Principle and foundation redux

“In everyday life, then, we must hold ourselves in balance before all created gifts insofar as we have a choice and are not bound by some responsibility.   We should not fix our desires on health or sickness, wealth or poverty, success or failure, a long life or a short one.  For everything has the potential of calling forth in us a more loving response to our life forever with God.

Our only desire and our one choice should be this: I want and I choose what better leads to God’s deepening life in me.” — David A. Fleming, S.J.

As much as the Exercises are structured linearly, each week building on the next, ultimately we find ourselves revisiting them out of order in various moments of our lives. It’s Easter season, but I am floundering in the Third Week, scrambling to find my balance.

Ignatius’ First Principle and Foundation animates his Spiritual Exercise. If you have not acceded to this, you are not ready to immerse yourself in the work of the Exercises. I may have accepted the Principle and Foundation long ago, but I cannot say that I have always managed to live in such perfect indifference. It’s a process, it’s the little things. I still do not suffer wet socks well.

Or, it’s not the little things…A few weeks back I woke up with much of the vision in my left eye gone. Light and darkness, color and movement remained, but the world to my left rippled and wavered in a disconcerting way. Shortly I was sitting in a chair in a darkened room as my ophthalmologist ran through a series of possibilities — none of them particularly comforting. When I could not read the letters on the eye chart with my right eye covered, a line from Fleming’s paraphrase of Ignatius flashed through my head: “We should not fix our desires on health or sickness…” I wondered if I had the courage to keep from fixing my desires on sight.  "Pray for the desire for the desire, then," I hear a long ago spiritual director advise.

Within an hour some of the worst diagnoses were off the table, but more tests and a visit to the sub-specialist had to follow before there would be any clarity, metaphorical or literal. I sought the anointing of the sick. I sank into the Gospel stories that wound closer and closer to the Passion. I assiduously avoided the stories in which the blind regained their sight. My sight certainly had not returned.

The specialist had a diagnosis, for which I am grateful. The prognosis is mixed. This will not progress. But I will not entirely regain what I have lost. On the left, I am like the blind man in Mark’s Gospel (Mk 8:22-25), who when only partially healed sees people walking about like trees. The right remains clear. This is the First Principle and Foundation embodied, the two desires compassing me about.

So I struggle to find that indifference, the desire not for any particular path, except that which leaves me closer to God. I find comfort in Rilke, believing that somehow in the ebb and flow of event, God is cutting deeper channels into my soul.

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.
I want to free what waits within me
so that what no one has dared to wish for 

may for once spring clear
without my contriving. 

If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,
but this is what I need to say.

May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.
Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,

I will sing you as no one ever has,
streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.  -- Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours I, 12

Gardens and saints

Yesterday, on the feast of St. Mary of Magdala, I went for a walk in a nearby public garden with a friend. Because of course a garden is where two women should go to talk about the Gospel.

It was lushly humid. The grounds are full of little delights. I loved the cross hatch pattern in the fountain, and was so enamoured of its symmetry, I didn't notice that the "rocks" in the pool are actually carved heads. And why had I never before noticed there were spikes on day lilies?

This is a garden to listen to, as well as see. The outlet from the pond burbles, the cicadas wail, and the cypress whisper in the breeze. 

We talked about Ignatius and the Exercises and praying with all your senses. It was a walk that tasted of salt, so full of flavor, and of bread, rising in the heat of the day.

I kept wondering if we'd turn a corner and find Monet painting water lilies,  or Jesus in his gardening hat harvesting the squash in the vegetable garden.

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The photograph of the orchids in my blog header is from another botanical garden, in Singapore. I took a taxi after a day's work to walk that garden in the late evening, so much of my experience of that garden was of sound and scent, of footsteps on the path muffled by the humidity.

small & fond & local

If you haven't listened to the Jesuitical podcast — do.  Even if you aren't in their demographic (which I'm pretty sure I'm not.)  I found it because they interviewed my boss at the Observatory, Br. Guy Consolmagno, SJ. This week's episode is a conversation on faith with poet Mary Karr, and in it their weekly "Consolations and Desolations" plunges into the depths. 

Karr read "The Voice of God, (from her latest collection taken from a series, "The Unholy Bible").  It's the Book of Wisdom rewrit and begins,

Ninety percent of what’s wrong with you
    could be cured with a hot bath,
says God from the bowels of the subway.

It's the end of the semester here, generally stressful, and this year a bit more than usual. (Or maybe age is catching up with me?)   The days spit me out at the end, damp and knotted and with a to-do list longer than when I began.  Out of the depth, I cry to you, O Lord. Hear me, and if you can't answer me, might you at least answer some of my email? (#modernMiracles)

So here is the answer, take a hot bath, not rumbling under my feet on a city street, but Bluetoothed into my earbuds.  Speaking of modern miracles. God, whispering in my ears. Take a hot bath, it'll cure ninety percent of what ails you.

The voice of God: "small & fond & local"

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You can read the whole poem here.

Writing Exercises

It's a book.  In February of 2016 I created a document on my computer labeled "Not By Bread Alone."  Forty-seven reflections and 12 months later I attached a document with the completed manuscript to an email to my editor.  It felt oddly unceremonious. Somehow a book manuscript ought to have real heft, to weigh something more than a few electrons.  But off it went, weightlessly and nearly instantly, to Liturgical Press to return with edits and queries, and as proofs and as final proofs.  No version weighing my computer down anymore than that first blank file had.

In many ways it was like making the Ignatian Exercises again, this time in the form of the 19th annotation — a retreat in daily life.  There was assigned scripture. There were familiar themes: contrition, the Gospel stories, gratitude and humility.  The Third Week came again, and the Fourth dawned with joy.

There was repetition, as each reflection was visited multiple times growing from a sketched sentence or two to full length.  (Not to mention the repetition that accompanied the proofs.) Colloquies were made as I crafted questions for readers to grapple with.  And there was a prayer to end each day's contemplations.

It was a privilege to walk those roads again, almost a decade after making the 30-days.  It was a privilege to write a path to walk with others. Ad majorem Dei gloriam.

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You can buy the book at Liturgical Press, $5 for the large print version, less for the easier to carry around version or for larger quantities, or for the weightless ebook!

Drinking from the mug of Indifference

Mugs are firmly embedded in my prayer life.   If I'm going on retreat -- even for a night of silence -- I take my mug.  Morning prayer with a hot cup of black, sweet, tea is both bracing and warming.  Outside when the weather permits, a window with a view if it does not.

The 30-day retreat to make the Spiritual Exercises was no exception. But three days into the Exercises, while washing it out, my mug slipped out of my hands and crashed into the sink.  So. I will not prefer my mug to one of the mugs set out in the dining hall.  #PrincipleAndFoundation #Indifference

Last week I took a group of students up to the Jesuit Center at Wernersville for three days to try an experience of silence. They are taking a linked set of courses on contemplative practices, one on the Buddhist rhetoric of meditation, one on the psychology of mindfulness, and mine, on the spaces of silence in the western contemplative traditions.  We are also headed to Japan in a couple of weeks, two weeks, no checked luggage, and so while reading the desert fathers and mothers, we've been talking about living and traveling light. 

I left my mug home.

I missed it.  I also didn't pack the yuzu tea I've been drinking for an awful case of laryngitis, or my favorite English breakfast tea.  I missed them, too.

It's not that they took up so much room in my bag, I could have tucked them in without effort.  There was something of the experience of simply going, of leaving without looking back.  No second tunic, no mug when I was sure there would one there I could use.  Fuge, tace, quiesce. Flee, be silent, be still.

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This lesson in indifference reminded me of the story of my mug at summer school for theology. I was taking an early morning course, and tea at the break was most welcome. There was a lounge downstairs with a kettle and sink and a place to hang your mugs, mostly used by the sisters who were in the MA program and staying for the summer in the dorms. I brought a bright yellow mug from home to use, hung it on the rack, and enjoyed my tea for the first two days. Day three and my mug is nowhere to be found. I brought another one in.   I couldn't imagine that any of the sisters would have taken it, we all had our own mugs. 

 A week later one of the sisters took me aside and told me she found my mug. The bishop had it, she said.   A bishop from South America had come for the summer to brush up on his theology. He was a delightful fellow student, but he had also wanted a mug for his coffee. He asked the dean where he might find one, and the dean had come down, unaware that the mugs on the rack were not "seminary mugs," pulled down my mug and handed it over. "This should do," she said.

My informant had the story straight from bishop, by asking him where he'd found the great yellow mug. And no, none of us told him! He was such a nice guy, we could not bring ourselves to embarrass him, or the equally delightful dean.

Column: Passion plays

In the midst of a crazy Holy Week, I found Pärt's Lamentate to be a spot to rest, to wait, to contemplate.  It's worth the 37 minutes, or even 3.

This column appeared at CatholicPhilly on 23 March 2016.

I will stand at my guard post, and station myself upon the rampart;
I will keep watch to see what he will say to me. — Habakkuk 2:1a

“So you could not keep watch with me for one hour? Watch and pray…” Jesus begs Peter, James, and John in the garden of Gesthemane. The Triduum of the Passion and Resurrection of the Lord is upon us, an invitation to once again watch and pray with Jesus in the garden, on the cross and in his triumphal resurrection. But how shall we pray?

In his Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius of Loyola suggests praying with the Gospels by reverently placing ourselves into the stories, imagining the scenes in detail. To see where you are standing and with whom. Is it cloudy? Can you smell the dust, the bread baking? Where is Jesus and what does he have to say to you? Who are you in the scene?

This is precisely the approach recommended in an Easter homily given by St. Gregory Nazianzen, a fourth century bishop and Doctor of the Church. What St. Gregory and St. Ignatius have in mind goes beyond a replaying of an historical event, or even a prayerful contemplation of Jesus’ experience. These meditations should propel us outward.

“If you are a Simon of Cyrene, take up the Cross and follow,” says St. Gregory. If you are Mary of Magdalene, call out to the Lord, listen to him and then go, proclaim what you have seen. Stand at the gates of heaven as Christ ascends, raise the gates to let him enter.

To pray through these days as St. Ignatius suggests, set aside some quiet time, and find the Scripture passage you want to enter into. Mark your Bible, or find it on the web. Begin by asking God for the grace to be at his disposal in this time of prayer. Then set the scene, and slowly imagine yourself there.

Don’t worry about being historically correct, whether you see the Gesthemane of Jesus’ time, or your own garden. When you have finished, speak to Jesus as you would to a close friend. What is his desire for you, here and now?

We retell the story of our salvation not merely to know we are saved, but to grasp more deeply our own role in the coming of the Kingdom. Who are we, where do we stand as Jesus enters into these mysteries? What is he saying to us? Go, wash each other’s feet. Go, stand watch for one another and pray. Go, offer yourselves for the poor and the forsaken.

Go, proclaim the good news.

What role do you play in the Passion?

A selection from St. Gregory Nazianzen’s Second Easter homily, given on Easter in the church at Arianzus,  a small village in what is now Turkey where the bishop lived the last years of his life in retirement.  See the Office of Readings for the last Saturday in Lent.

24. If you are a Simon of Cyrene, take up the Cross and follow. If you are crucified with Him as a robber, acknowledge God as a penitent robber. If even He was numbered among the transgressors for you and your sin, do you become law-abiding for His sake. Worship Him Who was hanged for you, even if you yourself are hanging; make some gain even from your wickedness; purchase salvation by your death; enter with Jesus into Paradise,  so that you may learn from what you have fallen. Contemplate the glories that are there; let the murderer die outside with his blasphemies; and if you be a Joseph of Arimathæa, beg the Body from him that crucified Him, make your own that which cleanses the world.  If you be a Nicodemus, the worshipper of God by night, bury Him with spices.

If you be a Mary, or another Mary, or a Salome, or a Joanna, weep in the early morning. Be first to see the stone taken away, and perhaps you will see the Angels and Jesus Himself. Say something; hear His Voice. If He say to you, Touch Me not, stand afar off; reverence the Word, but grieve not; for He knows those to whom He appears first. Keep the feast of the Resurrection; come to the aid of Eve who was first to fall, of Her who first embraced the Christ, and made Him known to the disciples.

Be a Peter or a John; hasten to the Sepulchre, running together, running against one another, vying in the noble race. And even if you be beaten in speed, win the victory of zeal; not Looking into the tomb, but Going in. And if, like a Thomas, you were left out when the disciples were assembled to whom Christ shows Himself, when you do see Him be not faithless; and if you do not believe, then believe those who tell you; and if you cannot believe them either, then have confidence in the print of the nails. If He descend into Hell, descend with Him. Learn to know the mysteries of Christ there also, what is the providential purpose of the twofold descent, to save all absolutely by His manifestation, or there too only them that believe.

25. And if He ascend up into Heaven, ascend with Him. Be one of those angels who escort Him, or one of those who receive Him. Bid the gates be lifted up, or be made higher, that they may receive Him, exalted after His Passion. Answer to those who are in doubt because He bears up with Him His body and the tokens of His Passion, which He had not when He came down, and who therefore inquire, Who is this King of Glory? that it is the Lord strong and mighty, as in all things that He has done from time to time and does, so now in His battle and triumph for the sake of Mankind.

— Read the entire oration here.

DotMagis: Hearing Places

After a month of travel, a delightful mix of work and rest, I was anxious to get home. Still, I wasn’t looking forward to negotiating yet another airport, where each line earns you the privilege of waiting in another. As we approached check-in, we were waved off to wait with a half-dozen others. “Are you sure they sent us to the right line?” I asked my husband, as I watched people in the long queue next to us check their bags for Philly while we waited— unmoving —  behind a rope.  “The sign says Philadelphia,” he reassured me.

Suddenly a young woman appeared, and without any preamble, began to ask us questions in careful English.  “What did you see?” she asked me brightly.  It was a hard question to answer.  I had spent a number of days walking the northwest coast of Ireland, I’d seen the Atlantic stretching out before me, breath-taking cliffs, tumbled-down chapels, and sheep — lots of sheep.  I’d seen Gaudi’s magnificent Sagrada Familia, and Michaelangelo’s David.  I took a lot of pictures, but my most potent memories of this trip are as much about what I heard as what I saw.  Why don't we ask people who've been away, "what did you hear?"

The walk where it was so quiet, I could hear the sheep tearing at the grass.  The rocks rolling on a shore far below.  The bubbles breaking in my cappuccino.

The experience led to a short reflection on Ignatius' notion of the composition of place posted today at DotMagis (with a great graphic!).

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The mystery of the lines was that they were funneling people off to let trainees practice.  Did we look patient?  Like teachers?  We each got a little gold star on our passports, regardless.

Go and tell my brothers and sisters

Noli Me Tangere by Fra Bartolomeo via Wikimedia 

From the 20^th chapter of the Gospel of John:  Jesus said to Mary Magdalene, “Go to my brothers and sisters and tell them, ‘I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”
Mary of Magdala went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and what he told her.

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One of the dynamics of a retreat we discussed at length during the practicum at ISI two weeks ago was how to send retreatants back into the world.  Underlying this was a conversation about the purpose of the retreat — to vacation with God, to 'unplug', a yearly spiritual 'cleanse', a moment to pick up tools to help one "make progress in the life," a step along the way toward magis  — keeping in mind that the dynamics of the retreat planned may not be consonant with the desires that retreatants bring with them, and that the magis Ignatius speaks of might not be for everyone. 

This was a practicum, so we had a chance to do a little preaching and were encouraged to sketch out retreat talks we might give.  I'm still grappling with how a weekend retreat framed around Ignatius 18th Annotation might move retreatants, how resurrection and mission might be presented in this context. 

The scene with Mary of Magdalene in the garden is what came to mind, perhaps because I was sitting outside in the heat, in a small rock garden, perhaps because her feast had been a few days earlier. 

St. Augustine called Mary Magdalene "the apostle to the apostles," because she was went from the garden to tell the apostles the good news. Magdala means tower in Aramaic and I frankly enjoy the image of Mary the Tower as a complement to Peter the Rock. The Church may be built on that rock of Peter, but Mary of Magdala ignited it with these words, "I have seen the Lord.” 

I found myself wondering what happened to Mary Magdalene next, after she returned and the disciples dismissed her as crazy (or so Luke's Gospel tell us).  The medieval legends says she went to France and lived in a cave, repenting of her sins and fed by angels.  I find myself more taken with the Orthodox tradition, which puts her with Mary, the Theotokos, the Mother of God, in Ephesus.

“Go” Jesus told Mary Magdalene in the garden.  Jesus didn’t mean for her to take a walk and deliver a message, the end.  The Greek word translated here as go (poreuou) in John’s Gospel carries the sense of heading out on a journey, to re-order your life’s direction, to carry forward a message. Go out, cries Jesus, I want you to proclaim again and again, “I have seen the risen Lord.” The ultimate root of poreuou is aptly enough "pierced through" (as a needle carries a thread through...) 

Did Mary tell the apostles, give up when they laughed at the women's "nonsense" (leros) and then quietly retire to Ephesus (or a cave for that matter)?  Or did what she saw and believed pour out of her?  Does she pray, as C.S. Lewis would say centuries later, because "I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time — waking and sleeping. " Does she proclaim the resurrection as she was sent to do?  Does she meet Paul?  Are the two Mary's at the core of the church in Ephesus?

It's given me much to think about, not only in the context of retreat preaching, but in terms of my own vocation.

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What is most often translated "brothers," adelphous, is literally "from the same womb" as are, of course, brothers and sisters.

A wink

I moved my office outside yesterday.  What do I need to work?  A stack of books (A Pernicious Sort of Woman, on late medieval canon law and religious women living without an approved rule - the title is alas a quote from the 2nd Lateran Council), pen, note pads, laptop, reading glasses, and a chilled thermos of aqueous caffeine. My breviary, for yes, I'm a religious woman living without an approved rule.  And of course, the office cat.

Ignatian Spiritualiy is celebrating its fifth anniversarty this month, and have put out a beautifully designed flipboard magazine with fifty two of their favorite posts. I had missed this one, God Winks, by Andy Otto when it first appeared.  Working out here is like being at a cocktail party, with someone I share inside jokes with, winking from across the room.  Wink. I look up to see three baby squirrels emerge from the nest in my neighbors tree, out to practice their walking on wire technique, chittering loudly and harrassing each other to no end.  The race out to the end of the wires, screech to a halt and use the pear tree to turn around.  (Mostly successfully, though there have been some near misses.) Wink.  A chipmunk pops up from the fern, delighted to have found a ripe wild cherry in the garden.

I am reading Follow the Ecstasy, a biography of Thomas Merton's last years - as he moved gradually to a hermitage on the monastery grounds, exploring the boundaries between the monastic life and the eremetic life, testing his limits and his community's limits.  As I sit in this green enclosure, alone, alternating between tending to the laundry, the last bits of paperwork from the academic year, my writing and my prayer, I'm wondering if I've not undertaken a similar experiment.

Ignatius of Loyola 1: Looking up to Ignatius

The image of St. Ignatius to the left hung in the stairwell at Eastern Point retreat house when I made the Spiritual Exercises there.  If you look closely, you can see my reflection at the lower right (the sleeve of my grey sweatshirt and the camera in front of my face).  Through his Exercises, Ignatius has had a substantial influence on my life, though our lives are separated by centuries, and an ocean.

In the Exercises, there is a contemplation which asks you to imagine standing before God and the communion of saints.  My image of Ignatius in that gathering was of a tall, thin man standing off to the side smiling — perhaps drawing on this image I looked up at each day on my way to meet with my director.  I was shocked to discover that Ignatius was only 4'11" tall.  I am a solid two inches taller than the good saint!

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Andy Otto's wonderful post about five ways to find God in all things is reprised on Loyola Press' 31-days of St. Ignatius calendar.  I love his suggestion to do something by hand that you might not have to.  Yesterday my kids and I baked bread, kneading and shaping the loaves.  This morning I was reminded of the sacredness of the everyday when I sliced a piece for toast and noticed that my oldest had slashed the sign of the cross in the top of the loaves, as his Irish great-great-great grandmother did.

31 Days of St. Ignatius

July 31st is the feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola, and Loyola Press is hosting a month long fest for the saint!  There is a calendar with interesting Ignatian links for each day (full disclosure, one of my reflections is featured on  July 9), watch their Facebook stream for other features during the month.

Who is St. Ignatius of Loyola?  Project Gutenberg has his autobiography in a number of electronic formats, there is a short biography here and here, or you can read Margaret Silf's imaginative conversations with Ignatius, Call Me Lopez. Or watch for a daily interesting (to me at least) Ignatian fact posted here...

This Ignatian Life: The Art of Packing a Camel

I have ridden a camel at an oasis in the desert, but I freely admit I've never had to pack one.  I realize that there is no evidence in the biblical accounts that the magi came by camel, but as Ignatian composition of place doesn't demand a slavish attention to historical detail...I'm free to imagine a camel breathing down my neck.

I learned on the Exercises that there is an art to packing a camel. I learned to ask the questions that the magi must have faced with a long journey ahead, where the weight of what you carry could — quite literally — drain the life from your camels. Where you might have to sit on what you had packed, so that with each passing mile the lumps and edges of your luggage gives you, as well as your camels, galls. Where balance is not a metaphor, but a hard reality.

Read the rest at This Ignatian Life.

Reflecting on reflecting with Ignatius: writing on teaching

My harvest of limes in Kamikatsu, Japan

Last year at this time I was in Japan with a group of students from the college's 360^o program. Today, an essay I wrote reflecting on the experience we had reflecting with our students about the structure of the course appeared — framed loosely around Ignatian repetition and his notion of the Examen.

You can find the essay here.  (Click on the photo to see the full text.)

Images of Ignatius of Loyola: Call Me Lopez

When I began making St. Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises, at Eastern Point in Gloucester, Massachusetts in the winter of 2009, my director began by sharing one of his encounters with Ignatius — an accidental encounter in an elective class during his seminary years that rapidly unfolded into a Jesuit vocation — and a bit of Ignatius' life. It was, he thought, important to have a sense of the man who had crafted these Exercises I was about to make.

He handed me a postcard with an image of Ignatius writing at his desk, noting he had picked it because it was the least intimidating of the images of Ignatius he could find.

Frankly, I had never thought of Ignatius as intimidating, having first met him casually over coffee with a friend in Bryn Mawr, we have a relationship that has grown gradually deeper and richer over the years and decades. Enigmatic, yes. Challenging? Absolutely. But I always found the saint's persona to be inviting and invigorating, rather than intimidating. The postcard sat on my desk for the duration of the Exercises, one link among many across the centuries to this extraordinary man, and now hangs over my desk even as I write this.

The image of Ignatius that is most firmly stuck in my mind is not the one on the postcard but the one that hung on the stairs up to my director's office at Eastern Point and therefore greeted me each morning of the Exercises (top left). It's the mix of the smile and wise eyes that still delights me in this picture. Each morning as I mounted the steps, I felt as if Ignatius knew the road I was walking in these 4 weeks, its difficulties and its joys, and was shooing me upstairs to talk about it, and have my feet gently set on the next step of the path he had sketched out 500 years ago. (When I showed the picture to my regular spiritual director, more than 50 years a Jesuit, he said, "Can it really be Ignatius, he's smiling?" I pointed out that the name on the shield seemed to unequivocallly identify the bearer.)

Loyoal Press has just published Margaret Silf's Call Me López, an imaginative spiritual biography of Ignatius of Loyola, framed as a conversation between Ignatius Oñaz López de Loyola — "call me López" — and Rachel, a fictional 21st century spiritual writer and giver of retreats. [Full disclosure: Loyola Press sent me an advanced copy of the book, and a copy to give away to readers of my blog, with no strings attached. Really full disclosure, I'd already pre-ordered the book!] Having my own strong images of Ignatius, I worried if reading Call Me López would be like seeing the movie after reading a book you adored, where the beloved main character's voice and appearance are at utter odds with the images in your mind.

Short answer. No. I was swept away from the first pages, so much so in fact, that reading it while I waited for someone to come fetch me, it took an effort of will to recall myself to where I was and what I was doing when she arrived.

I loved the image of Ignatius inside the front cover, so like the one on my wall, but warmer and lighter. There is a terrific timeline of Ignatius' life in the back cover. I wish this book had existed when I made the Exercises. I would have left it for my husband and sons to read, to let Ignatius companion them as he companioned me.

Reading this book gently drew me back into some of the movements of the Exercises, not so much in their details, but in their depths — a welcome touch of Ignatian repetition in a year where my week's retreat was more Carthusian in tone than Ignatian.

I have more to say about the book itself, but will save that for another post. If you've wondered about Ignatian spirituality, or the Exercises, Margaret Silf's book is a wonderful way to discover what lies at their heart.

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If you'd like to win a copy of Margaret Silf's Just Call Me López to read, courtesy of Loyola Press, enter by leaving me a comment on this post. I'll fire up my random number generator and pick a winner next Tuesday (July 24th) If you like, tell me how you met Ignatius, and what your first impressions were.

If you can't wait to see if you win, the lovely people at Loyola Press are offering a 30% discount on the book through July 31 (the feast of St. Ignatius). Use the code LOPEZ before 8/31/12 at Loyola Press' site.

Ignatian Antinomy

...not to be confused with antimony.^1,2 (comment on Wikipedia entry for antinomy)

In his first principle and foundation, Ignatius of Loyola uses antinomy to good effect:

We should not fix our desires on health or sickness,
Wealth or poverty, success or failure, a long life or a short one.
For everything has the potential of calling forth in us
A deeper response to our life in God. — From David Fleming SJ's beautiful paraphrase

When I told a friend the other day that I was working on not preferring order over chaos, he suggested that might be my own Ignatian antinomy. I said we could probably all write our own personal versions. Forthwith, here is mine.

I should not fix my desires on wet socks or dry feet,

placemats or tablecloths,³ silence or noise, order or utter chaos.

For everything has the potential of calling forth in us

A deeper response to our life in God (even the placemats).

I just finished writing a reflection (for next Lent!) which in combination with this exchange has me thinking about how I am willing to assent to broad terms but when faced with the real issues of my ordinary life can let it all go out the window.

Making the Exercises these big bins — success and failure, wealth and poverty — were much on my mind. But Ignatius was thinking that everything sat on this ability to let all these things, desired or not, move us closer to God. Everyday, not just while making the Exercises, not just in the momentous decisions about life, but when faced with the kitchen and the dishes, the laundry and the mail, the phone and teen driving lessons.

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1. Antimony is a chemical element.
2. Blogger's spellcheck suggests I change antinomy to antimony. I am not confused.

3. You need to ask Math Man about this one.

Application of the Senses

One hallmark of an Ignatian approach to prayer is the way in which engages all the senses, both in its composition of place and as a way of deepening and sharpening the focus of a contemplation. Smell the dust, says Ignatius. Hear the raucous crowd. Stop analyzing and feel. This isn't about God, or even about talking with God, this is an encounter with God.

Though my recent retreat was not formally Ignatian — no spiritual director, and four hours a day spent in the liturgy — it retained a distinctly Ignatian flavor in the ways in which my senses were drawn into times of prayer, pulling particular strands from the external into the interior space of my meditations.

The turquoise of the small bay far below against the yellow hills and dark rocks boasting their lacy ruffs of surf is stunning, but the smells were as intriguing as the view is breathtaking. Something smelled of licorice [note: it turned out to be licorice, which grows wild in the area] which reminded me of Menotti's opera about the Magi. The smell of the fox's den announced itself brightly as the drive began to descend in earnest, marking off the beginning and ends of walks more sharply than the cross embedded in the rock face. And at the very end of a hot afternoon's walk, I looked down to see a single tiny wild strawberry, then realized I could smell the scent of warm strawberry sifting up from a small patch in the sun. The cold damp on my skin as I walked early one morning through the bits of mist that still clung to the canyon walls like lint left from the bank of fog that lingers off shore.

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After I posted this, I read this post by Jim Manney on how the physical gets all too easily neglected in our prayer....

Ignatian Life: Easter's shattering realities

Christ is risen, alleluia, alleluia!

"I find myself flinching at the mere thought of wrapping them in paper and cloth and hitting them with a hammer. No matter how gently done, this is not a benign procedure. It is meant to shatter, to destroy. There is no going back, once begun. The plants are still beautiful in their containers, not yet feeling the effects of the confinement. But unless I can steel myself to breaking open the glass, the plants will be forever stunted. Not today, I think, not this week. Perhaps the next?"

Read the rest at This Ignatian Life

Ignatian Life: Custody of the Eyes

I've been following the conversation at the Deacon's Bench on the prudential judgement that needs to be exercised in deciding — in the moment — who should be admitted to the Eucharist. There is a lot of slicing and dicing of canon law, Eucharistic theology and moral theology being done (who has what rights, what is a correct disposition...) as well as a great deal of Monday morning quarterbacking going on.

It's been making me think, not about Eucharistic theology per se, but rather about the decisions we make — in the moment — when we come face to face with Christ in a "distressing diguise." Those can be tough, as a young Jesuit Volunteer courageously recounts here. What happens at the altar, does not stay at the altar, but plays out on the altar of the world. It's easy to be critical of the decisions made on all sides when there is time to think and discuss, not so easy when the decision is standing in front of you, asking to be fed.

I'm struggling with how to respond in these encounters with Christ as well — as you can read in my latest reflection at This Ignatian Life.

"We issue lists of grave sins, delicta graviora. We wrangle over translations, theological nuances and liturgical praxis. We worry whether we are sufficiently reverent with the body of Christ when we receive in the hand, and all the while the body of Christ lies crumpled and abandoned on the sidewalk. And I walk past, averting my eyes.

'And what about His hunger, cold, chains, nakedness and sickness? What about His homelessness? Are these sufferings not sufficient to overcome your alienation?' challenged John Chrysostom sixteen centuries ago. How can you continue to walk through the city, pretending not to see, failing to recognize what is before you? It’s not just new perspectives in science I seek on this sabbatical. What about His homelessness? I chose to work in the city on this leave, not just because the materials I needed were here, but because I wanted to look at this horizon, to struggle with my response to these challenging questions. To face what I had walked away from two summers previously."

Read the rest here.

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Photo is from rubygold, used under Creative Commons license.

God walks among the pots and pans

I've started blogging occasionally at This Ignatian Life. The blog explores the lived traditions of Ignatian spirituality, and current bloggers range from Jesuit scholastic Paul Lickteig to David Bayne who worked with street children in Argentina and Lisa Kelly, a mother and missionary. My first post is up:

"....what I did get was a place to pray. As I spackled and sanded yesterday afternoon, my mind wandered back to the First Week of the Exercises, meditating on the ways in which my life is dinged and damaged, and the world likewise. Much like the laundry room of my First Week, this 5 foot square space encouraged meditations on failure and redemption.


My impromptu orationis angulus has vanished. The walls are done, the drop cloth folded up, the paint brushes are drying by the basement sink. What remains, though, is a potent composition of place, a modern riff on Isaiah’s image of clay and potter: Yet, LORD, you are our father; we are the clay and you our potter: we are all the work of your hand. I can smell the paint, hear the scritch of the sandpaper, see the flecks of paint on the window, feel the smoothness of the sanded patch. I imagine God at work, perched precariously on a ladder, working cheerfully even in this cramped and awkward space."

Read the whole thing here.