Accompanying persons on their journeys to loving union with God
Timothy (Timm) Glover, M.Div.
Welcome!
In 2022 after much prayer and discernment, I made the decision to retire after 24 years of serving in Mission Integration executive leadership in Catholic healthcare. I sought to respond to God’s call to the ministry of spiritual direction and formation. Drawing upon my years of experience of facilitating spiritual formation for leaders, healthcare providers and board members along with my clinical training as a Pastoral Counselor and Family Therapist, I began my certification as a spiritual director through the Avila Institute and the Heart of Christ Spiritual Direction Program. l experience accompanying others on their journeys to loving union with God deeply humbling, inspiring and a joy-filled mystery.
Timm & Sue Glover
More about me and my spiritual journey….
One of the pressing questions and deep yearnings of my spiritual life has been what Saint Ignatius of Loyola termed “the More” - magis. I am so grateful for God’s grace and gift of faith that led me as a young adolescent to give my initial “Yes” to Jesus as my Lord and Savior and undergo my Baptism. My faith and interior spiritual life have always been central in my life. Approaching life as a sacred calling and vocation has also been so central - especially in my over 33 years of marriage to my wife, Sue, to being a father and now a grandfather, and to my various ministry roles. These streams of the More, my ongoing “Yes” to Jesus and vocation all came together during a silent retreat in 2014 at Christ in the Desert Monastery. Here, I experienced God’s proclamation about Jesus at His baptism directed to me as well: “Timm, you are my Beloved.”
This simple response and its mystery have unfolded for me in such powerful ways through the following years. One of the most significant ways is how it has shaped my understanding of the purpose of the spiritual life or the Christian life. Imagine a spiritual timeline where on one end, there is a label that reads “My initial ‘Yes’ to Jesus” and on the other end of the spiritual timeline is a label that says “Heaven, My Death”. What is suppose to be happening throughout this entire line between those two points? 2 Peter 1:3-4 gave me both an answer and a living vision (take time to look that passage up).
So, “What’s the so What?” of the More, the goal of my ongoing “Yes” to Jesus and the substance of vocation? It’s this: to enter into the fullness and flourishing of being God’s beloved. How? By fully participating in and partaking of “the divine nature”. Put another way, the purpose of the spiritual life is to be conformed to the supernatural life of God (sanctifying grace along with the virtues and gifts of the Holy Spirit) and grow daily in an ever-deepening, personal and intimate relationship with Jesus. This what the Church means by “sanctification”, “divinization” or theosis.
It is through this living vision that I find great joy and inspiration in journeying with others through spiritual direction and spiritual formation.