This Ignatian Life

Ignatian Spirituality in real time
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Luke 10:38-42

March 14, 2010 By: mbensley Category: Ignatian Spirituality, Megan's Posts, Uncategorized Comments Off

Parties have been on my mind lately. Last weekend I helped to throw a birthday party for my niece, this week there were two birthday celebrations at work and tonight I’m having a few friends over for a dinner party. That being said, I cannot get Luke’s words out of my head:

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!” “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “You are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10:38-42)

I am much more of a Martha than a Mary. Dinner parties, lesson planning for my classes, birthdays, vacations…. I busy myself with little distractions, oftentimes to the detriment of my enjoyment of the “event” itself. When I think about the kind of party I would like to throw if Jesus was in my neighborhood for the evening, I immediately begin making lists:

1) Homemade snacks of all kinds
2) Cake fit for a King
3) Extravagantly long guest list
4) Party games? Which ones? (Is Jesus more of a Taboo buff or Scattergories nut?)
5) Clever music (I’m thinking of a catchy i-tunes mix with the first song being Chicago’s
“You’re the Inspiration.” Would He get it?)

In the midst of my planning for this fictional, overly ambitious dinner party I am reminded of Jesus’ reminder to Martha, “Stop being worried about so many things and just enjoy the moment!” This week I am going to take a cue from Mary: worry less, busy myself less and live more in the moment. I suspect this just might make the presence of Christ all the more clear to me in the classroom, in my conversations with friends, and during the dinner party that is happening in t-minus one hour. I’ll keep you posted on my “less is more efforts!”

…in all things but sin.

March 06, 2010 By: plickteig Category: Ignatian Spirituality, Paul's Posts 4 Comments →

How human do we dare to make him? Did he smell funny when he was a kid? Did he get cranky when he was hungry? Did he ever get preoccupied by play and forget to come home for dinner? Did he ever stand in awe of a sunset or wonder why God made ants? What about at 15 when he was awash in hormones and his frontal lobe was not fully developed? Did he ever forget what he was supposed to do? Did he break things because he was too excited to think about what he was doing? How did he feel about girls? How did he feel about boys? Did he ever hurt people by accident? Did he ever forget what he was trying to say, only to remember after he had said something that might have been better left unsaid?

What did he see when he read the temple scrolls? Did he wonder why the people begged for a king to rule their nation when God had told them that judges were all that they needed? Did he feel his own heart stir as God sent the people prophet after prophet, calling them back to the covenant and to intimacy with Him? Did he immediately and explicitly know how to respond to the questions of Job? Did he wonder at the Beauty of Bathsheba, or contemplate the splendor of Solomon? Were the strange, sometimes conflicting elements of the books of Wisdom a mystery to him? Did he recognize people in his own village in the accounts he read? Could he see his neighbors wandering in their own deserts, with hardening hearts, growing weak in spirit?

Was he drawn into deeper awareness that he was the Messiah? Was he living a conscious articulation of something he already and always knew, or was it a surprise? Did he struggle with that articulation? Was it hard for him to admit because he did not want to presume too much? Did he know it and try to hide it even as a child? Did he have to learn he needed to hide it? Was he born knowing how to do miracles? Did he make mistakes sometimes (how many tries before he healed the blind man who saw people like walking trees?)? Did he know the little girl would rise? Why did he weep at the tomb of Lazarus? Did know how to handle mobs, or did he have to think on his feet? When he met the woman about to be stoned, was he buying time by writing in the sand?

Did he have foreknowledge of all that was to come or was he an intuitive of unsurpassed ability? Did he know who would betray him from the start or did he learn it as time wore on? Did he feel sadness for his betrayer? Was his knowledge of Peter’s denial a hunch? Did he know how he was going to die? Did he think that there was a chance it could be avoided? Was he hoping for the end to come as he was being flogged? What did he think about as he carried his cross up the hill? Was he sad that his mother had to see him in that state? Did he pass out at any point? Was it hope that led him up that hill? Was it love?

If Jesus is like us in all things but sin, what did this mean for us? Did Christ think like you? Did he pray like you? Would he see the same things as you, if he were in your place now, staring out from behind your eyes? Was his awareness like yours when you feel the presence of God, when you are aware and certain? When he talked about being one with the Father, even if his awareness was complete and total, was awareness of God sufficient for him to not feel pain? Can anyone avoid suffering? Loss of love? Weeping? Joy? How human was he? How much a part of God are we? Where does God consciousness begin and regular consciousness end? Are we unrolling the scroll as we go just like he had to? Are we coming into awareness of God in our lives like a son, or daughter, of God?

Photo: “Andy at Sunset” by “Gary Simmons” from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

Overwhelmed by God

February 08, 2010 By: Lisa Category: Ignatian Spirituality 1 Comment →

Authored by guest blogger Pat Malone, S.J.

I wrote in a reflection booklet last year that it is more than a bit mind-numbing to ponder the unlikelihood of our existence. Somewhere along the many plagues, wars, diseases, inhospitable climates, hungry animals, and random acts of violence that occurred within the 3.8 billion years of our exhausted ancestors, they stayed alive long enough to continue their fragile lineage. As Bill Bryson writes in A Short History of Nearly Everything, they were “attractive enough to mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of our pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, untimely wounded or otherwise deflected.”

While they were just doing what they could to survive, possible with a few festivals along the way, they were adding their own quirks to the gene pool that would one day give us life. Pondering the improbability of our being here gives us a small, teasing glimpse of a bigger, more tangled truth: either we were meant to be here, or we are very, very lucky. If we eventually are not in awe of the improbability of own existence, we are not paying sufficient attention.

Science agrees. The further cosmology can look out into this expanding universe, or the smaller and smaller that quantum physics is able to probe, from atom to quark, the more we sense that there is no end point. Gregg Easterbrook wrote in Beside Still Waters: Searching for Meaning in an Age of Doubt that if the ratio of energy to matter were different by one-quadrillionth of one percent, there would be no life; the universe would collapse back into itself. The odds against of us being here are at, at minimum, staggering, and apparently more than just randomness. Stephen Hawking sums up this improbability of randomness as the explanation for human life when he wrote, “What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for us to describe?” The most rational explanation would be the one most difficult to understand: the Breather of fire wants us here.
It is daunting and hard–at least for the non-scientists–to get our heads around these improbabilities. It is hard until we have our own unlikely survival stories. It is the close call of an accident that amazingly did not happen. It is the small child we let out of our site for a second who somehow missed getting scraped. Death had its rightful claim, and somehow, here we are to try to tell accounts of near-misses that we know we cannot fully absorb, much less repeat to others.

The further I move from the harrowing moments of my health journey, the more I learn that my words and demeanor beg of being in awe at the improbability of being here. That truth may be more evident for those with dramatic health journeys, but the truth is universal: there are moments in our lives when we know the people and experiences of our lives did not come to us by accident. It is often in hindsight that we learn of their significance. They have compelled us to grow, to be grateful, and to finally be accountable. And in a very beautiful way, they compel us to a sense of being overwhelmed by God.

Photo: “Eclipse 1999” by Leslie Chatfield from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

Hear I AM

February 03, 2010 By: plickteig Category: Ignatian Spirituality, Paul's Posts Comments Off

What am I looking for? Is it love? Acceptance? Understanding? Purpose? What words do I put on the thing or experience that I think will help me feel like I am doing my part in this world? Is there a word? I am not sure that I have any answers that have not been covered at least 10,000 times by minds more nimble than mine. Words…words…words…

I have felt inarticulate as of late. I have been traveling for the last six weeks, never staying in one place for more than ten days, occasionally waking up and forgetting where I am. To be sure, I have had beautiful experiences with family and friends. I have seen the sun set over mountains, on plains (in planes), and rise over pine trees and frozen hills. I am grateful for the experience. I have experienced conversations in cultures (both in the US and outside) that have opened my eyes in new ways. The thing is, I cannot really say much about them. I do not know what to say. They have not had time to settle. I have not had time to process. I do not have the words available. Further, looking at the news of the world and seeing murder, mayhem and madness floating alongside stories of beauty and grace, I do not know how to feel.

Culture shock, mixing with the mental and emotional saturation of the holidays, the glut of food, family, friends and foreigners, leaves me just feeling worn. I feel like hibernating. I feel like sinking into the sluggishness of the season. I know I think things and that I feel something. I am just not sure it matters if I say what. I mean really, is it necessary to say anything? Is it necessary to try to muddle through the mental slog and describe the sediment of some sentiment? Is there any articulation that will actually help matters?

I am not so sure. In fact, maybe articulation is what I want to avoid.

My real desire, see, is to let myself drift into a quiet place away from the noise and hullabaloo of the next big entertainment event (Grammy’s Superbowl, Olympics, Oscars) and listen.

Thank God Lent is coming.

These are the desert days for me. These are the days when I want to go out into the barren land and learn to listen again to the voices of my soul. I do not want to avoid the World so much as I want to remember how to listen to it. I want to remember how to hold the events of my day along side the events of the world and let them coexist. I need to remember how to let go of the desire to do and give into the awareness of “I AM.” I want to remember the voice of the one crying out in the desert. I want to remember how to let myself be moved again and respond once more as a child of God.

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