Hello! I’m Christianne Squires, founder of the Light House community for contemplative women. I live in Florida, USA, with my husband, Kirk, and our two cats, Aslan and Lucy.
I’m a trained spiritual director and spiritual formation practitioner, and I put my training and education in service of all I create and steward here.
The contemplative way is often lonely, isn’t it?
It’s antithetical to the world around us and broader than what most religious institutions are able to hold or offer, even if we still consider ourselves a part of those institutions.
Hoping to find other contemplative kindreds, we turn and turn and turn—only to discover they’re few and hard to find.
We get it. We’ve been there.
Enter the Light House, a community for contemplative women like you.
About the Founder
My spiritual ground is rooted in the Christian tradition, with my early years of formation taking place in the Roman Catholic church and nondenominational Christianity.
In my early 20s, I experienced imaginative prayer for the first time. I later learned this was a hallmark of Ignatian spirituality, but at the time I only knew that Christ had met me in a place of suffering and brought a gaze of love.
I began to move toward the Christian mystics, contemplative spirituality, and liturgy, and I was confirmed in the Episcopal Church in my mid-thirties.
Now in my mid-forties, with my training as a spiritual director guiding me from years ago, I carry a strong conviction to meet each person where they are in their experience of God and their way of naming and connecting with the Divine Mystery. However you name and connect with the Divine Presence, we support and make room for you here.
My Professional Background
For many years now, my work has traveled along the two tracks of spiritual formation and publishing.
As a spiritual formation practitioner . . .
I hosted an online space called Still Forming between the years 2008–2017.
I completed an MA in spiritual formation in 2011 through Spring Arbor University. It was an online hybrid cohort model, and I completed my master's thesis research on digital connectivity and spiritual formation, exploring how internet culture affects the soul.
I completed my training as a spiritual director in 2011 through the Audire School for Spiritual Direction in Central Florida. It was a rich three years of training that included two years of supervised internship, during which I discerned a call to exercise my vocation as a spiritual director in online spaces.
In 2013, I was honored to be named by Spiritual Directors International (SDI) as one of their New Contemplatives.
In 2014, I offered a workshop at SDI's annual conference on the subject "Spiritual Formation in a Google-ized World," followed by two online webinars: "The Case for Spiritual Direction in the Technology Age" and "Using Technology Tools in Spiritual Direction: Is It for You?"
At that same 2014 conference, I was privileged to interview Richard Rohr, OFM. We talked about many things: St. Thérèse of Lisieux, falling upward in the second half of life, and the unique opportunities available to spiritual directors at this time in history. You can watch our conversation here.
In 2014, on the heels of that conference, my husband, Kirk, and I developed and hosted a year-long initiative for spiritual directors called The Soul Online, inviting fellow spiritual directors to connect around the subject of the internet and its effect on our spiritual development.
In January 2016, I published an article in the Center for Action and Contemplation's journal, Oneing, on the subject of messiness in community. You can read the article here or purchase that particular issue of the journal here.
In April 2021, I co-hosted a workshop with Samuel Rahberg and Angela Ford Nelson for SDI’s annual conference on the subject “Spiritually Connected: Taking Tech from 2020 to 2022,” which helped spiritual directors notice and discern their invitations within their vocation as a result of what the pandemic had taught them.
As a publishing professional . . .
I got my start in 1999–2000 as a news intern and print magazine intern in my final year of college. (Or you could say I got my start in 1995–1996, when I wrote for the high school newspaper and was co-editor-in-chief of the high school yearbook. 😉)
I wore many editorial hats for two decades, from 2000–2020, that included:
Associate book editor for a traditional publishing house
Staff editor for an international nonprofit
Writing director for an honors college
Print magazine editor
Online media editor
Writer-for-hire
Fully-booked-out freelance book editor
Book midwife for contemplative leaders
In 2016, I founded a company called Bookwifery, helping contemplative leaders birth their book, their voice, and their audience, and this is work I tend alongside the Light House community.
At the Light House, we are a community that values listening and discernment and that supports you in the light that is uniquely yours to shine. It is my deep joy and delight to champion who you are as the person you are made to be and are continually being invited to become.
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