The Ignatian Exercises

Here's something pretty cool.

The Jesuit community at Georgetown University has created a series of videos to explain and comment on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. These gentlemen, from all over the place, are some of the heavy hitters in Ignatian spirituality ~ they are the ones whom the rest of us read and listen to as we learn to do spiritual direction.

The first speaker is noted European historian John O'Malley, S.J. When he talks about Ignatius working on the Exercises in his early life, he reminds me of the constant interplay of traditions n my own life: Ignatius was studying and writing in Paris at the same time that John Calvin was. There's no evidence that they met, but a few summers ago I certainly enjoyed walking the streets in the neighborhood they had walked and contemplating my multi-dimensional heritage. At the time, I was finishing the Exercises (with one of the Jesuits who's apparently going to speak in this series) and starting to imagine myself in seminary and in ministry.

As I watch this first video as I write, I'm thinking that Joseph Tetlow, S.J. is a little intimidating! I wonder whether I would have fallen in love with the Exercises if he had been the one to introduce them to me. It's true that it's quite a challenge to learn articulate your prayer life as you make your way through them, but it's a loving and generous experience, not a scary, intellectual one.

These presentations take a bit of stamina, but are well worth your time if you have any interest in Ignatian spirituality or spiritual direction.

God as Irony

As most of you know, through a series of those ironical twists of life which I am coming to see as the places in which God dwells most deeply, a couple of Jesuits have played huge roles in my landing where I am now.

I did the graduate work necessary to retain my teaching license at the local Jesuit university. At first, my reasons had to do with convenience of location and ease of registration; later, they had to do with my pursuit of what I called my "stealth religious studies degree." Needing work in literature and history which I could justify to my licensing board, I took courses that met my real interests in the other arena of my life. Since I taught world history, it was easy to get approval for graduate work in Islamic history and philosophy, in Renaissance art, in medieval church history. Since I taught English, I managed the same for the courses I took in spirituality and autobiography and spirituality and literature.

And when the "official" requirements were behind me, I got started on a course in Ignatian spirituality, asked the professor to guide me through the Spiritual Exercises, and found myself applying to seminaries.

Two interesting pieces of writing have popped up on my computer in the past few days. One was a comment on an old post from someone who sees the Exercises as a one-way street toward a specific destination and urged me to avail myself of resources which, had he skimmed this blog, he would know that I have been immersed in for years. The other led me to a reflection on Father Tom King, a Georgetown Jesuit who died a few months ago, written by another Jesuit who had first encountered him as a student. Here's the part that caught my attention:

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"I asked him why he had focused so much of his career on the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin - a Jesuit paleontologist, philosopher and theologian whose work had for a long time been considered suspect by the Vatican. I asked Father King if it made him nervous to be associated with someone who had for a while been silenced by the Church because of his work.

First, he gave me a long discourse on the nature of time. ...

Then he said something that was for a me a moment of grace, a signal moment in the gradual emergence of my own vocation. He laid out for me his understanding that in the Church, as in any organization, someone has to be willing to be ahead of the curve, even though that can be an uncomfortable and even treacherous place to be. If no one is willing to do that, he said, then progress will stall, growth will be stunted. That would be bad for the Church. Someone has to be willing to lean into the future, to take the risks associated with asking "What if?" That's why the Church has Jesuits, he said. "

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I've had two Jesuit spiritual directors over the past now-going-on-five years. One of them helped me through the long process of discernment that led me to seminary and, although he himself is now elsewhere, has remained as an eloquently supportive presence in my life during this past horrific year since the death of our son. The other has seen me through the questioning and anguish that, while it changes, doesn't end, and has been a consistent presence, guide, companion, and friend through a time of relentless turmoil.

Neither of them has ever indicated any kind of idea that the Exercises or the prayer life that emerges out of them is limited to a particular kind of person or a rigid focus. The process is always one of growth in relationship with God through Jesus in their Spirit, but how that works itself out remains to be seen and lived, not controlled.

When I read the reflection about Tom King, and his insistence that someone has to be willing to ask, "What if?" I thought ~ that's it. That's what lies at the foundation of spiritual direction, at least as I have experienced it and now try to make it available to others: that willingness to ask, "What if?"

What if I help this woman who has wandered into my class make the Exercises ~ to what might that lead?

What if I accompany this woman through overwhelming and immobilizing grief ~ how might that reality be transformed into another?

I have thought for a long time now that the foundational attitude of an effective spiritual director is one of hope, and I am sure that I have challenged the hopes of both of these men. But "What if?" is a question of hope.

It remains a baffling irony to me that my journey has taken me from a teaching experience in an Orthodox Jewish school along the path of Ignatian spirituality and into a Presbyterian seminary education. (And that's only the last ten years!)

I am extremely grateful to have run into Jesuits who are willing to ask "What if?" and to lean into an indecipherable future.

Future in Ministry: Two or Three Things

The novelist and short story writer F. Scott Fitzgerald once made the point that every novelist has two or three things to say, which he or she repeats in various forms throughout a lifetime of writing.

At the time I encountered that statement, I was a college student reading through most of his work, and young enough that most things were still fresh and new. The idea that the essence of a person's thought, experiences, approach to life, might be boiled down to two or three ideas, was one of those fresh and new things, and one of the few I never forgot.

Many years later, as I was become an aficionado of the sermon genre, it became apparent that the same statement could be made of preachers. Preachers, like novelists, reveal themselves through words that dance around and through a couple of major themes, the difference being that preachers' themes tend to emerge from the kaleidescopic lens of the Bible.

And then, my first year in seminary, one of my professors mentioned this same reality. And many of the students, not much older than I had been in college, found his words to be as fresh and new as I had Scott Fitzgerald's.

Fresh and new or fresh and old ~ it doesn't matter. I think that we all have ways of focusing, of narrowing in, on our lives and work characteristic of who we are in our deepest, richest, most authentic selves and, if God so graces us, we are permitted to express those selves to others in our work as well as in our kitchens and living rooms and bedrooms.

With my formal training in spiritual direction behind me and one year of seminary left, I have started to think about what my own Two or Three Things might be. I have no idea to what work I will be invited when this second academic portion of my life comes to a conclusion; like an adolescent, I imagine one thing one day and another the next. I probably have, if I remain healthy, fifteen or so years of very active ministry ahead of me, and then, I hope, many years beyond that of perhaps spiritual direction and writing. (You don't have to remind me, of course, that prediction is a futile activity. But one needs to think in general terms, at least.)

I don't know what my activities might entail, but a sense of what my calling is has begin to bubble up. That sense ~ my Two or Three Things, the ones that matter so much to me that I might test each proposed act or potential word (or flow of words!) against them ~ is merely at the beginning stage of a work in progress at the moment.

I wish I had thought of this when I was twenty ~ of trying to boil down to two or three the things that most mattered to me about how to live my life and contribute my gifts to the vast river of lives and gifts that creates the human community. Now, with fewer years ahead of me than behind, it has become an essential task.

And so, my first vague try. Three Things, without (much) elaboration at this point:

"My work is loving the world." (Messenger, by Mary Oliver)

Our narratives are called into life by God our Creator and blend into the narrative of Jesus through the Spirit. It is essential that we tell and live our stories in order that we as God's most beloved may be transformed into whom God calls us to be. (My personal summary of the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises.)

"Be gentle, for everyone you meet is carrying a great burden." Philo of Alexandria. Those of us who have crouched down and wailed into the dry desert wind need to share that story and and open our eyes against the blinding grains of sand, so that we see more clearly and can share more willingly the weight others carry, freeing them to share and live their stories as well. (A sort of subchapter of my Second Thing, bourne out of the past year of my life.)

What about you? Have you thought about what your Two or Three Things are? Do you consciously try to live them out? Are you able to dispense with those things no longer at the core of your being, and center yourself on those that are?

Quieting Down

Over at my other place, I'm settling in for this upcoming anniversary week.

I have a big week-end ahead first, as the program in which I've studied spiritual direction for the past two years has its annual retreat starting tomorrow, with Sunday marked by our class certification ceremony.

This having been our internship year (upon which, for obvious reasons, I took my time embarking), I haven't had much to say in public. A spiritual direction relationship is such a confidential one that it seems to me that it would violate someone's trust to say anything even vaguely specific (an oxymoron if ever there was one!) about it. But I can say that I have done a considerable amount of direction work this year ~ some regular monthly direction, some one-time meetings, and a variety of personal retreat work, meeting with people every day for a church or college sponsored week, every week for a Lenten retreat, and every week for the full-blown Ignatian Exercises, which take close to a year.

St. Ignatius referred to his work as "giving" the Exercises, rather than as "directing" someone. He had, 450 years ago, a nuanced sense of collaboration and an understanding that what he had to share was truly a gift ~ the gift of presence to the journey of another. It has been a wondrous gift to me this year, to discover that even among the rocky shoals of my own life, I still have something to offer others.

And so ~ I have one more post to write about today's wonderful meeting with another mother, assuming I get the photos uploaded tomorrow, and then I'm going to spend a couple of days away, and then it will be quiet around here for awhile.

Two More Weeks . . .

Retreat

Sarah's List

This post is not exactly about Hebrew.

As a small group of us were winding up our tutoring session with our professor in the library this afternoon, I flipped idly through the new issue of America magazine and found this poem by Benedictine Kilian MacDonnell.

As it happens, I am also finishing up a paper on a book on the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises as experienced by women, and so I am giving some thought to feminist critique of Scripture, of the Exercises, of the Christian tradition in general.

I have read Scripture and church history and tradition through a feminist lens for as much of my adult life as I have read such things, and so I am always translating, in my head at least, narratives and essays and such into perspectives other than those which appear explicitly on the page. However, I am no poet, and this man's (!) interpretation of Sarah's experience, at least as it is presented in Genesis, is far more evocative than anything I could write:

. . . And who consulted me

when you bid him burn my son

on Mount Moriah? Still I exaggerate?

. . .

Why did I not see light in your light?

Why did your truth not set me free?

As a mother who has recently lost a son and is now studying Hebrew via the story of the binding of Issac, I have had much occasion over the past two-plus weeks to consider Sarah and her plight.

Of course, we do not know, really, do we? The writers of Genesis 22 did not elect to present the story from her vantage point. Perhaps she did see light and truth, albeit differently from their presentation in the narrative of the journey to Mount Moriah.

Did her husband's decision to follow God's instructions kill her? Silence her? Or did she have some things to say? My experience of the last ten months leads me to believe that she had a great deal to say.

We will never know.

Thursday Thoughts 10 Minutes Max

Yesterday was difficult -- I thought I was going to give up on seminary -- as I was staring at the wall I was reminded (for the 15,849th time) of St. Ignatius saying, "No changes in desolation" -- and so I managed to prevent myself from walking downstairs to the registrar to withdraw. I thnk there were a lot of prayers surounding me yesterday, too. . . .

Today is a little crazy. I have to drive back to seminary for my homiletics class, make a five-minute presentation from memory (which won't actually happen), and then drive right back home after class (yeah, 2.5 hours each way -- but it's the OTHER presentations I'm interested in) because by then the Lovely Daughter will be here! She has a minor operation on Monday to re-correct an eye muscle issue that was first addressed when she was three ~ we have to get it in now, since she will lose her health insurance when she graduates from college ~ so her dad is taking the day off to pick her up at the airport and take her to all her pre-op appointments. The surgeon wanted her to be good and tired when she saw him so he could better assess her eye; hence, the all-night flight from the Oregon.

It was kind of fun to visit her eye doctor over winter break, not having seen him in 18 years. He and I recognized each other, but he said that he would never have known her, of course.

Then a busy week-end, helping to lead a women's retreat and running back and forth from the retreat house to hang out with my beautiful girl. The topic of the retreat is Women Following Jesus and my presentations are on the Woman at the Well and Phoebe, the deacon mentioned at the end of Romans.

Ten minutes -- now breakfast and into the car.

Friday Five: Some Forks

Wonderful Friday Five today! Here it is, from Singing Owl:

I am at a life-changing juncture. I do not know which way I will go, but I have been thinking about the times, people and events that changed my life (for good or ill) in significant ways. For today's Friday Five, share with us five "fork-in-the-road" events, or persons, or choices. And how did life change after these forks in the road?

Obviously, the biggest fork in my road, ever, has been the sudden death of my son six months ago. But that horror of a life-changing event happened within a broad context of life, and it's that context that I want to focus on today. Herewith, five forks:

1. That first Brownie camera, received for my 9th birthday. I have experimented with photography off and on throughout my life, and it has played a big part in helping this cerebral, left-brained, language-oriented person become more attuned to how vast is the universe beyond words. I have noticed, in the six months since we lost our son, that despite the cascade of words that have come my way, most of the things which really speak to me are visual, either images themselves or words which create images.

2. The marriage. I have been married my entire adult life, since just before I turned 21. All of the things I have done as an adult have been within the confines and expansiveness of that relationship, meaning that, while sometimes my options have been limited, I have always been supported in decisions that are sometimes a little bizarre and more often than not seem to lead nowhere. I became a lawyer, a teacher, and now a seminary student, welcomed three children and said good-bye to one, all in the context of one marriage.

3. The venture into church, a Methodist church, in my late 20s. I simply woke up one morning and announced to the Quiet Husband that we needed to find a church. Who knew? In addition to serving as the foundation for a whole host of life choices, that church was the place in which we became part of a group of friends who have been family to one another for more than twenty years.

4. Great-horned owls. I first became interested in birding as a law student, when I read an article about a local guy studying and photographing nesting great-horned owls. Who could not fall in love with baby GHOs? That led to a decade-long volunteer relationship with the Museum of Natural History, my first experiences as a teacher, time up-close-and-personal with bald eagles and, most of all, a lifelong dedication to birds of all kinds.

5. The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. After a couple of graduate courses on spirituality as expressed in literature, I signed up for a course on the Exercises and within a couple of weeks asked my professor whether he would guide me through them. With that low-key modesty characteristic of individuals of profound achievement, he simply said "Sure," never letting on, as he had not through three semesters of classes, that he is one of the giants of Ignatian interpretation. A year later, I was en route to seminary and to becoming a spiritual director myself, immersed in an experience and a tradition of prayer that have, quite simply, changed my entire being and course of life.

So that's it, five forks. All of them unexpected people, unexpected gifts.

(Image: Here.)

Ten Things

Due to the Giant Storm, I decided to skip my Tillich class today and drove home from seminary last night ~ apparently a good idea. The last 25 miles on the interstate were treacherous, an hour-long trip with cars every which way, since no one could see the lines, and judging from the looks of things, I would not have been able to come home tonight. I thought that I would spend the day holed up in the house finishing a paper, but I am still procrastinating (actually, I just got up) and have given myself a 10:00 am start time.

Therefore . . . since I see that my friend Stratoz is playing one of those list memes, I thought that I would make one up for myself. I am 55 so: ten things about myself, one for every 5th year starting with age five (and ignoring this one, which has nothing to recommend it):

1. When I was five, I went to the second half of kindergarten in a church in Vero Beach, Florida.

2. I rode a horse for the first time, on the trails of Grand Teton National Park, when I was ten.

3. I went to the Harvard-Dartmouth game in Cambridge when I was fifteen, which was followed by an unfortunate double date involving my boarding school rommate and two Dartmouth freshmen.

4. When I was twenty I used to wake up in my dorm room in Williamstown, Massachusetts listening to classical music on Morning Pro Musica with Robert J. Lertsema of WGBH-Boston.

5. When I was 25, we lived in an apartment two blocks from where we live now and one of our upstairs neighbors, now a city councilman who lives two blocks in the other direction, led our tenants' revolt when the furnace broke down during a storm like this one.

6. When I was 30, we had a large and silly black dog, named Renko for the character in Hill Street Blues.

7. I don't remember many details, but I would venture that 35, with two four-year-old boys and a year old daughter, was one of the most perfect years of my life.

8. When I was 40 my three children were in Montessori school and I opened my family law practice.

9. When I was 45, we took a family trip to Italy. Our favorite parts were ~ everything! The Duomo, the monastery out in the middle of nowhere, Pompeii, the Cinque Terre, the Vatican Museums, the Roman Forum, the gelato, St. Peter's, the full moon over Florence. Lots more.

10. And when I was 50, I had one of those completely unexpected and life-changing encounters, when I resignedly signed up for a graduate class with the Jesuit who would a couple of years later guide me through the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises and become the mentor, counselor, guide and spiritual father who would nurture me through the seminary process and now through this horrible past year.

I see that I did not make my 10:00 deadline. Guess I'll procrastinate a bit more and look for photos of Florence.

No Changes in Desolation

I usually think that I understand something when I read it. Unless maybe it's Aquinas, in which case I know that there's no hope. (Actually, with respect to most philosophers - the truth is, I have no idea what they're talking about.) But in general, I read something and I get it.

Except I don't. Living through something is always so different.

"No changes in desolation," Ignatious tells us. Or, more precisely,

"In time of desolation we should never make any change but remain firm and constant in the resolution and decision that guided us the day before the desolation...".

People have been dissecting the Ignatian Rules for Discernment for centuries. There's a lot of subtlety to them, which means that they are trouble for a person like me who thinks that she's understood something when she's read it.

Let's just say again: things are always harder in real life.

What it boils down to: if you've made a good decision, one that has been confirmed many times over in all sorts of ways, then you don't give up or run away or turn back or completely change your life in a time of turmoil and darkness.

Soap opera plot lines, I think, turn on violations of this rule. Their characters are always impulsively entangling themselves in situations (usually involving sex) in times of desolation, thereby offering the writers material for decades to come and endearing themselves to the rest of us, whose inclinations for self-destructive behavior parallel theirs exactly.

In real life, I am watching from the periphery as someone I know is making (yet again) a big change in a time of desolation. It seems that one of the tell-tale signs of a decision made in turmoil is oblivion to its effects on others; apparently, tunnel vision is a hallmark of desolation.

In my own life -- well, as I said, it's hard. It would be a lot easier to let my impulses carry me. To skate away on that river. I can't skate and I hate being cold, but it would still be easier.

No changes in desolation. The words, printed or spoken -- they look and sound so simple.