This Ignatian Life

Saturday was the feast of St. Ignatius. I have been thinking about his legacy quite a bit these last few days.  So much of what we call Ignatian spirituality has been reduced to sound bits — “finding God in all things,” “magis,” “cura personalis.”  These are fine, as far as they go, but they do tend, I think, to deflect our attention away from the man’s actual achievement, and, in so deflecting, to insulate us from the core insight of the Ignatian way.

The Church at the beginning of the 16th century was not pretty.  Ignatius was born in 1491, one year before Columbus sailed to America.  In 1517 Martin Luther published his 95 theses and launched the Protestant Reformation.  The Society of Jesus was founded, officially, in 1540, five years before the beginning of the Council of Trent. Ignatius died in 1556, seven years before the end of that Council.

These are not just random dates strewn here and there. The arrival of Columbus marked the end of a way of life for the indigenous peoples of America.  In much of their suffering the Church was complicit. The Reformation is more aptly described as a schism that ruptured the fabric of a 1200-year old experiment in Christian civilization.  It also introduced centuries of religious violence into Christian Europe, laying the foundation for the current post-Christian reality of that place. The Council of Trent, while innovative and creative in some ways, rigidified Catholicism for 400 years, until the relative softening of Vatican II.  So, Ignatius was born in complicated times.

The spirituality that he forged through the teaching of the exercises and the practice of discernment was not a Borders-style self-help manual to make us feel good about ourselves and our relationships, and God.  Rather, it was a way to navigate the complexities of a world that seemed to be in the process of becoming unhinged.  Ignatius asked how should I respond to God in the face of these new realities, and God’s answer was “do something new.” Build schools. Travel to newly discovered parts of the world. Try to do no harm, and hopefully do some good. The response of Ignatius and his followers was not always perfect, but it was certainly original, and it was certainly timely.

I wonder how to recover this part of Ignatius’ legacy.  Like him, we live in a world that seems in the process of becoming unhinged.  In this reality the slogans ring hollow. Can we really “find God in all things” when “all things” means massive suffering in the developing world, melting icecaps, oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico, corrupt politicians, pedophile priests, do I really need to go on?

Finding God in these things does not mean pretending that they are good. Finding God in these hard things means finding out what God wants us to do and doing it.  So, in this season of Ignatius’ feast, I invite all of us inspired by his witness to pray for a good discernment and to get busy.

Photo: “Letter from St. Ignatius of Loyola I” by “Nick in exsillio” from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

Last week as usual I began my daily examen with gratitude when, somewhere in the flurry of traditions that is the 4th of July, I thought I should take time to be grateful for our independence. (Be wary of the “shoulds” I can hear my spiritual director saying.) Truly there is much to be grateful for in the freedoms guaranteed in the US Constitution; so many people on this Earth suffer horrendously for lack of such freedoms. But, true to form, my Ignatian prayer turned my world upside down, allowing me to see our celebrations completely differently than through the patriotic lens I had always known.

As I sat in prayer, seemingly alone with God in my mind, fully at peace, thankful for the bounty that independence has yielded, the zinger hits me: Independence from what? You were not created to be independent. The tone is almost incredulous.

Thus the repartee begins:

Me: Uh, maybe I should rephrase that (oh there’s that darn “should” again).

No need to rephrase, just name for what you are truly grateful, what is it that is truly satisfying to your heart, what makes you whole.

Me: Well, I am grateful for those I love, those who share with me the struggles of this life, those who see the beauty in this world with me, even those for whom I have to struggle now. What was truly satisfying to my heart today? This week? Those moments I was with my mom who just had surgery. To finally after all these years be in a place to truly give to her and she actually accepted my help. It is the closest I have felt to her in years.

Those are not moments of independence, are they?

No, they are moments of dependence, at times total dependence, on another. (My heart is beginning to feel the consolation of understanding.)

That’s where God is, isn’t it? Not in our independence from each other, not in our strength to live alone or pull ourselves up by our boot straps, but in our connections to each other, in our strength to live together.

Imagine a culture in which instead of celebrating our independence we celebrated our dependence, or maybe our inter-dependence, with the rest of the world. Imagine taking to prayer gratitude for the other nations who share our Earth. Thank you dear Lord for England, for Botswana, for Uganda, for Brazil, even for Iran and Iraq. In all the years of praying, I don’t think I have ever said that prayer.

And thus, my Ignatian imagination of what could be helps to imagine such celebrations; Celebrating and honoring the Other and our connection to them, rather than celebrating ourselves and our independence from them. How such celebrations would change me and make me whole; a part of something truly bigger than myself, bigger than the United States. A part of Oneness.

And I smile inside. For there within a split second, perhaps I have grasped just a glimpse of the Kingdom of God. (now that would be the grand finale of all fireworks!)

Photo: “NYC Fourth of July 2009” by Ed Yourdon from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

Ignatius left his sword before a statue of the Virgin, however, his transformation was not instantaneous. He had to learn how to live. Over many years he struggled to come to terms with what his symbolic gesture was intended to reveal. He went from noble, to beggar, to pariah, to crazy-man on campus.  He eventually made friends, but he was neither the most affable nor appreciated of young Catholic thinkers (see: inquisition).  In time, however, he learned how to live in a new way that allowed what he believed in his heart to be revealed in his actions.  He gained understanding.  He gained wisdom.

Some say that Wisdom only comes with learning how to live with love in the midst of difficult circumstances. This is a hard truth for many of us because it reminds us that the one problem we all share, our inability to understand how to live with one another, cannot be addressed in any way but through our experience. We have to learn how to live with one another.  No merely symbolic action will suffice to create the change in our lives that we desire. Words and gestures give us something visible to hold onto, but they are nothing if they are not experienced in our hearts.

Wisdom is a mix of love and understanding that only comes with time.  Wisdom cannot be extracted with machines from the earth, or mapped out with a set of instructions; we become aware of it as we learn how to love even when faced with the hardest choices of our lives. Wisdom is more than a set of tools or rules. It must be pulled from the depths of our experience as creatures, living in uncertainty, clinging to our belief in the goodness of God.

There are really own two questions that I ever ask: God, how are you loving me, and how have I been loving you? From these two questions come of a slew of others: Was I open to the kindness that was offered to me today? Have I learned to care for others? Do I seek to understand others even when it’s difficult, even when they bother me? Am I willing to face hardship and misery as I encounter it in my own life, in my doubts about God, humanity and my own nature? Lord…How do I love when I hurt? How can I be forgiving when I am so angry? How can I live with creativity when I see so much destruction? How do I live a life of integrity when it seems so difficult and so few seem to value it? How do I acknowledge both the fact that I am called to serve you, my God, but I am, too, a sinner? All of these questions are about loving and being loved. How I handle these questions, whether I honestly grapple with who I am, what I desire, and what I desire to desire, tells me who my true God is.

I like to think that when Ignatius was laying down his sword, it was not just a symbolic act of fidelity, but revelatory of his movement away from weapons, both exterior and interior, that were harming his relationships with God and others. The act, in itself, would have meant nothing if Ignatius had not learned to live in another way. His prayers, thereafter, were not an assertion of the way he lived, but they way he desired to live. He sought in his own heart to be wholly faithful to God, without counting the cost, heeding the wounds, seeking for rest, or asking for any reward except for knowing that he did God’s will. He sought these things not because he did them well already, but because they were an articulation of what he desired in the depths of his soul. He had to grow into these words. He had to learn how to live his desires. Like Ignatius, I am still learning how to love. I am still growing into wisdom. In this way, each prayer is a reminder not only of who I am, but who it is that I desire to become.

My landlord invited my roommate and I to leave our apartment this month to do some renovations on the roof, bathroom and ceiling.  At the end of another dizzying school year this seemed like the perfect time for a vacation, yet the shoestring budget of a NYC Catholic school teacher wouldn’t allow much wiggle room for fleeing.  Needing the extra money that summertime tutoring brings and maybe a cake gig or two, I knew I wouldn’t really be able to go far.  Instead, I packed my bags, several books, and my computer and prepared to live a little bit here, a little bit there, visiting friends and doing a little bit of soul renovating along the way.

The first few days of renovation (a.k.a. my displacement) were spent finishing work from the school year–typing Word documents at the speed of light, updating curriculum, preparing reports on struggling students, etc.  I have to commend myself— I was pretty darn productive.  And then the work finished itself up and I was left staring into the tabula rasa that is summer ’10.  This is where the trouble began.  The lack of structure, certainty and purpose in my days was terrifying.  With the predictability and routine of my work environment and my home environment now gone…I too felt gone, lost and unsupported.  My confident, determined, and usually task-driven self all of a sudden felt without purpose.  Why so glum, I thought, when this is SUMMER and well-deserved relaxation should be a welcomed prospect?  The type-A in myself decided to sleep-it-off and wake up in the morning with a concrete list of tasks to put me back on track—go for a walk, do some laundry, call a friend in Omaha, read 2 chapters of a book, bake a pie.  Notice that nowhere along the way did I stop and turn to God…nope, I was the task master.

Go for a walk—check

Laundry—check

Phone call—check

Pie—check

Book— check, and…stop.

The book I picked up was Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet.  I have read through it several times—sometimes slowly mulling over Rilke’s advice and other times racing through the text on a face-paced commute simply to “kill time.”  No matter when read or in what style, Rilke’s message always feels fresh and new.  There’s always something different I am left with at the end of a simple leaf-through.  This time around, it was his advice on writing that stuck with me and his advice on avoiding look OUT to somehow prove one’s worth WITHIN:

“You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now.

No one can advise or help you – no one.  There is only one thing you should do.  Go into yourself.  Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.  This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write?  Dig into yourself for a deep answer.  And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your while life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse.”

Reading Rilke’s words struck an accord with my schedule-driven frenzy.  What if, just what if, the answer to rest, relaxation and a return to independence laid WITHIN?!  I could literally hear God whispering “duh” in my ear and repeating Rilke’s words as:

“… ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I PRAY?”

Looking within, slowing down, turning to prayer, turning to writing…the middle of my 10-day renovation vacation has led me to the beach.  No more lists for the time being—more Rilke, a little E.L. Doctorow, and embracing the WITHIN.