I cannot help but smile as I remember a conversation I had with Abby on the way home from preschool the other day. Me: What did you learn about in chapel today? Abby: The fruits of the spirit. Me: Really? What are the fruits of the spirit? Abby: STRAWBERRIES! While Abby did not answer with [...]
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Lisa Kelly says that consolation is sometimes painful: On the surface, we fun-seeking humans will do lots of things that are not of God to avoid feeling bad, to avoid the aches of the heart. We shop. We eat. We yell. We procrastinate. We deny the reality before us. But while each of those may [...]
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Something to think about | How are we to interpret the alternately serendipitous and disappointing, unexpected and unpredictable, courses of our lives? What is happening when death or financial disaster force us to reconsider what we want from life, when teachers or mentors find and nurture talent we didn’t know we had, when we succeed [...]
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Advent is the season when we remind ourselves of what we are waiting for, keeping at bay the voices which tell us that our waiting is fruitless. In one of the texts from the Office of Readings for Advent, St. Ephrem writes: Keep watch; when the body is asleep nature takes control of us, and [...]
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Matthew Spotts, SJ, didn’t particularly “like” his four-month stint working on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, yet he thought it was what God wanted him to do. He writes, “discernment, is far, far more complicated than figuring out what makes us happy on a superficial level, figuring what we ‘like.’” Liking or [...]
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I do some of my best thinking and praying while running or biking. This morning I considered how biking hills is not a bad analogy to the discernment of consolation and desolation in the spiritual life. Here’s the idea. Coming to the beginning of a long upward climb can be a daunting experience. You see [...]
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Psychologists study a phenomenon called “disregard of regression toward the mean.” This is our tendency to expect that extreme performance will continue. It’s a common mistake. I’ve had a string of good days lately. Writing comes easily, ideas flow, I’ve had a lot of fun with my family and friends. I feel great. Meanwhile, my [...]
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Consolation and desolation are key ideas in Ignatian discernment, and they are not easy to understand. Abbot Joseph has a good post about the nuances. Even for those who are serious about the spiritual life, it is good to make the distinction between subjective feelings and objective reality when trying to discern one’s spiritual state [...]
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This week’s song selection is “Ripple” by the Grateful Dead. It was recommended by John Montag, SJ, who wrote on the Ignatian Spirituality Facebook page that the chorus of the song aptly describes “consolation without cause.” “Consolation without cause” is a sense of peace and joy that suddenly appears without a reason. Most of our [...]
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