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 senior executive leadership in Catholic healthcare. I sought to respond to God’s call to the ministry of spiritual direction and formation. I wanted to integrate my experience of facilitating spiritual formation for those who serve in Catholic healthcare and my clinical training as a Clinical Pastoral Therapist and Marriage/Family Therapist in this new calling. I completed my Certification in Spiritual Direction 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 35 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 the Holy Trinity - Father, Son and Holy Spirit and growing daily in an ever-deepening, personal and intimate relationship of love. This what the Church means by “sanctification”, “divinization” or theosis. For myself, I settled too long for just 20% of the Gospel Message (hell vs. heaven) and was ignorant of the other 80% which pointed to my destiny through, with and in Christ Jesus.
It is through this living vision that I find great joy and inspiration in journeying with others through spiritual direction and spiritual formation.