This Ignatian Life

Today it poured rain in Omaha. I ran through it to get from my car to the school where I teach a early morning dance class on Fridays, then from the school to my car where I sat, hoping it would let up so I could make it into the office without arriving totally drenched. At this moment, mid afternoon, outside it is a sunny, bright Nebraska  clear sky sun day that makes you squint your eyes just from looking out the window. Appropriately my eyes are drawn to a Mary Oliver poem that is hanging by my desk:

…meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies… announcing your place in the family of things.

Finding God in all things is easy when you are about to get married, which I know because I am exactly three weeks away from my wedding. The love of friends, family, priest, fiancé, God’s provision; a wedding seems ordained the time to know that you are in the place of the family of things that you should be. I see so many tangible reminders of God’s guidance through Calvin’s and my discernment to get married and am thankful for them. There is a consolation of “yes, this is the person, this is the place, this is the covenant we are supposed to be making.”

Finding God is harder in the silence of my contemplative prayer sits that are still filled with anxious thoughts and worries. I liked Paul’s most recent post about a conversation between himself and St. Ignatius. He talks about the forces that work against us when we are in consolation, forces that want us to end up back in a state of desolation. Are those forces why so many things that are good; like our days, our jobs, even our weddings, leave the taste of frustration and failure in our mouths? I often find myself while sitting in contemplative prayer thinking ”Wasn’t I anxious about something earlier today? What was that? Oh yeah, that’s right.” and I let my thoughts take me away from peace and consolation.

What a comfort to be reminded today that there is rain and sun and just like the rain and sun we too have a place in the family of things! It’s ok to let the thoughts that plague us during contemplative prayer go their way, we have a sense of consolation to look forward to and a God who will be the voice we hear behind us, whether we turn to the right or to the left, saying “this is the way, walk in it.”

Yesterday I returned from a retreat at St. Benedict’s Center in Schuyler, Nebraska. Just me, the pond (which they call a lake but being from the Great Lakes State I know is actually a pond), and the comfy brown easy chair in the quiet single room… three days, no computer, no phone, no friends or family. I felt very Ignatian! And though I wrote and wrote while I was there, now I am struggling to know how to share from this, my first ever spiritual retreat.

Whenever I write about spirituality I find I try too hard to simplify it down to one or two catchy tidbits that can stick. I would be great at limericks if there was still a market for that kind of thing. Really what I should say to you is GO, take a retreat. Sit in silence and stare at the water, notice all the layers of reflection. The music you will need is not on your Ipod but the sound of the wind chimes or the birds that made a secret nest in the rain gutter above your head where you can sit and drink cup after cup of coffee and listen. “Eternity is not later or in any undefinable place.” said Mary Oliver to me while we sat together. “These are a few of your disordered attachments…” from God and St. Ignatius.

I’ve read that when we pursue contemplation the fruit in our lives will not feel like consolation necessarily or warm and fuzzy prayer times, but it will be obvious to those around us. I have gotten so many compliments on being a better person in the two days since I got back, “You seem happier.” “You look great.” “You’re like a new person.”  “You’re so optimistic!” All these gifts of a better self that I can offer the people around me come from simply taking some space and stillness. I know I have been given a lot of fruit from those three days away. Yet, while I was on retreat I struggled with the same anxiety I’ve been fighting for the last few months, several times I almost left and drove home. The only thing that kept me there was the fact that the front desk seemed to be providentially closed every time I tried to pay my bill and leave early.

At some point this weekend I realized that this is a season of huge growth for all of us who finished the exercises this summer, and that brings with it anxiety. If we can be present to ourselves, whether on retreat or on retreat in daily life, and listen to what the anxiety is heralding, we’ll be ready for the fruit of God’s work that’s being offered to us.

The blog post you are about to read is a reflection on my notes from a talk that Larry Gillick, SJ gave to the IA formation group last night.

Desolation and consolation are almost like states of mind within us. In one state we are able to see all things are from God, we trust, there’s nowhere we can be that isn’t where we were meant to be (Beatles). We are more likely to see things in life as sacraments than disappointments. In the other, opposing state, we rely so much on the things of the world that when it is revealed to be material, flawed, imperfect we are angry. We are angry at the object, whether it is us or another person/situation/place and ultimately God. Fr Gillick said desolation is when we no longer believe there is hope.

Thich Naht Hanh says that we can’t communicate with others unless we first communicate with self. We can’t trust another unless we we know them and have quality time with them. Since so much of what we know and understand about God is based on our own filters, it seems like we should know ourselves best first and along with knowing God. Knowing ourself means knowing our inherent goodness and ability to do good things, protecting against the desire of the Evil Spirit for us to do nothing. It also means knowing our “unfreedoms”- those places in which we are most broken.

Fr Gillick once asked God “Why do I keep encountering myself and my own imperfections in prayer? Why can’t I encounter you and your perfections?” God answered, “Well, because I’m in the imperfections.” Praying from your unfreedoms is the only way to pray. Not praying to fix or change them, but praying from the place of awareness, and I (liz) would say a place of welcome for those unfreedoms. I’ve heard of different models; mindfulness, welcoming prayer, breath prayer, the examen. I think the Enneagram can give us a language to use when finding our unfreedoms. It can also can give a compassionate understanding for us when others share with us their unfreedoms.

“If you wish to come after me, you must deny your very selves, take up the instrument of your own death and begin to follow in my footsteps.”  (Jesus to the disciples in Mt 17:24)   When I read this I understand Jesus saying that to deny our very selves means not our most true, good self he created to know and love him, but the false self. Following in Jesus’ footsteps seems to be remaining faithful to our most true self; the image of God within our hearts. I imagine “the instrument that facilitates death” to our false self which we should take up would be the awareness of our unfreedoms and the humility to find and pray from the places of brokenness within us. To view our own brokennesses as the instrument that leads us to liberation brings me full circle to consolation again; the state of mind where we are more likely to view situations as sacraments than disappointments.

Last night at Ignatian Associates This Ignatian Life blogger John O’Keefe talked about the idea of resurrection of the body. ”I believe in the resurrection of the body.”  We’ve all said it during our baptismal renewals. I think about how imperfect my body is; an imperfect body in a perfect place like heaven? “But our bodies will be made perfect,” says my friend Silas… then he responds to himself, “I guess what does that mean? What’s perfect?” Exactly. Would I be a size zero in heaven because that’s the American perception of perfection or will I be a plus-size model because that’s the Nepali perception of perfection? Not perfect but healthy, perhaps? Resurrecting this body puts a new spin on eating right, exercising and taking care of my body… if I’m going to have this for all eternity I want to take good care of it.

I will, after all, be a solid body in a solid place, not a heavenly soul in an ethereal place.

Yesterday I was in a rehearsal for a modern dance piece that is based on Barry Commoner’s 4 Laws of Ecology. The choreagrapher said “I want this piece earthy, I want a quality of movement not up in heaven but connected to the land.”  The quality of movement I learned as a young ballet dancer is ethereal, it’s high, on your toes, everything is focused on being lifted out of your body. High legs, high jumps, keep your head high above the rest of you, dance on your very tippy toes. Later on as a dancer I fell in love with modern dance. This style of dance began to develop in the 1930’s as a sort of reaction to the out of this world feeling of ballet. Modern is performed in bare feet, dancers use their breath and stomp the floor, everything is low and very connected to earth and to reality. They danced about social issues and created pieces like the one I am in; on ecology and care for the environment.  

Everything is connected; the first law of ecology. The growth in my dance life from ethereal to earthy is connected to similar movements in my personal Christianity, from hope of ethereal resurrection of the soul to belief in earthly resurrection of the body. The implications, as John talked about yesterday, are enormous. Now there is care of creation, of the body, of others and of earthly justice and peace.  “Human nature, he said “is by definition material, resurrection means resurrected to a new kind of physical life not just transcending to the heavenly realm.” If we don’t just leave it all behind when we go, then we have a lot more incentive to care.