Fifth week epiphany

Sixteen years ago, as the feast of the Epiphany approached, I packed my bags and drove north to Gloucester, MA to make the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola  — the long retreat. You can do the Exercises in daily life, devoting time each day to the meditations over 30 or so weeks, as Ignatius suggests in the 19th annotation (he prefaced the Exercises with 20 notes). Learning to balance prayer and work in real time. Or you can spend 30 days sequestered in silence, moving through the four “weeks” or movements Ignatius proposed, then be pushed back out the door into the world — the fifth week. 

For a mother and wife and scientist, the second version was a luxury (ok, either version is a luxury TBH). It was the longest stretch I had ever spent away from home. I was a commuting student in college, so packing up for an extended stay away was a new-to-me experience.  Like the Magi, I would return home by a different route, or rather, routed in a different way. (Unlike the Magi, I didn't have to ride a camel into town to get what I might need. Post-it notes, as it turned it out).

I had a star to orient me. A gift of a lovely friend and talented artist. It now hangs in a west window at home, still bringing color to a winter landscape, still leading. 

I remarked to my spiritual director last week that the fifth week of the Exercises has a long tail. "Like the rest of your life?"  Yep. 

I left the Exercises with the Suscipe in my heart, "Receive, O Lord, all my liberty. Take my memory, my understanding, and my entire will. Whatsoever I have or hold, you have given me. I surrender it wholly to be governed by your will. Give me only your love and your grace and I am rich enough and ask for nothing more." 

These days, what surrendering my entire will looks like is not at all what I imagined at 50. And I still come to prayer with desires and entreaties, asking for much. But with enough grace I can occasionally recognize how richly beloved I am.

What does the fifth week look like? Like a carpenter smoothing a piece of wood by hand. The plane peeling a layer off here. Sanding down rough spots there.  Oil to keep the wood from drying and breaking, a balm, a guard.