Introduction to 'Landscapes of the Soul'

Geoff Holsclaw: Landscapes of the Soul is the book we just put out. Attachment Theory and spiritual Formation is the intersection. It's what we're talking about. But why should spiritual directors read this book? What might they get out of it and how might it help their work or possibly help their directee? That's what we're talking about today on this special launch episode of the Attaching to God podcast.

Meet Our Guest: Summer Gross Joy

Geoff Holsclaw: Our guest today is no stranger to the podcast. It is Summer gross joy. She is an Anglican. Priest, a retreat leader, spiritual director. She's also associate faculty of the spiritual formation and the art of spiritual direction at the Healing Care ministry's spiritual direction school. And she was also, she joined us for last year's attaching to God's [00:01:00] Summit, which was such a delight.

And she recently wrote a book called The Emmanuel Promise, discovering The Security of a Life Held By God, which talks about attachment quite a bit. Welcome back,

Summer Joy Gross: Thank you so much, Jeff. I am so appreciative for all the work that you and Sid are doing. And lo I just hear from about it from so many different friends who are even taking your DIN program and I'm always asking them after they come back, so what did you learn this.

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah we just finished it. Finished cohort. Seminar last week with someone that you know, and so that was a lot of fun. But you're not a stranger to this attachment stuff. We previously, we talked to Monica Mauer, who's a therapist and she knows all about attachment and working with clients and the book was really helpful to her.

But you you've been in and around this stuff and I'd love to hear your reactions of landscapes of the [00:02:00] soul. So that's the book, obviously, for all of you listeners. 

Summer's Journey into Spiritual Direction

Geoff Holsclaw: First, can you tell us how you've gotten into like your own work that you do with spiritual direction and with individuals, but also with groups and the other things you do?

Summer Joy Gross: Yeah I got a Spiritual Direction certificate about eight years ago after being a. Pastor for 10 years pastor in a church with my husband, we coworked just like you and Sid cowork now. we had the privilege of doing that for 10 years and had the experience of watching people struggle in our congregation.

Just the stuck in resentment or stuck in an old story and became. Passionate about learning about inner healing. How could we practically come alongside people in helping them to experience [00:03:00] God breaking in his resurrection life, pulling them up? Have you ever seen that icon, Jeff? it's the resurrection icon and sometimes it's called the harrowing of Hell.

It is just my favorite in which the resurrected Christ is pulling up Adam and Eve out of their caskets and bringing them

Geoff Holsclaw: I have one on the wall. I can look at it right now. While I'm looking at you. Yeah. And I love it because there's it looks like he's floating in the air, but then there's these two boards and they're actually the doors of hell that he's standing on that he's blown the hinges off of.

And then some pictures have just like manacles and chains that are just cast off. I love it. It's so

Summer Joy Gross: If not Satan, himself being chained in there or death himself being chained. Yeah. We were watching our people stuck in in death in different ways and wanting to see the resurrected life Christ [00:04:00] break into their lives and pull them out of their places of death. So we had the privilege of going to Healing Care ministries, learning from.

Terry Wardle and Anne Halley. And Anne was teaching on attachment even back then. I think that was 12, 14, 15 years ago that she was teaching on attachment. I just saw her last week and she's doing well and and teaching still in our spiritual direction School. But at that time she was teaching on attachment and doing attachment interviews with her spiritual direction clients to understand more about their early stories so that she may be under able to understand what she calls our book of love. Which would help her to [00:05:00] understand how people are looking through their book of love at God through that lens. So Ann Halley has done beautiful work, and I know that she was Kurt Thompson's spiritual director for a period of time as well. She's touched a lot of our lives.

Geoff Holsclaw: Oh, that's great. That's so nice. 

Understanding Attachment Theory

Geoff Holsclaw: So how has learning about attachment then and I love that idea of looking through the Book of Love. I know Dr. Todd Hall, he talks about attachment filters, and then of course we talk about these different landscapes that we see all of life through.

But how has that helped you either personally or on helping those people on resurrection journeys? How has this attachment stuff kind of been important for you?

Summer Joy Gross: First, it's been huge in my own life, of course, and how the Lord has. Walked into some stories that were closed and [00:06:00] stifled and where I needed him to rescue me from those places. And to find me as a daughter who needed attachment with her new Abba father. So that was the big aha moment for me is.

Talking to some friends who had adopted children and their own experience of trying to walk with them into an attachment bond and then realizing, oh our God. Has adopted us, and yet we still see him as far away and needing to be placated by rules in order to be loved. And I'm just really grateful for this lens of attachment in which I could start to see [00:07:00] that kind of the holes or the the cracks in my own attachment, secure attachment in order to be invited into, as you call it, the safe pasture and life with God. So first of all, it's been super helpful in my own life. And then second, understanding where people have come from in their own attachment journey has helped me to understand the majority of people who have some really warped images of God.

And that's my work is really. How do we invite the true God, our God as he reveals himself through scripture into the present moment. Of our lives, even when that present moment doesn't seem pretty [00:08:00] good. And because of that, because so many of us are living in difficult circumstances, we need to know that we have a God who joins us.

In that place and who is safe and loving and as you say, also challenging, to meet us there, to be with us there and also to move us. And that's honestly I loved your lenses, but I also. Loved the invitation to see God as one who not just meets us, but one who moves us as well. And that felt I think.

I may have touched on pieces of that just a little bit, but you explored that so much more and it was such a joy to, to read [00:09:00] those portions and and to be challenged in that way. That was exciting.

Geoff Holsclaw: Oh, thank you. The. They and maybe you just, you touched on it with the, that word challenge and the meeting and moving. 'cause a lot of the attachment kind of literature that we were going through and certainly the popular ones would talk about secure attachment comes about through sometimes being seen and soothed and being, 

Summer Joy Gross: safe and secure. The four

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah. Safe sec. Yeah. The four Ss. So that comes from Dan Siegel and Kurt Thompson talks about it, and that's all true. There's this other part that we were really trying to emphasize, which is something like. That secure attachment also requires this kind of exciting or excitable or expand, expanding kind of energy.

So it's not just that when we're in distress that we need to be soothed and seen and brought to safety, which is true, right? And people who have been traumatized, they need to start there. Definitely. But there's also the side of the attachment where it's like we're built [00:10:00] to also go out and to explore.

And that parents can be those who challenge and give energy or encourage and encourage is like a really good word because it means in which is to like. the prefix there is to do with or to to give it, and then the courage is to build the courage, right?

So you're actually giving your child courage so that they can do things. You're encouraging them. So I'm glad that you latched onto that that the meeting and moving is it's both the care and the challenge is how we

Summer Joy Gross: This is how I see that in my spiritual direction practice. How I see the need for that in my spiritual direction practice. A lot of folks will come to me and say, I have these whole periods of time where I'm not thinking about God at all. I have these whole periods of time where I'm engrossed in my work or in my to-do list or in the people around me, and I'm, I feel bad.

I feel shame. That I'm not thinking about [00:11:00] God all that time. And one of the things that I appreciated from other attachment literature as well, was the importance of, when a child feels secure, they move out and they're creative and they're engrossed in their play. They know that they're safe.

They know that they carry within them as some say, they carry within them the smile, they carry within them, the care, and so they're free to go out and explore. In order to come back at times, but they're able to be completely engrossed in what's giving them joy and exploring. And that's a part of early childhood de development.

To be able to go out and explore. And so I loved [00:12:00] what you did spending more time on the invitation of God and it, I think it fills God out even more to how he reveals himself to one who meets us, but also one who challenges us. But the challenge is not outside of his love.

Care. It's the exploration that we're invited to do is within his care.

And that I think we see that. Let's look for a second at Matthew and Jesus sending out the disciples and he doesn't go with them.

Them to go and then when they come back he the Greek says he jumps for joy.

Geoff Holsclaw: yeah. And that's what we talk about that, in one of the chapter, the later chapters about how, I, and I think it's in Mark's gospel that says [00:13:00] it, when he called the 12 disciples, he called them and then the two main verbs are that they would be with him and that he would be sending them out.

And so he was, those are the two kind of. 

Intimacy and Independence in Spiritual Practice

Geoff Holsclaw: And so before we jumped on and started recording, you said that these the themes of like intimacy and independence stood out to you so we could jump there, but that was the idea that Jesus was calling his disciples to be intimate with them, but it also gives them lots of opportunity for independence, not f.

Against God or from God, but in alongside Jesus. And he sends him out on mission and then they come back a little freaked out and then they keep growing. It's that whole growing and learning process for sure. But you said intimacy and independence stood out. Could you just talk about that for a minute?

Summer Joy Gross: Yeah, so I think because of brother Lawrence and practicing the presence of God

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah.

Summer Joy Gross: and the idea of being tuned in to the fact that there is a God who is tuned into us. At all times [00:14:00] and that takes practice. I do believe it takes practice and I believe it's part of the movement for some of us. I'm not saying for all of us, but I think for a lot of us, it's a part of kind of the exercise.

Or the challenge of practicing that intimacy, but then there's that invitation to go out and explore in the independence. I came from a more of an anxious attachment. So the jungle, as you guys talked about it, I thought your lenses were fantastic. With the desert being a place of just knowing all the rules of the landscape and protecting oneself and and.

Having logic be the major rule. But [00:15:00] then the jungle of all of these relationships and connections and can I figure these people out and believing that you have to be the first one to understand them. And if you didn't, then, then you, you lost somehow, or you're in fight or flight, just not knowing how to interact with that jungle atmosphere.

But I think those of us that came from an anxious attachment struggle with, being able to move out in independence, whether or not we have the connection that we crave. And I just have to admit that is a very real thing for me even today. And something that I have to push through on the regular and to ask myself [00:16:00] is.

Is this what I'm being called to do, even if it feels so horrible? Because there are, different folks that don't see it the same way. So I have to struggle through that. Recognizing that sometimes there's times for independence rather than for intimacy. And man, that was super empowering, Jeff.

I just, I felt super empowered as someone who has an anxious attachment to really explore that other area.

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah, that's that was our logic between, just for listeners who haven't read the book if you're familiar with attachment language, oftentimes there's these two polls or two capacities, or it's one's the anxious kind of and then the other one's the avoidant, like, how anxious are you in a relationship and how avoidant, and then you get this like attachment score.

And we [00:17:00] really, we heard from people, we felt that. That could be very shaming and it doesn't really give you a goal to, to work toward oh, I just need to become less anxious, or I need to become less avoidant. And going through the research, we came across the opposites is really intimacy and independence is that we're supposed to have both of those capacities.

And it, and I don't know if this is exactly what you're saying, someone who's in the anxious kind of zone of the jungle, they would be much more. High capacity for intimacy, but a little lower on the independence. And then someone in the desert would have much higher capacity for independence.

They love being on their own, but they're not very skilled. And so that's the language we used about Jesus meeting and moving is that Jesus will meet you when you're high. Intimacy, but then it'll also move you toward flexing that independence muscle more. But I, as someone from the desert, I have to do the opposite, is I have a pretty high independence.

I love my to-do list. I will get stuff done. And, but I had, and Jesus meets me there, in the Bible study and the doctrine and the kind of big heady kind of things. But then he's also trying [00:18:00] to move me toward the integration of Hey, you need to flex that

Muscle a little bit more.

And so that's been really helpful for me. I don't know if that was 

Summer Joy Gross: yes. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I it reminds me of Friedman and his, he's the one who wrote Generation to Generation, but he also wrote another book on failure, and I'm not gonna remember the whole type of title, the Failure of Leadership or Failure.

Geoff Holsclaw: Is it the failure of

Summer Joy Gross: Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And I feel like that it's that skillset that you're talking about of independence despite what the rest of the DNA of the structure or the, the church structure or or corporation structure or whatever, being able to have the integrity to stay in this [00:19:00] independent space where you believe that this is what you are being called to. But we see that in Jesus, that mission that he had moving towards Jerusalem. And sometimes he would say to people that he was done healing because it was time for him to move to.

That happened after healing Peter's mother-in-law and. A lot of people showed up for healing and deliverance and then the next morning he listened to the Lord and the Lord's like it's time to move, even though there was a lot of need right there. So that kind of. Focus and ability to be independent, is vital.

So yeah, I just, I see the need for both of these things and honestly see them in the church. How do we form bodies [00:20:00] that have both of these? Skill side by side. That's one of the questions that I felt like you were asking in your book as well.

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah the church question is oh, if we had time to write another book.

Summer Joy Gross: There we go.

Geoff Holsclaw: but it really I, yeah, it could be we. To use the care and challenge language I think you're right. I think some church environments are really good at creating a caring environment where people feel seen and soothed and, safe and there's a lot of attunement, relational attunement going on.

But then maybe sometimes there's a little lower challenge and then you other churches are the opposite. It's very high challenge. Maybe it's like they. They have really clear ideas of how you should be involved, how to serve what obedience means to the Lord. Be sure to give this much money, right?

But then the care structure often is lacking. Whether it's a big church or a small church, people don't necessarily feel nurtured. If they fall off the getting things done kind of [00:21:00] wagon of that high challenge environment, then they feel lost or unable to contribute. So yeah, our kind of hope is that, the attachment language can help us understand that both of those are essential, that they shouldn't.

Be, neither one should be villainized. They're supposed to work together, but I think a lot of times they don't. You find when you're working with clients, who do you find is coming to you? Is it the ones that are from the two high challenge environments and they need more care? Or is it a little of both?

Like sometimes the other direct.

Summer Joy Gross: I work with a lot of people who recognize their. Desire for greater attachment, secure attachment. And so they're wanting to figure out the different ways that they have made God in the image of often and unhealthy caregiver. And to recognize how [00:22:00] that's playing out in their everyday world, their everyday faith.

Spiritual direction, as is what's it's care in the present is listening to God as the director. And creating space for that in the present where, where therapy is looking at the past and also looking at problem areas. And then, coaching perhaps is looking towards goals in the future.

So spiritual direction is really what's happening now in our spiritual life and how do we invite God or listen to his invitation that he's already sending to. Either to intimacy or to challenge as well. Sometimes there is a challenge. It's time to I'm stuck right here. It's time to forgive, [00:23:00] or I'm grieving, it's time to lament.

There's a real challenge there.

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah. Yeah. As our time is coming to an end, is there any last things that have stood out about landscapes of the soul, the book or just about attachment that you're just wanting to share as we wrap up?

Spiritual Practices and Final Thoughts

Summer Joy Gross: Yeah, I think we've moved through where I am in the book. Honestly. I loved looking ahead at your spiritual practices. That's a piece that's really important to me and recognizing how different spiritual practices can be a. An easy thing for some spirit, some attachment styles and a challenge for others, and I just love that.

I think that's really important that in our lives we have both, something that feels like an easy road. To God or like John the Baptist saying, make a [00:24:00] way for God to come. But some that feels a little harder and the challenge that our soul needs in order to become holy.

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah that's our hope for the book is that it would build hope in people for that connection with God. I know you have written a great book, the Emmanuel Promise, discovering Security of a Life Held by God, and you have a bunch of great practices there. We hope that our book Landscapes of the Soul will also add to the library of spiritual directors.

Like you, could you tell some people just to finish the, where people can stay connected with you and the things you're doing, and if you have any special projects? I don't know, do you have another book in the works or you have

Summer Joy Gross: I am playing now I'm playing and one of 'em is Alex Dina journaling method that has been really fruitful for people as well as for myself. And and. Brings a lot of [00:25:00] neuroscience in there, and so I'm working with that. That's, and that might become a book as well as a journal. But yeah, the Emmanuel Promise at the end of.

Each of the chapters. I tried to have some ways for people to interact with the material and with God to have Alexio, Davina or some other spiritual practice that was a video. People could find me on Instagram at rev Summer, joy or find me. patreon.com/the Presence Project, where I do a lot of teaching and group retreats twice a month, three times a month.

It's a real joy. We've got yeah, some really fun things coming up this year in which [00:26:00] we're working with the threshold of the last hour of the day and what happens in our brain as we are nourished during that time instead of getting sucked into binge watching something and allow ourselves to be nourished during that last.

Hour. Did you know that our brains wired differently in the last 15 minutes than it does any other time of the day? So that's

Geoff Holsclaw: like before you fall

Summer Joy Gross: before you fall asleep. So that's one of the things that we're gonna be playing with in the Presence Project in a group called Table of the Beloved this fall.

Geoff Holsclaw: Oh, fun. Great. I have some of those things. We'll be sure to add that to the show notes. But thank you so much for taking time to read our book. Again, it's Landscapes of the Soul. Thank you for writing your book and all the things that you do. We really appreciate it. [00:27:00] I.