Franciscan Spirituality Center
920 Market Street
La Crosse, WI 54601
Welcome to the Franciscan Spirituality Center in La Crosse, Wisconsin’s, What is Spirituality podcast. Your host, Steve Spilde, is the associate director at the Center. His guests talk about their evolving understanding of God. My name is Steve Spilde, and today I’m meeting with Barb Kruse. Welcome, Barb. Thanks, Steve. Good to be here. We've known each other for about five years. We met before when we were part of the Spiritual Direction Preparation Program and that is a program of the Franciscan Spirituality Center and you were on the staff long before I joined the staff of the FSC. So, could you tell me when you joined the staff of the Center and, what brought you here. Sure. So, I knew about the Center and have been part of Spirituality Center long before I started working on staff and probably I think I began coming to the Center maybe in the ‘90s and looking for spiritual direction. I remember coming to an Enneagram program. I was connected with the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, the FSPA, through my husband, Joe's, work at the hospital so we were connected to the sisters in that way because the sisters were sponsors of the Franciscan or St. Francis at that time, so I know a lot of the sisters. I knew about the Center and just felt the draw to come here. So, I would guess that was probably through than ‘90s that I started coming to the Center again for programs and also spiritual direction. With that came an invitation to think about and consider the Spiritual Direction Preparation Program, and I listened to that invitation and it felt right for me and so I started the program I think it was like in, gosh, 1999 maybe, and then finished the program in 2001 or 2002, somewhere in there. Those are the dates that I was part of the part of the program. So, then that connected me to the Center in an even a greater way, but I did not come to work at the Spirituality Center probably until about maybe in 2007 or 2008, I came on just to work on a Venture Grant that the Center had received from the Franciscan Sisters, from the FSPA, to have a Franciscan fest so we created this festival and I was part of that planning and I did that and then what surfaced from that experience was a part-time position on staff in spiritual direction and then eventually leading into being director of the Spiritual Direction Preparation Program and being here for 10 years after that time, knowing you Steve for half that time. That's a long version of long story. No, it’s all good. You mentioned coming for spiritual direction and being involved in providing spiritual direction. For people who are new to that, how would you describe spiritual direction? There are so many definitions of spiritual direction, probably that the one that would come to mind first and foremost would be spiritual direction as an opportunity to sit in the sacred setting with another person who will listen deeply, compassionately, nonjudgmentally to your deeper story . We hear a lot about each other's stories throughout our days. There's a lot of our story that we keep hidden, and that deeper story is a story that when we do share it, and in a spiritual direction setting, it opens us up to tapping into our truer and authentic self, which I believe is our God self and our spirit self. And with that ability and opportunity to do that we find, at least I found, that I become more connected. This flow of love, of what I would call God, other religions would call it something different, that is always calling me more deeply and to love and have compassion for myself and for the world around me, so spiritual direction can offer that place to understand our belovedness and free us from the wounds of our deeper story and help us be more connected to all of creation, which we already are. We just don't really get it most the time. Do you remember the first time you went to spiritual direction? The first visits? Sure I do. Who was your spiritual director? Sister Mary Kathryn (Fogarty). It was great, and you know the best part about it, and I don’t know, it took maybe a couple visits, but really, to have somebody listen who really cared and didn't, I felt that they weren't waiting for their opportunity to speak about their story because I'm a listener, so I'm always waiting for the other person to share and then my story stops and then I receive what they had to say but she was there just fully listening to me so I felt really heard, and I also didn't take very long for her to help me see the connection between my story and God's story and how my story fits into that. Just that beautiful story of love that I am okay just as I am. Even with my baggage and even with my brokenness. I’m fully loved it, and that that was the most freeing thing for me to have somebody tell me what I intuitively knew which I think we all know that we just, it's locked away. Is that what you expected you would get from her? No, I didn't know what I was going to get, no I just felt that a point in a time in my life probably in my late 40s, mid-40s and raising kids, life was full crazy good that it was so good, but inside I felt that unsettledness in a restlessness and even a simmering anger that I just couldn't quite put my finger on, and I don't know, I think, again, I'm all about paying attention to the invitation, so somewhere along the line I heard a conversation between people or a comment or read something that just invited me to consider spiritual direction as a place to go in and maybe to look at the more deeply into my story. So, you did, you met with her one-on-one for spiritual direction, for how long? Well, you know, on and off several years, I'm sure. The peace that sometimes happens in spiritual direction, but not always, Mary Kathryn being the really astute and attentive spiritual director, she listened to my story for a couple of sessions and then said that it might be a good idea for me to see somebody professionally to unwrap the story a little bit more, So, of course, you know I was like you mean go to what, a therapist, which felt real scary, but I think I was brave enough to know that it was the right thing to step into and again. Yet it was the right thing. So I was seeing Mary Kathryn for spiritual direction and went to see Mary the therapist. I saw her for probably four or five times and I just had a deeper story I needed to tell and I told that story, and she listened and there was a healing that happened in just telling the story. So how is therapy different from spiritual direction? How is what you got with Mary different from Sister Mary Kathryn. I think when you go to therapy that there is always a little more outcome focused. When you go to therapy that, as a therapist, a therapist would feel that responsibility to move the person you know maybe from point A to point B. Oftentimes not considering the spirituality that underlies the whole story. So, I think Mary was able to take my particular story and experience in my life, and offer me some tools and some insights that helped me understand the story a little bit more and again a lot of it's just giving permission, like you're okay, this wasn't your fault, this is what happens, so that was really a freeing and healing thing for me but that wasn't the spiritual piece woven through that. Some therapists will do that. But typically that doesn't happen so spiritual direction is not about getting a person to a specific place because as a spiritual companion or a spiritual director, I will just continue to listen to the story, invite the directee more deeply into their story by asking them feeling question longings, but where is God in the midst of this for you? What do you feel you're being invited to? A little more deeply, the directee can explore their particular experience or story in the context of what God's invitation is for them in. You mentioned when you started seeing Mary Kathryn you were busy as a mom and you got four sons? I do. So that's your current family and then the family you were born into, how big it was your family, where did you fit in? Yeah, the family of origin. There were six of us kids and I was the fourth, and in the way the family happened, there were four of us older kids and then this period of no kids and then two more kids a little bit later on so I'm the youngest of the first of the first four and then there's nine years between myself and my sister and then three years between her and my brother Tom, So I have three older brothers and me and then my sister Marianne and my brother Tom. So even though I was fourth born, I was the first girl. And you were kind of like the youngest child when you grew up. Until I was nine. okay yeah. My dad called me fairy wings, but I really wasn't much of fairy wings. I was a real tomboy, I had these three older brothers. Yeah. So, the family you grew up in, religious, not religious? Yeah, I grew up in a Catholic household. I was born in 1956, so my elementary school years were the during the ‘60s, went to parochial school from second grade to sixth grade in a parochial school and then that was it in the town we lived and so then we went to public school. My mom was born and raised Catholic. My dad was not. He was, I think his family was Lutheran. I don’t know how much they would practice their faith, and then my dad converted to Catholicism, probably in order at that time, to marry my mom. This would be back in the early ‘50s yeah which is once I remember his family could not come, no his brother, nobody could be in the wedding party from his family because they weren’t Catholic and I think his mom didn't even come to the wedding. She was just pretty disappointed about the whole thing. I’ve picked that up over the years, that was a little bit of a sore spot, a sadness. But anyway so Dad was the best Catholic he could be. We went to church every Sunday