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What Wasn’t Said

February 22, 2010 By: Lisa Category: Ignatian Spirituality, Lisa's Posts 2 Comments →

As a writer, I find lovely little consolations in grasping just the right words to convey an experience. So when one of the most articulate teachers I’ve ever had told me I needed to listen for what wasn’t said, I was very perplexed. How could I possibly know what wasn’t said?  Any of 10,000 things could have NOT been said.  What’s important to me is what WAS said, the words, the tone, the intention.  But alas, today, I came to understand the ways in which my teacher was exactly in line with Ignatius in the need to listen for and be aware of what wasn’t said.

In contemplation with the senses, Ignatius encourages prayer that puts oneself into the passage from scripture.  You may find yourself an invisible observer in the room of the last supper, hearing the clink of the cups, or you may find yourself one of the characters in the scene, the one being healed, one of the apostles, or even seeing the situation from the perspective of Jesus himself.  But when I utilize that prayer, I am instructed to use all my senses, hearing, sight, smell, touch, even taste, and imagine all that would be evoked within me. I am also instructed to contemplate what wasn’t said, that is, what  wasn’t written in the Gospels. What would I have said?  What side conversations may be going on? What would Jesus have said to me had I been there?  Ignatius asks that I allow the Spirit to speak to me more clearly through what wasn’t said.  Listen for what wasn’t said then, but is being said to you now.  In this is the message you need to hear.

In my relationships with others as well, my Examen is making me painfully aware of what wasn’t said, for good and for bad.  I notice the efforts my teenager makes NOT to argue (I try to reinforce those!)  I notice as well when invitations are not extended my way.  Most importantly, though, I am aware of myself and what I won’t say. What do I really want to say, but just can’t? Where do we hold ourselves back from saying what we truly believe? What could one of us have said, but didn’t?  When I take time to recognize what wasn’t said, I often find the places I most need to grow.

But in both my prayer and my relationships, there is a definite, glorious consolation that comes in recognizing what wasn’t said within those times when nothing can be said, when words defy us, when we are in the space of the ineffable, when the sentiment between the pray-er and the Praised are One and known by each, when we are in total solidarity with another.    To recognize those moments when our verbal capacities fail us, is to recognize that there is One greater than us.

As Jesus stood before Pilate, waiting to be sentenced, Pilate challenged him verbally: “What is truth?” and “Where are you from?”  And the Gospel of John says, “Jesus chose not to answer.”  Perhaps the greatest teacher in history knew, like my teacher knew, like Ignatius knew, that what wasn’t said can be the most powerful message of all.

Photo: "I will whisper hidden secrets in your ear" by HAMED MASOUMI from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

My Best Year Yet

January 17, 2010 By: Lisa Category: Ignatian Spirituality, Lisa's Posts Comments Off

A friend of mine is a consultant helping businesses develop their annual strategic plans. She uses the same process of 10 reflective questions to help individuals create their own personal strategic plan asking what must I do to make this my Best Year Yet? Last year she helped me create my own plan—but of course, being me, well let’s just say it wasn’t exactly my best year yet. I didn’t keep up with the monthly online goal tracker, my 10 goals were far from being met, and I felt more like a failure for once again not achieving what I pledged to do last January. I rationalized a few of the goals away: It wasn’t my fault I didn’t become fluent in Spanish because the language school was lame; I could cheat and say I really had become a more attentive spouse (just don’t ask my husband!). But regardless of the reason, the truth was I hadn’t done what I had said I needed to do to have my Best Year Yet. So when she enthusiastically wanted to get together to develop my plan for this year it felt more like my tax attorney excitedly wanting to get going on that audit!

As I reflected in prayer on both the questions she had asked of me and my awkwardness with trying to project my path forward this year, I recognized her business planning tool was practically “Ignatian Spirituality Lite.” Right from the start, the coach states her job is to hold you accountable to what you say you are going to do, that honest accountability being one of the most powerful indicators of plan success. If only my spiritual director realized how much her “accountability services” were worth in the secular business world! Like Ignatius’ directive in the Spiritual Exercises, my personal strategic plan is to begin with gratitude and finding the good in what has been and what IS rather than our tendency to focus on our trouble spots (hmmm… now what Spirit might those be coming from?) In creating a plan one must answer questions (phrased in more secular terms) about consolations and desolations and discern the message of them. I am encouraged to articulate “my limiting paradigm” which ironically sounds a lot like the ‘three types of persons’ discussion I had with my spiritual director. Do I say I believe but really don’t? Do I give all but that one thing which I hold in reserve for myself? In place of that constricting thought churning in my head, I name a new paradigm. Following Ignatian Spirituality, that for me would be the directive of the First Principle and Foundation: I want and choose what better leads to God’s deepening life within me. But am I really prepared to live by that? Do I really want that?

While many people would frame such reflection tools as “self-help”, doing so in the context of prayer clarifies easily that my “self” tends to be more the problem and the “help” is definitely from One greater than I. If what propels my growth this year is anything other than the God my heart seeks, be it money, vanity, or personal ambition, I will be less than I was created to be.

Ultimately, I must identify my roles and goals for each role. These are winnowed down to my top 10 goals for the year, and each month I define my tactics for advancing that goal. Implicitly, if I achieve my top 10 goals I will have my Best Year Yet. Here is where I made my crucial mistake last year. I listed the typical roles: wife, mother, employee, community member, best friend, and …believer. I noted my monthly mini-goals for growth in each role. And, thinking I was following Ignatius’ directive, planned all the proper tactics right down to the daily prayer time. But to segment my faith life from those other roles is precisely what Ignatian Spirituality fights against. If being faithful or growing in my relationship to Christ is one of many other goals I am trying to achieve, right up there with learning Spanish and reading novels, it too easily gets lost in the daily to do list and denies the greatest resource I have—the grace of God—to be actively engaged in achieving those other goals. What if instead, I saw that daily prayer time as a tactic to achieving the other goals on my list, every goal on my list? What if my service projects or learning Spanish were not an end in themselves, but a means to my life’s calling to praise, honor, and serve God?

Perhaps this year I will have just one goal in my personal strategic plan: Live love in each moment.

If I could do that, it would be my best year yet for sure.

Photo: “Letterpress 2010” by Sarah Parrott from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

Preparing vs. Planning

December 12, 2009 By: Lisa Category: Ignatian Spirituality, Lisa's Posts Comments Off

Long ago a friend taught me the difference between preparing and planning. Planning is what we tend to do this time of year: travel plans, meal plans, party plans. Planning is not bad and in fact to not plan ahead for known challenges is simply irresponsible (e.g. you can’t take a frozen turkey out the day you want to cook it for the feast!) Planning is being sure we maintain control of the situation, the schedule and the details of the process or event to ensure the outcome we want—ah, the perfect Christmas. (or is it?) In the process of making all the lists and checking them twice, I find myself having planned for the perfect Christmas, but being woefully unprepared for honoring the God-with-us, Emmanuel.

In the first week of the Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius emphasizes the importance of preparing oneself to pray each day. In fact, he offers a few directives for preparatory prayer, praying about praying. This is not planning in your mind a Santa Claus wish list of what I will pray for during my prayer time or how the prayer will move along. No, prepatory prayer is praying about that space, that opportunity, that moment that will shortly be upon me to be vulnerable to the Spirit of God. It is the petition for grace, that whatever takes place during my prayer time, whatever movements are churned in my soul, I will be open to faithfully respond. It is the reminder going into prayer that if I’m truly open to the Spirit working in and through me, I don’t know the outcome. I am not using prayer to reach some expected reward, my perfectly planned party as it might be, but rather to put myself at the disposal of God. It is that open, vulnerability to whatever may be, allowing the outcome to be out of my control, that differentiates preparing from planning.

And so too in Advent we have this chance to prepare for the moments of vulnerability before God that are about to be offered to us. These moments are there any other time of year, but are practically handed to us on a silver platter now. I’m not just talking about that time of contemplation at midnight mass when the lights are out and the silence is waiting to be shattered by bellows of “Joy to the World.” I’m talking about the moment when you give that nicely wrapped gift to my grandma, knowing it may be her last Christmas or look across the feast table to my sister, the one you argued with so vehemently growing up and yet secretly always admired. In that moment, the one that is usually glossed over with an “Oh, you shouldn’t have,” or an “I didn’t know what to get you,” you will have a space, a split second perhaps, to be vulnerable to God and those you are called to love. To look them in the eyes and say the words of love that God yearns to speak to them through you. To offer the intentional touch and strong hug that they so desperately need, but rarely get to feel. You can’t plan when it will happen or even exactly what you will say. You can’t know the outcome, or how they will react. But here in Advent is the time for that prepatory prayer; To seek the grace to overcome the awkwardness of those moments, to not shy away from them or gloss over them, to put whatever you do within those seconds of connection with another at the service and praise of the One being born.

Ah, now that would be the perfect Christmas.

Time is short. Those moments are coming. I’ve done a lot of planning, but am I prepared?


Photo: "Last Candle of Advent" by Bob Travis from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

Disordered Attachments

November 02, 2009 By: Lisa Category: Ignatian Spirituality, Lisa's Posts Comments Off


This is a hard blog to write. It’s a hard thing to admit.
I have disordered attachments (sounds like one of those awkward TV commercials about things no one ever really talks about, doesn’t it?)Disordered attachments are those things (objects, experiences, activities, even other people) who become the focus of our desires and, consequently our time on this earth, rather than seeking the will and companionship of God.

Recently I faced the reality of someone living amidst Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder manifested as Hoarder’s syndrome. Imagine walking into a house in which every surface, every corner, every chair, every closet, every drawer was filled or covered with junk. There is no place to sit, no place to hang a coat, no place to walk in some cases. Even the trunk of the car was used as a storage area. Company is not invited over and friends are actually few and far between because time is spent gathering more or continually finding ways to try to hide the stuff already accumulated. OCPD is a mental illness, beyond a person’s control in many cases. It is as tragic as incurable cancer. This clinical disorder prevents a person from ever getting rid of anything out of “fear” that it might be needed. It was horrifying and sad to see and I asked myself “How can anyone live like that? How can their soul find rest amidst such fear and clutter?”

But in a moment of prayer and intimacy with the One, I recognized that I too have disordered attachments. I have desires or wants that go unquestioned and become almost habitual rather than be considered in light of what they give to or deny my soul in the present moment. Sometimes I can even justify that they give me joy and they do, but they distract me from the focus to be closer to God. And far too often the moments of my day are spent trying to placate those rather than being open and present to how God is working or calls me to work in my day. Similar to the over- cluttered house, these attachments clutter my soul.

For example, I just took a 10-day trip back to the U.S. from our current home in El Salvador. Even though we are only going to be here for six more weeks, I spent much of my time stocking up on foods my family craved. I was quite proud of myself for packing my bags 50lbs to the ounce so as not to be overcharged. But just because you can “manage” your attachments does mean they are healthy. Struggling to haul nearly 100lbs through five airports, my disorder hit me. This is nuts! Rather than be at peace in my travels and truly work to inculturate or simplify our lives—wherein I profess God most clearly exists—I was attached to the fear of feeling empty or at a loss if I didn’t have those junk food staples of my life. And the time I spent accumulating my attachments could have been spent on less self-centered behaviors such as engaging my ailing father or helping my mother around the house. I missed those opportunities to answer God’s call.

I’ve seen many people with disordered attachments, to technology, to money, to work or the need for recognition, to another person, or to things. None of these are bad in themselves. In fact, in the Ignatian tradition we are called to find God in all things. The disorder comes from allowing the object of the attachment to subtly take the place of our search for God’s presence and will in this moment or situation. We are not truly open, we do not have the freedom to choose God’s will, instead we just got to have ________ (fill in your own disordered attachment here.)

But, in my prayer as well, I recognize that I am not helpless to control my attachments. Jesus says if something is causing you to sin cut it off or pluck it out, go cold turkey. But that takes a tremendous amount of will power and leaves one in angst over what is missing for quite some time. In other cases, like attachment to food or money or technology even, it is hard to function without the object of our disorder.

Ignatius guides us that in contemplation there are ways to overcome those disordered attachments.
- Naming the disorder is the place to start.
- Admitting the implications it has for one’s day and relationships.
- Recalling instead the ultimate desire of our lives is to move closer to God in each moment and serve others.
- Seeking the grace to be strong and committed to that Path. Rather than completely deny the object of my attachment, I seek only to hold it openly, in ways that free my soul from fear, trusting that if it truly is of God, the consolation it gives will stay present without my obsession.

I’ve heard contemplation defined as “anything that dismantles illusions.” To sit in honest contemplation with my actions or wants, hard as it is to admit, reveals their disordered nature. It also reveals their true nature as well.

I look forward to the day when I will actually get to travel with no baggage at all, completely free to enjoy the journey.

Photo: “Too Much Stuff” by Pete&Brook’s Photostream from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

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