When Relationships Change Us: Why Justice Workers Need Spiritual Direction
Andrew Schulz is not someone I ever expected to quote in a blog post about spiritual companioning. The podcaster and comedian who interviewed Donald Trump before the 2024 election and publicly voted for him has spent the past months becoming one of the administration's sharpest critics. This week, he called the killing of Alex Pretti (a 37-year-old Veterans Affairs nurse shot by Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis) "murder in cold blood" and the administration's response "fucking disgusting."
What changed?
Schulz recently became a father. His Netflix special "Life" explores his journey through fertility challenges and into fatherhood. And while I can't speak to what's happening in his heart, I can observe this: relationships change us. Being in loving relationship with other people, a partner, a child, opens us to caring about other others. It builds the muscle of empathy.
When Schulz looks at footage of federal agents in masks interrogating children in New York City parks, when he sees the administration rushing to label a murdered American citizen a "domestic terrorist," he's not just seeing policy. He's seeing someone's child. Someone's person. The capacity to hold the humanity of strangers grows from the practice of holding the humanity of those we love.
This is why spirit tending matters so urgently right now.
Spiritual direction work: the practice of accompanying someone in their unfolding relationship with the sacred, with justice, with themselves, is fundamentally about building connection. It's about creating the kind of fierce support in safer spaces where people can metabolize their experiences, name their truths, and reconnect with their deepest values. It's about relationship as the container for transformation.
And we need this work everywhere, not just in private offices and church basements.
We need spiritual companions among activists who are burning out from bearing witness to cruelty. We need them in organizing spaces where people are navigating moral injury and collective trauma. We need them with justice workers who are trying to hold hope while the world feels like it's unraveling. We need them creating the conditions where people like Andrew Schulz, people who are waking up to their own capacity for solidarity, can keep waking up instead of shutting down.
Because here's what I know from 14 years of this work: people don't change through argument or shame. They change through relationship. Through being seen, held, and accompanied as they discover what they truly believe. Through having someone witness their courage as they choose empathy over tribalism, connection over cruelty.
The work of spiritual companionship is not neutral. It's not about helping people feel better so they can return to business as usual. It's about supporting people as they align their lives with their values, as they build the internal resources to show up for justice again and again, as they learn to hold complexity without collapsing into cynicism.
Ready to start that journey? You can offer spiritual direction work [Click Here]. You can receive spirit tending [Click Here].
This is why I'm so passionate about training more spiritual companions, and training them well. Through the Cherry Hill Spiritual Direction Certification Program, we're forming companions who can hold space across difference, who understand trauma and consent, who can work with earth-based practitioners and multi-religious seekers and people who've been harmed by institutional religion. We're creating a cohort of practitioners who understand that this work belongs in the streets as much as it belongs in sanctuaries.
Join Us
Our March 2026 cohort is forming now. We have 8 students enrolled and room for 6 more. If you've been feeling the call to this work, if you sense that your gifts belong in the service of others' spiritual unfolding, I invite you to apply. The application deadline is February 15th.
We need more people who can do this work. We need more spaces where transformation becomes possible. We need more practitioners who understand that accompanying people in their spiritual lives is also accompanying them in their moral development, their capacity for empathy, their willingness to see the humanity in those they've been taught to dismiss.
Andrew Schulz is learning what many of us know: relationships change us. Love expands our circle of care. Connection builds the capacity for courage.
And spiritual companioning is the practice of tending these relationships, with ourselves, with each other, with the sacred, with the world we're trying to build together.
If you're ready to learn how to offer this kind of companionship, we're ready to train you.
Applications for the March 2026 Cherry Hill Spiritual Direction Certification Program close February 15th. Learn more and apply at https://abeltaine.blogspot.com/2025/01/cherry-hill-spiritual-direction.html.
Beloved, You are whole, holy, and worthy.
Rev. Amy
