("Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner"), which believers were encouraged to repeat and to incorporate into their daily life.

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