Franciscan Spiritual Center
Meet Our Spiritual Directors
Tom
Tom Welch’s approach to spiritual direction is strongly influenced by the Franciscan and Roman Catholic traditions. Coming from a background in medicine, Tom has been practicing as a psychiatrist for nearly three decades. ln addition to receiving his MD from the University of Washington, he earned a Master of Arts in Pastoral Ministry from a combined program of the University of Portland and Gonzaga University. He completed his training and certification in spiritual direction in the Franciscan Spiritual Center’s Spiritual Direction Training Program and has been acting as a spiritual director since 2016.
Tom welcomes all as equals, believing we all are created in the image of God. Tom reflects back that loving image in a spirit of openness, authenticity, and compassion. He possesses a playful spirit and trusts that his directees will treasure the gifts of laughter and fun.
Tom meets with people in person, via video chat, and by telephone. He meets people for one-on-one spiritual direction and, additionally, he provides supervision services for other spiritual directors in small peer groups and in one-on-one meetings. For in-person gatherings, Tom meets people in our offices in Lake Oswego, Oregon as well as in our satellite location in NE Portland, hosted within the offices of the Northwest Catholic Counseling Center.
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Ann
Ann Steigerwald spent many years in full-time Christian ministry and missions. Her ministries took her overseas as well as with several US-based Protestant denominations, where she created discernment and assessment processes in support of pastoral development and church planting. Ann received her training and certification in spiritual direction in the Franciscan Spiritual Center’s training program and has been acting as a spiritual director since 2020. She also created outdoor programming for the Franciscan Center, including kayaking excursions.
Ann has described spiritual direction as a sacred companionship of others in their exploration of questions of spirituality and meaning, which may happen both within and outside traditional religious practice.
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Mark
Mark Lesniewski provides spiritual direction with individuals and in small group settings. Mark also offers supervision services to other spiritual directors in small peer groups and one-on-one.
Mark found his vocation as a spiritual director after decades of personal formation that developed in him a presence of generosity and acceptance toward others. Mark’s formal education ranged from a Catholic seminary followed by Franciscan formation early in his life to a Master’s Degree in Contemplative Buddhist Psychotherapy from Naropa University in mid-life. His professional career included public mental health work with people experiencing poverty, incarceration, and mental and physical illness. His personal experiences, which have influence these streams of formation, include mystical experiences in the early 1980s.
One characteristic of the way Mark approaches spiritual direction is through image, metaphor, dreams, and paying attention to the feeling center of knowing (the gut). Mark also facilitates our meditation groups, which form a critical pathway of transformation.
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Eileen
Eileen Parfrey is a semi-retired Presbyterian pastor. After a career as a building contractor and then ordained senior pastor, she retired into a full second half of life that includes offering spiritual direction (since 2020), co-leading our training program for aspiring spiritual directors, and active ministry in her church and denomination (often as a guest preacher and accompanying parishioners through illness, grief, and dying).
Eileen is also an artist (working in several mediums but primarily clay). As such, she often is able to support a directee in accessing their visual, creative, and experiential self-knowledge. In drawing on her own formation in the Reformed tradition and certification at Namaste in Portland, she celebrates the variety of ways people define and express their experience of God.
A concept that resonates in Eileen’s spiritual direction relationships is that we are not human beings in search of a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings in search of a human experience.
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Mary Jo
Mary Jo Chaves is a Franciscan sister in the order of the Sisters of St Francis of Philadelphia. Sr Mary Jo, born and bred in Oregon, was an educator for years, earned Masters degrees in the Art of Teaching and in Applied Theology. She has accompanied individuals in spiritual direction since 1996. She is a trained supervisor who also provides supervision services to other spiritual directors and she developed and co-facilitated our Franciscan training program for aspiring spiritual directors.
Sr Mary Jo has described spiritual direction as a covenantal relationship in which she accompanies the directee in a prayerful relationship with their God. She sees herself as being present to another by holding very still and being like a mirror that faithfully reflects how another is aware of the Divine. As such, many of her direction relationships continue for years. She continues to create new direction relationships and, at this phase of her ministry, she is a gifted mentor to other spiritual directors offering ongoing supervision services (in both small peer groups and one-on-one).
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Christine
Christine Naylor first found solace in the practice of spiritual direction as a directee in a time of personal change, which led to transformation. In time she trained and committed to offering the companionship of spiritual direction to others as a way to give back through the spiritual discipline which had been so life giving to her. Christine has been acting as a spiritual director since 2015. She also serves as the Executive Director for the overall ministry of the Franciscan Spiritual Center.
One thing Christine has observed in sitting with others, is how a regular rhythm of spiritual direction becomes its own form of prayer – a form of prayer based more on listening and less on talking or asking. This seems to show up often as people express their longings and notice the subtleties of their own unique and precious lives. There is a Franciscan emphasis (or invitation) to consider the virtue of Beauty as a means of discernment and Christine is drawn to this foundational principle in the stance she holds with directees. As we grow in our understanding of the complexity of beauty we are often better able to perceive our own meaning, our relationships, and our image of God.
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Theresa
Theresa Lamkin is a Franciscan sister in the order of the Sisters of St Francis of Philadelphia. Sr Theresa has an experiential knowledge of what it means to discern over an extended period. She joined another religious order in her youth, went through the difficult and courageous process of a long discernment in leaving that order, established a teaching career in Oregon and Saudi Arabia, cared for ailing family members, served people experiencing the impacts of houselessness and mental illness, and found her Franciscan heart in the ministry of spiritual direction (which she has offered since 2020).
One way Sr Theresa accompanies people in spiritual direction is in extending radical hospitality to others as they explore what it means to deepen their relationship with the Divine. From the life and ministry she has lived, Sr Theresa has a knack for holding directees with gentleness in the sober realities of their lives while finding the joy in those same realities. Spontaneity and laughter in direction is often a reflection of the Divine image in whose presence we sit.
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Words from our Directors
Christine August 2023
Tom August 2023
Eileen August 2023
Mark September 2023
Sr. Mary Jo September 2023
Portraits by Musa Wolcott