This Ignatian Life

Kuskokwim River, Bethel, AK

Originally uploaded by jjoiv

Last week I went to Bethel, Alaska to visit my daughter Erin. She moved up there 18 months ago to do a year of service with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps and decided to stick around another year, maybe two. I had a lot of frequent flyer miles, so off I went.

Bethel is far away in more ways than one. Situated 400 miles west of Anchorage in “Bush” Alaska, there are no roads in or out. The only way to get to Bethel is by plane (year round) and by boat up the Kuskokwim River in the summer. It takes a long time to get there, almost as long as it takes to get the Europe. But, Bethel also feels like another country. Whenever I got out my wallet, I felt surprised that they took dollars. It’s also really cold, at least in the winter. One day the wind chill dipped to -67 Fahrenheit. That was pretty nasty. Undeterred, the Bethelites bundled up and went out on the frozen river to watch the finish of the annual dog sled race, the Kuskokwim 300. Mushers are local heros.

The Jesuits (and the Jesuit Volunteers) minister in Western Alaska in service to the native Yup’ik population. The Yup’ik are a soft-spoken and very interesting people, many of whom still live a quasi-subsistence lifestyle heavily dependent upon hunting and fishing. However, their communities also suffer from the same social ills that plague other native groups in the lower 48. So, the ministries there resemble the Jesuit/Ignatian ministries in South Dakota on the Rosebud reservation. It’s good work and consistent with the Ignatian commitment to the work of social justice.

Perhaps the most salient feature of my time in Bethel, though, was a powerful sense of community. This must surely be one of the reasons every year some of the Jesuit Volunteers, like my daughter, decide to stay even after their year of service is completed and even in this harsh climate. My daughter has no television, the town only has one radio station, my cell phone did not work, and for internet access I had to walk across the frozen tundra to the local community center, which I did once a day. So, I had a lot of down time, and I was suddenly and blessedly free from the relentless barrage of information that constantly invades my life. Stepping out of the plane into Bethel is like stepping back in time to a slower paced and more humane form of life. Community happens naturally there in a way that is perhaps impossible even in a moderate-sized city like Omaha where calendars and schedules rule. Bethel is a time machine or an artifact or both.

On Friday night — before it got really cold – the town turned out on the ice road/Kuskokwim River to send off the mushers. We watched the dogs pull the sleds into the darkness, then went in for tea, warming our toes by the heater, the noise of modernity inaudible and nearly forgotten.

The Reverend Larry Gillick, S. J. was recently a guest on my podcast, Catholic Comments. I have known Larry for almost 20 years, but he continues to surprise me with the depth of his insight about life and human motivation. This conversation was no different. We talked about Advent, which – to paraphrase Larry — he called the season of making room for Christ.

Since my days as a theology student, I have generally thought of Advent as a season of waiting and expectation. There are good reasons to understand it this way. After all, we are waiting for the birth of the Lord with expectation. Also, the readings of the season point to the second coming and the general resurrection, for which we all wait, though with varying degrees of expectation. For me, thinking about Advent in this way had become so routine that the season had lost its ability to edge me toward any kind of spiritual insight during what might be called the American Season of Frenzy, which happens to correspond to the Christian Season of Advent.

During the interview, instead of pulling out the standard trope of “waiting,” Larry said that Advent was about making space for God. Think about it. If you are like me– and I know many people are not — Christmas preparations feel a bit like a pain in the ass. They come at a really bad time in the life of an educator. In late November and early December, the momentum of the semester builds toward a crest that crashes into final projects and exams. When these are finished, I have just enough time to grade them and then careen around the city Christmas shopping in crowded places (which I really do not enjoy). All of this combines to create a baseline of unease (at best) and annoyance (at worst).

So, lately, the approach of Advent has been a source of irritation because it means that once again the Season of Frenzy has descended upon me. In this state, I care little about waiting and am unmoved by apocalyptic promises of the second coming. Finish the exams, throw up the tree, get through it all so I can rest — this is my attitude on the days when I am most tired.

At the interview Larry compared bringing the Christmas tree into the house to the making space in our hearts for the arrival of Christ. Moving the furniture to accommodate the tree is analogous to clearing an inner space to accommodate the reception of the Lord. “But we don’t want to do it,” Larry said, “we resist.”

I resist. With Christmas approaching– as I write this it is just a few days away– I find myself, ignatian style, contemplating the innkeepers of ancient Bethlehem on the eve of the arrival of the Holy Family. Who can blame them for turning away Mary and Joseph and the unborn Christ. They were busy. They had businesses to run. Their inns well full. Besides, it was the freaking Government’s fault for imposing the stupid census that required people to travel to their ancestral village at a difficult time of year. Why should I bend over backwards for a couple of losers who left too late and did not make a reservation. Didn’t they watch the news for God’s sake. They deserve to sleep on the street because they are such poor planners. Joseph must be a pretty lousy husband — not very responsible.

Sometime I think that Ignatian contemplatios are a bit juvenile. I mean really, putting yourself in a Bible scene? Who does that in the twenty-first century except children and fundamentalists? But, when I do it, it almost always bears fruit.

I am — we are — so much like the innkeepers of Bethlehem when it comes to the spiritual life. During the last couple of weeks that have defined the season of Advent, I can see, in retrospect, times when the Lord was asking for a room and but the inner inn was closed. My reasons were pretty good, though. I had stuff to do, places to go, papers to grades, podcasts to produce, blogs to manage, a class to take, food to cook, people to form, children to raise. I was busy, and besides, God could wait because God always does.

As the Advent season winds down, I am finally ready for room-making and God is there waiting. God, of course, is undisturbed by having to wait, but I find myself wondering how much more graceful the last few weeks would have been if I had made room then.

Maybe next year I’ll do better.

Photo: “No Room at the Inn” by “Jrwooley6″ from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

Outside the window of my hotel room window in Montreal the old and the new contrast with a stately elegance. The morning sunlight reflects off the glass of a nearby skyscraper and, in turn, passes through the window of a copper roofed artifact from another age of the world. The horizontal nave of the old French-Canadian church across the streets interrupts the verticality of the sky-scrappers behind it, and, in interrupting, it softens with stone and aging metal the relentless ambition of towering glass and steel.

In Montreal, though, as elsewhere in the Western world, Christian culture is a crumbling remnant. The architectural remains of that culture, like the church across the street, prompt me to reflect this morning on the difficult task that confronts those of us whose vocation it is to live among the ruins.

Like many of my friends and students, I am drawn to the vigorous spiritual energy that characterizes that Church’s experience in other parts of the world, especially among the poor. Two weeks ago, I was in the Dominican Republic and experienced again the rich vibrancy of Latin American Christian piety and devotion. In March I stood transfixed as angelic voices in war-ravaged northern Uganda praised God in song despite the terrible material depravation that characterized their lives. I understand the desire to live among those who know their need for God.

I do not want to suggest that spiritual poverty is somehow as bad as material poverty nor that the materially wealthy do not have the duty to care for the materially poor. But, despite that, it is also true that those of us trying to live out Ignatian Spirituality in the shadow of skyscrapers cannot neglect the well-fed poor among us.

As I write this, I am aware of so much suffering: a couple struggling with their marriage, young people profoundly confused about their sexuality and pathologically afraid of commitment, a friend approaching 50 who thought an affair with a younger woman would turn back the clock on his aging, my brother-in-law’s uncle who shot himself in the head rather than face the continued humiliation of unemployment. Those known to me are but a tiny fragment of a huge mass of human beings struggling for meaning and purpose in a world that can seem hideously indifferent.

Reflecting on this, I realize that the gospel has made a real difference in my ability to negotiate the deep deceptions of my culture. It is, I think, part of our vocation to share this path with others.

I am today especially grateful for the Christian life. Although an artifact from another age, it still retains a liberating power.

“What do you want?” This is one of the most basic questions in Ignatian spirituality, but also, at times, one of the most difficult to answer. In my pre-Ignatian days, I used to think that, when faced with choices about a possible course of action, God would probably want me to pick the harder one, or the one that seemed less appealing, or the one the seemed “more spiritual” in whatever way I happened to be thinking “more spiritual” meant. It was something of a liberation to learn from my Jesuit spiritual director that what I wanted, deep down, was what God wanted for me. According to this way of thinking, the best way to know God’s will is to know my own heart.

The problem is that we often don’t know our own hearts and that our desires can be really messed up. A short vignette from Matthew’s gospel instructs. In chapter 20, the Mother of James and John comes with her sons in tow to Jesus and he says to her “what do you want?” She answers that she wants her sons to sit at Jesus’ right hand when he comes into his kingdom. Jesus replies “you do not know what you are asking.” The story makes clear that what James and John (and their mother) think they want is glory and honor as a reward for their discipleship. Thus, a disordered desire (power) is at the heart of their motivation, but it masquerades as a holy desire (discipleship). However, a few lines later Jesus transforms their desire by explaining that true discipleship is servanthood. What’s cool about this story is that James and John, because they stick with Jesus, eventually figure out that what they really want is to follow Jesus no matter what, and they come to recognize the seductive deception of their first desire. Following a disordered desire is the source of all bad discernment, and it inevitably leads us away from God.

I recently was invited to apply for a job that would require a cross country move. If I were to get it, it would mean more responsibility, more opportunity for leadership, more money, and closer proximity to extended family, all of which, in some strong ways, I want. But, it would also mean moving my youngest child from the high school he loves, leaving a community that has taken years to establish, leaving the work I am currently doing and enjoy, and leaving a property for which I have deep affection, all of which I do not want.

Given that I am an American male, I felt a certain amount of interior pressure — even desire — to respond to the items on the first list, especially those offering more power and money. In my discernment temptations loomed: “besides,” I could say, “this opportunity is really about getting back to extended family, and my son is young: he’ll bounce back.” I also reasoned that we could make new friends and, more perversely, I found myself speculating that our friends would probably leave anyway. But ignatian practice pulled me back from that. I took the time to listen to my heart, and when I listened it was clear that the deeper desire was for stability and relationship even if the price was for now, and maybe forever, not to have the other things. It took a few weeks, but I chose not to apply. I think in this case I did a good discernment.

Responding to God honestly when God asks “what do you want” is one of the great challenges of the Christian life.

Photo: “What do you want?” by “Elton Lin” from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)