Ignatius the Pilgrim Statue Explained

I've been asked why I'm so taken with the statue of Ignatius which stands in the garden at the Guelph Retreat Center (photographs in the two posts below).

Ignatius often referred to himself as a pilgrim. A soldier who experienced a profound conversion during his recuperation from a battle injury, he traveled a great deal in the next several years as he sought to discern God's direction for his life. No doubt he would have preferred the great mission adventures for which his colleague Francis Xavier is famed, but he spent the final portion of his life in Rome, writing the constitutions and letters which formed the documentary backbone of the Society of Jesus. Thus the word "pilgrim" ultimately had for Ignatius the same metaphorical connotation of journey that it does for all Christians.

Replicas of this particular statue are scattered around the world. Here's a description from the plaque at Creighton University (which might be identical to the description of the almost identical statue at Guelph, but I'm not sure), with a good explanation of why I like it so much:

“St. Ignatius Loyola, the first Jesuit, leans into the winds blowing from the ends of the earth, manifestations of God’s power and the wonder of the Incarnation. The letter in his hand symbolizes the need that all humans need to communicate with one another and to discover Christ in each other. Adventurous, yet reflective, St. Ignatius meets God’s challenges as the contemplative in action finding God in all creation.”

Another View

Ignatius the Pilgrim

I'm very fond of this statue at Guelph.

Back

So . . . I didn't last long on retreat. What can I say? ~ It's a harrowing time of life. Disguised in the ordinary.

On Retreat in Canada

Week Ahead

Guelph Labyrinth

Big week ahead.

Tomorrow night I go before my Presbytery for the next step in the ordination process. Usually these meetings are upbeat and joyful; mine will most likely edge far to the sober side of the spectrum. I have written candidly about Chicago Son in the statement I have to present, partly because his life and death are now so germane to my call to ministry and partly because I don't want people to feel that they must tiptoe around the edge of whatever real questions they have. I am hoping for some joyful moments at the end!

Thursday morning: our Hebrew final. I have a good grasp on what all the possible issues are (and believe me, that's a huge step forward). The question remains: can I remember how any of them work out? Four more days to cram it all into my brain, a few hours of writing, and then -- over!!!

Saturday I drive to Guelph for my retreat. For eight days the forty or so of us there will spend all of our time in total silence, excepting Mass if we are inclined to attend and a daily meeting with a spiritual director. I have written them about the circumstances of my life, telling them I need a retreat director who is experienced, resilient, and fearless. I have had my moments of trepidation, and long periods of wondering whether attempting to make another retreat, ever, after last year is an indication that I have finally and completely lost my mind ~ but mostly, I can hardly wait.

All of which means that a week from right now I will be surrounded by ~ SILENCE.

Loyola House - Meals Magnifique!

Since I've imposed a moratorium on myself with respect to my daily 24/7 obsession with muddling through Hebrew, I thought I'd add some more about my upcoming retreat which is becoming, amazingly, something to which I am looking forward. Amazing in the sense that I can't think of anything else in the past eleven months, other than The Lovely Daughter's college graduation.

Probably many of you have been to various retreat house and conference center meals where the menu resembled something akin to that found in your local high school cafeteria. And I get it -- time is short, budgets are limited, and not too many people working for cafeteria level wages have the interest, knowledge, and skills to develop a menu based on fresh local offerings, Not being a cook of any sort myself, I can hardly complain. When I went to Guelph two years ago, I expected the usual overcooked chicken, scalloped potatoes, and green beans dumped out of cans, and I would not have been disappointed by same.

Did I ever underestimate the creativity and hospitality of the Jesuits ??? (One might mistake them for Benedictines!)

Herewith, from the new brochure (linked in my previous post):

Our continental breakfast includes fresh fruit, yogurt, muffins, citrus marinated prunes, fresh baked breads, hot oats, cereal, and Guelph’s own Planet Bean fair trade organic coffee. Hot breakfasts can include poached, fried, or scrambled eggs, bacon, ham, sausage, French toast, or pancakes.

Every lunch we offer a house soup such as ginger carrot, fresh tomato fennel, chowder, sweet potato, or roasted vegetable. Our entrées range from spanakopita to pasta primavera. Salads might include Greek, roasted sweet potato, fresh greens, tomato basil, or coleslaw.

Our dinner entrées can include roasted lemon chicken, fish in a caper tomato broth, beef and vegetable stew, Moroccan tagine, or roast pork with rosemary. Dinner accompaniments range from herb roasted sweet potatoes, fresh vegetables, or roasted Yukon golds to a mixed rice pilaf.

Desserts are our specialty! From fresh apple crumble pie and butter tarts to orange pecan cake to a simple fresh fruit bowl.

We take great care to bring you the freshest ingredients in all of our preparations. Whenever possible we use as much locally grown food as we can, especially from our farm right here on the property. Everything is made in house from the beginning without the use of pre-made ingredients.

I might add that everything is prepared in silence, to accomodate the retreatants, and presented enticingly in a vast and light, airy dining room, one wall of which consists of windows overlooking gardens and pastures. (And the brochure doesn't mention the brownies, one of which I spirited up to my room every night for a post-labyrinth midnight snack.)

Obviously the expectation is that a week of silent prayer requires a lot of nourishment, and not just of the spiritual direction variety.

Two More Weeks . . .

Retreat

Ten Things

1. The beginning of the third week, and I finally feel pretty much better after getting really, really sick in Oregon.

2. Going to spend the next three days plowing through my last paper (on which, thankfully, I had had the foresight to request an extension) so that I can maybe enjoy at least one long week-end (instead of the 10 days originally planned) before . . .

3. Summer Hebrew starts a week from today. Two quarters worth jammed into 8 weeks, and we all know how gifted (far from it) I am in ancient languages. Kiss this summer good-bye, until . . .

4. Two months from today I will be on an 8-day silent retreat, back at Guelph. I am torn between apprehension in memory of having been on retreat when Chicago Son died and a longing for the silence, the river, the sunrises, the labyrinth, the wide open spaces, the prayer, and ~ did I mention the silence?

5. Gregarious Son is taking the LSAT next week. Too late for law school this fall, which is a very good thing in a life ~ all our lives ~ which will be filled with tumultuous memories at the end of the summer, but who knows what it may lead to later?

6. The Lovely Daughter is at home and has begun her job search in earnest. It's beyond wonderful to have her around.

7. The yard is looking nice. All cleaned up and some flowers in ~ quite a change from last year, when I rushed from seminary to Chicago to CPE and then was too steadily exhausted from those overnight on-calls to think beyond the occasional lawn-mowing job.

8. The house is a disaster. I'm hoping that we will get the guest room re-plastered and painted this summer. So far it has taken about two months to pull down a couple of lengths of wallpaper and clean up the plaster dust, so the re-do plan might be a bit too ambitious. I have no idea how people like Quotidian Grace actually build an entire house.

9. Also ahead this summer: movement toward candidacy status in the ordination process. I have about finished the six essays (thanks to help from a RevGal!) and meet with my Session in two weeks, my CPM at the beginning of July, and the Presbytery at the end of July. All Presby-speak for The Process.

10. I think a great deal about a comment my friend Julia left over on Desert Year some time ago: about how sometimes things happen that you think you cannot possibly survive, and yet somehow you endure and move forward. Apparently that is the case, at least most of the time for most of us. I wish it were true for all of us but, for those of us who are left, there is increasing energy and laughter and ~ each other.

Silence

Michelle has written one of the best pieces I've ever read about a silent retreat, here, and has reminded me of some of my own experience.

When I was on retreat at Guelph last summer, the 90-plus degree temperatures every day made the pool a most welcome respite. I think that I went swimming every afternoon right before dinner, and a couple of times after dinner as well. At first I wondered: would people actually swim in silence? I needn't have asked. There were always five or ten people at the pool, and many nodded and smiled, but no one said a word.

Early in the week, I sprained my toe as I stumbled over a deck chair. The pain was excruciating, the kind the makes you feel momentarily as if you are going to vomit. Normally under such circumstances, such an encounter would be followed by a string of loud and angry expletives on my part, but I managed to be unusually restrained in the context of the swimming silence. I sat on the edge of the pool for awhile, hoping that the icy water would reduce the inevitable swelling and bruising, and limped back to the house. My labyrinth prayer walk after dinner was an exceedingly slow one. Hours later, in the middle of the night, I went down to the kitchen to fill a washcloth with ice and to dig around in the first aid cupboard for something with which to tape my throbbing toe.

As Michelle so eloquently notes, in the silence you make less of your needs, less of yourself. You discover how little of yourself you need to impose -- on the space, on others, on the silence itself. The normal chatter and rueful laughter that accompany minor klutziness -- unnecessary. The need for attention -- none, when others have considerately provided for your needs so that you can quietly take care of yourself. The will to overcome? It's up to you. You can live with the pain and the limp and walk the trails and labyrinth, and swim in the pool, and visit the barns and gardens and river -- or not. In the gentleness of the silence, your decisions are your own.

The company you keep is entirely with Someone Else.

Bad Karma?

One wonders.

Overall, I feel SO much better. Except . . . I seem to have broken a rib. Coughing. Rather painful. So painful, in fact, that I almost drfited to sleep mopping the kitchen floor.

I am home studying for finals next week. I googled "broken rib" and see that I can expect it to take six weeks to heal. Because, unfortunately, one has to keep breathing ~ so ribs get no rest. I'll be through the next set of midterms by then. In fact, I'll be home for Christmas.

I've been thinking that I'd like very much to be on retreat at Guelph. Instead, I am about to crawl into bed with my Greek and history materials. A photo will have to do.

What Were You Doing Up There? (Retreat Part 4)

Some retreat clarification, in response to various questions people have asked me:

Yes, you talk to your director! Each day your director suggests a passage of Scripture for you to reflect on, and then the next day you talk it over with her or him. A few sentences can lead you on countless winding paths and even, sometimes, to a genuine inner stillness and alertness to the Spirit of God.

No, you don't have to do another single thing. One of my friends asked about the work of preparing meals together -- nope. The delicious meals were prepared and beautifully presented by the kitchen staff -- which also works in silence, so as not to disturb the retreatants in the dining room.

I thought longingly of my computer and its internet access maybe three times in eight days.

I found the silence easy and the eight days short. I'm sure one's mileage varies, and I wouldn't predict even my own future experience based upon this recent one. But I have a pretty well-established practice of lengthy daily silence for listening for God, which itself has an effect on the prayer going on inside my head or through my activities even when I am chattering away or otherwise engaged during the rest of the day. So, this time at least, the silence went well for me.

I'll try to write a little about spiritual direction tomorrow. It's been such a significant part of my life for the past two years that I tend to forget how weird the entire concept sounds. But yes, I am aware that when you use words like "spirituality" or "direction" in most of the contexts I inhabit, people start thinking New Age or Eastern tradition or medieval or rigidity of discipline.

For now let's just leave it at this: you will never have to worry about mistaking me for Mother Teresa.

Enjoy the sunrise!

Retreat (Part 3) Colors and Light

Stuart Gordon writes a fine blog entitled Colors and Light ; I highly recommend his work to you. And since that phrase occured to me many times as I wandered the retreat house grounds last week, I offer here my own version of Guelph color and light in grays and browns.

Today I also want to recommend the two Jesuit prayer sites I frequent:

Pray as You Go

and

Sacred Space.

Retreat (Part 2): Early Morning to Early Evening

I read one book, off and on, while I was on retreat: Walking in the Spirit: A Reflection on Jeronimo Nadal's Phrase "Contemplative Likewise in Action" by Joseph F. Conwell, S.J. It's a combination history of the early Jesuits, biography of Jerome Nadal (who, while not one of the earliest of the Society, was a significant member and prolific writer in the years immediately preceeding and following the death of Ignatius) and treatise on prayer. I copied several sections into my journal, including the following:

"To insist on a Trinitarian orientation to prayer does not set limits on prayer but gives it a field of play broader than all creation. At the same time, fully Trinitarian prayer plants one's feet squarely on the earth. If a [person] grasps a Trinity-pervaded universe, then that grasp generates not merely a vision, a wonderment, an overwhelming gasp at the beauty and grandeur of it all; it initiates an immensely practical surging forward to meet and tangle with a world in revolt against that beauty and grandeur and love. Love born out of love moves to love."

Eight Days on Retreat (Part 1)

Loyola House occupies 600 acres of farmland and orchard in southern Ontario, and for eight days about forty of us kept almost complete silence there (yes! ~ eating in silence, walking in silence, swimming in silence), moving about as we wished except for the 45 minutes spent with a spiritual director each morning.

I settled into a routine almost immediately: walking the labyrinth for about an hour before or after breakfast; meeting with my director and going to the liturgy in the late morning; a very l-o-n-g walk most afternoons along the river that meanders far through the property, which provided almost complete solitude and opportunites to play out in the middle of sparkling shallow water; a before-dinner swim in the most welcome pool; an evening walk through fields or woods; and a late evening turn around the labyrinth again. The meals were beyond delicious; the chapel, dining room, and living room were all elegant in their simplicity and beautiful use of woodworking craftsmanship; the atmosphere was Jesuit and ecumenical; and the mosquitos were in abundance.

My retreat was a difficult one. I had read that sometimes retreats are full of light and ease, and sometimes they challenge and disturb. Now that I look at some of the images I brought back with me, I see both light and darkness in abundance. The Christian journey exactly.