The Creator Deals Directly With The Creature

by Jim Manney

A comment about the early Jesuits

There was, however, one “doctrine” that was fundamental for them, one that gave orientation to all their ministries and to the way they wanted to lead their own lives. It was the basic premise of the Exercises, even though it was buried unobtrusively in the fifteenth Preliminary Observation”: the Creator deals directly with the creature, and the creature deals directly with the Creator—heart to heart, one might say. Upon this teaching Jesuits based their more characteristic themes—indifference, discernment, and inner devotion, or consolation.

John W. O’Malley, SJ
The First Jesuits

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May 22, 2012

The Christian Problem

by Jim Manney

One day I was riding a subway in New York City engaging in my favorite New York pastime—people-watching. You can really study people in subways because they sit in the same place for a while and they almost always avoid eye contact. Across from me sat a Sikh man wearing an expensive suit and a turban. Near him was a Muslim woman also wearing a head covering. Down the car a bit were two Hasidic Jews wearing long black coats, flat-brimmed black hats, and sporting curls of hair on the sides of their heads. The religions of the world, all in one subway car—only in New York. Then I noticed that the man sitting next to the Sikh appeared to be reading a Bible. It was hard to tell for sure. The Bible looked like an ordinary book, but as I peered at it, it looked like the type was small and laid out in two columns on the page.  He looked like everyone else, an ordinary guy reading a book on a subway.

My friend Chris Lowney calls this “the Christian problem.” The problem is: how are Christians different? Our lives look pretty much the same as everyone’s. In everyday terms, what makes us different?

Other religions have answers to that question with visible differences, as my subway inspection showed.  Observant Jews follow the Law, which regulates food, dress, and other aspects of daily life. Faithful Muslims pray five times a day.  Hindus are differentiated into caste groups with distinct modes of dress and behavior. We Christians have few of these outer signs of religious identity because Jesus wasn’t much interested in external signs of piety.  He was much more interested in the condition of our hearts. We act as Christians when our hearts are set on loving God and other people.  We live as followers of Christ when we’re aligned with the work God is doing in the world. This is much more a matter of our inner orientation than outward characteristics.

The answer to the Christian problem is to find God in all things—to see God in what we think, do, and feel; in life with family, friends, colleagues, and casual acquaintances; in our busyness and our rest.  That’s what the Examen helps us do so well.

Adapted from A Simple, Life-Changing Prayer: Discovering the Power of St. Ignatius Loyola’s Examen

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May 21, 2012

The Hinterland Becomes the Heartland

by Jim Manney

What if that shadowy mystery beyond the span of our years turns out to be the real country to which our earthly days are just the fragmented signposts? What if the unconscious realms in which our conscious minds are floating turn out to be the embryonic sac that is beckoning us toward a reality far beyond imagination? What if that of my life that seems so total, so final, and so absolute turns out to be the map into the hinterland of my eternal reality?

How reluctant we are to let go of the containing walls and risk a life beyond the circumscription. It seems easier to survive the slavery of Egypt than to venture into Sinai, and we convince ourselves that our slavery is freedom and our helplessness is a proud independence. The map changes radically when our walls come down and the real roads, that were always there, though impassable, are opened up. Then the hinterland becomes the heartland, where real life can really be lived.

Margaret Silf
Inner Compass

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May 18, 2012

Spiritual AND Religious

by Jim Manney

When one of his students said she was spiritual but not religious, Jason Brauninger, SJ, decided to explain why was both.  His essay was published on the lively JesuitPost.com site.  His main reason?

It’s this: without religion, without a living community of spiritual friends, I simply have no one to hold me up to any standards. There would be no one with a similar set of values or beliefs that could help me become a better person, challenge me to deepen my relationship with God, or even understand me when I have to beg for help from the depths like the psalmist.

Read the whole thing.

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May 17, 2012

Work as if Everything Depends on God

by Jim Manney

There’s an old saying that we should “pray as if everything depends on God, work as if everything depends on you.”  It’s been attributed to Ignatius (though there’s no evidence that he said it), and many think it captures the Ignatian spirit: turning it all over to God in prayer and then working tirelessly and urgently to do God’s work.  I prefer to reverse it: “pray as if everything depends on you, work as if everything depends on God.”  This means that prayer has to be urgent: God has to do something dramatic if everything depends on me.  It also puts our work in the right perspective: if it depends on God, we can let it go.  We can work hard but leave the outcome up to him.  If God is in charge we can tolerate mixed results and endure failure.

Ignatius writes about work and human effort in a letter to an aristocrat named Jerome Vines, whom I imagine was a busy, hard-charging, Type A character who was getting upset about the fate of his many projects.  A busy man, Ignatius writes, “must make up his mind to do what he can, without afflicting himself if he cannot do all that he wishes. You must have patience and not think that God our Lord requires what man cannot accomplish.”  He concludes with this: “There is no need to wear yourself out, but make a competent and sufficient effort, and leave the rest to him who can do all he pleases.”

 Image by wetwebwork under Creative Commons license.

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May 16, 2012

How Do You Know If You Have Found God?

by Jim Manney

Something to think about ¦ How do you “know” if you have “found God” in something, in a moment of your day? For me it is like hitting a hard reset on my computer; It is reconnecting to my mission, to that which makes me tick and makes me seek goodness. It is the self-awareness of seeing what is truly important and needed in a situation rather than just what I “want.” It is the moment of gratitude for what is, and the release of the angst for what isn’t. And in those moments, there is a sense of wholeness, of Oneness with Something greater than myself, with another person, or with the world around me. When I step outside of myself enough, at the end of my day or throughout the day, to momentarily name and celebrate that experience of Oneness, that is when I can say I find God in all things.

Lisa Kelly
IgnatianLife.org

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May 15, 2012

Go Gracefully

by Maureen McCann Waldron

I have a dear friend who has been a Servite sister for many decades.  Last week she mentioned in passing that in her community they have a tradition that she called “Go gracefully.”  It means that before someone goes on a trip she gets everything done ahead of time.  Laundry is done, suitcase packed, driving directions printed off or boarding pass ready.   “Go Gracefully” means that the night before the trip or the morning of the excursion, there is a peaceful readiness about everything and no last-minute panic.

I have thought of that a number of times in the days since I have seen her and pondered what a gentle and sensible tradition that is.  When we are running around excitedly trying to get our last-minute things done, our urgency is imposed on everyone around us.  My panic becomes the prominent emotion in the house.  My problem becomes everyone else’s problem.

It’s bad enough in a family, but if I project that kind of alarming behavior on a whole community of people, I can create quite a disturbance simply because I did not plan ahead.  What a sensible tradition for people who live in community – and for the rest of us!

I even think about workplace panic.  If I have a big meeting that I am procrastinating preparing for, my last minute fear and anxiety will fill the office and disturb my colleagues.  My disquiet will seep into those around me at work or at home.

This is a good time of year for all of us to remember to go gracefully.  It is a special way we can love those around us by remaining at peace and turning our fretting over to our loving God.

“The LORD will guard your coming and going both now and forever.”
Psalm 121

Image by wwarby under Creative Commons license.

 

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May 14, 2012

Love One Another–Online and Off

by Meredith Gould

Earlier this week I found myself in a phone conversation with someone with over a decade of experience in  church leadership. Yes, we were on the phone talking about social media, which just underscores my perpetual point about choosing communication tools wisely and well. Among other things, she was concerned about  the questionable quality of interaction among Christians that sometimes shows up on social media. “It’s much too snarky, too negative,” she said.  My response? “Please do not blame the tools.”

I pressed for more information.

Was the edginess coming from GenXers or Millennials? If so, they might characterize it as their form of humor.  Was the negativity coming from those in church leadership? If so, they might characterize it as blowing off steam. What happens if you respond with concern, either in public or through a back channel like email or private message? Have you considered offering the option of continuing the conversation by phone or in person?

The question behind my questions: are you willing to view social media as a tool for ministry?

Over the past four years of engagement with social media, I’ve had the privilege of observing people reach out to one another  in response to posts that were raw expressions of pain. I, too, have been the grateful recipient of tender outreach when I’ve jammed my frustration du jour into 140 characters.  And I prayerfully hope I’ve provided such comfort for others, especially those for whom gallows humor is a coping mechanism for living a life of faith these days.

On social media, as in daily life offline, we choose the lens that informs our vision. When it comes to social media, I suggest choosing to look through the lens of ministry and then answering the invitation to love one another.

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May 11, 2012

St. Ignatius and Memory

by Guest

This is a guest post by Dawn Eden, author and blogger at The Dawn Patrol.

Dawn Eden

Dawn Eden

In St. Ignatius Loyola’s Suscipe, the prayer for perfect charity that appears toward the end of his Spiritual Exercises, we find important clues to the nature of the saint’s own spiritual journey:

“Take, O Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my whole will …”

The first thing Ignatius offers God is his liberty. Wanting to live for God instead of for himself, he gives up his freedom to act, so that he might say with St. Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20).

Then comes the aspect of the Suscipe prayer that is perhaps the most striking. Having given his freedom, Ignatius seeks to give God his mind and heart. What is the first part of his inner self that he offers? It is his memory.

In Ignatius’s understanding of the human mind, the concept of memory refers to more than just particular memories. Memory includes everything that had entered into his consciousness to make him who he was—whether or not he could actually remember it. It forms the foundation of his present identity, including his hopes for his future.

This is an ancient way of understanding memory, dating back at least to St. Augustine, and it makes particular sense for one who has survived trauma—as Ignatius had, having been wounded during his military days. Often in trauma survivors (and this holds regardless of whether the trauma was the result of sexual abuse or military combat) the brain attempts to protect itself by consigning painful swaths of the past to areas where memory’s tendrils cannot reach them. Yet the memories of traumatic events, whether present to us or not, remain part of us.

That is why there is something very beautiful about St. Ignatius offering his memory to God. The saint acknowledges there are things he cannot change—the events of his past—and at the same time displays the bold hope that his Maker will accept him as he is now, with everything he did and everything that was done to him. Such is true abandonment to divine providence—joyfully accepting in your own life the truth encapsulated in the old proverb, “God writes straight with crooked lines.”

The fathers of the Second Vatican Council, writing of Christ’s Passion, said that “the Holy Spirit in a manner known only to God offers to every man the possibility of being associated with this paschal mystery.” Ignatius discovered in his own life that the Holy Spirit was able to use all the experiences that had shaped him—all the traumas he endured, as well as the mistakes he made along the way—to bring him to the love of Christ.

Excerpted from My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints by Dawn Eden. Copyright 2012. Ave Maria Press Notre Dame, IN. All rights reserved.

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May 10, 2012

Mother’s Day

by Becky Eldredge

At our parish on Mother’s Day, we have a tradition of honoring all women, whether they biologically have children or not. I am always deeply moved by this tradition, because it allows us to honor women who “mother” even if they do not have children of their own.

Mother's Day cookieAs all women stand in our parish, I can barely hold back the tears as I survey the room and the beautiful array of women who stand with pride. This tradition allows us to honor the religious sisters of our parish, who nurture people by tending to their needs and faith lives. It allows us to honor the women who were never able to have children or who chose not to have children, yet still have profound impacts on the lives of others. They, too, are mothers in my eyes!

When I stand up, I most certainly stand with a full heart of love for having the opportunity to love my two children. As I stand, though, I cannot help but think of all the other women in my life that make me the woman I am today: my own mom, my grandmothers, my sisters-in-law, my aunts, my cousins, my friends, colleagues, my mom’s friends who are like second moms, women at our parish, some very dear religious sisters, and on and on. These women create a circle of support that provides strength and courage in my own mothering.

St. Ignatius says, “Love ought to show itself in deeds more than in words, and love consists in sharing what one has and who one is with those one loves.” The act of mothering allows us to do this every day. This Mother’s Day, I invite us to be thankful for all the women in our lives who have shown us the meaning of St. Ignatius’s words.

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May 9, 2012

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