Tag: ignatian spirituality

The Grail Bearers

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I wrote previously that I was effectively wandering about in a spiritual meadow, smelling the flowers, and that my spiritual director had suggested that it was in essence a dark night of the soul. Not in the sense of feeling an absence of God, but in the sense of not knowing where I’m going and asking:

What is it all about?

He has been reassuring that it is a recognised part of the journey. I have not been ready to talk about it here until now.

It started on the 19th November 2023 and the day is burned in my memory because of the trauma I experienced and the schism it caused. I’d watched a video earlier in the day of a Palestinian father cradling his dead child in his arms and crying and wailing:

How am I going to live without you?

Later in the evening, I heard my daughter enter the house screaming, holding her dead six month old puppy in her arms. He’d managed to pull himself free from her and had been hit by a car. I saw with horror, dissociative amnesia descend on her. The image was similar to a pieta, like the image of the Palestinian man earlier in the day, and a part of me was grateful that it wasn’t my child that was dead. I can’t dwell on this part of my story any more because it still causes me a great deal of distress. Suffice to say, my journey, and that of my daughter, has been difficult and painful, and I started talking to a psychotherapist to help me to cope.

But this day changed my spiritual paradigm. I first noticed it on the first day of my retreat last year at St. Beunos. Since having ME/CFS, I have found it difficult to get to mass, it being either too early or too late for me to manage physically, and when I have pushed myself, it left me exhausted. On retreat however, the chapel was just along the corridor from my room and the mass time was just inside the later part of my normal energy envelope. But the first day I  went, I was exhausted. I put it down to first day retreat tiredness and went the second day. I felt even more exhausted, weary even, and I struggled to sit upright. I realised with a shock that I didn’t want to be there. What do you do when you love Him with everything you are, but you develop an aversion to going to church? I am not the first to ask this question, nor will I be the last I expect. I shared it with my retreat director and she asked:

So what happens if you don’t go? And how does God respond to it?

These are the questions I have been sitting in obscurity with. What is the root of my revulsion? And it is as strong as that, and what is the way of proceeding from here?

To sum up what I now understand but didn’t to begin with (I could identify the video and the puppy as the trigger), the root of my revulsion is the patriarchal, hierarchical structures that govern our world at large and lead to the escalation of violence and hatred that we see all over the world today. I came to understand that it wasn’t just the convergence of the video and the death of the puppy that had disturbed me so profoundly in the image of the pieta. What happened with the puppy certainly brought home the personal nature of the grief, but I was already profoundly disturbed by the video because it was a man. We are so used to the image of Mary in the pieta, of a woman, a mother; we have normalised women’s suffering to such an extent that it is shocking and deeply upsetting when we see a man in such a familiar image. We don’t expect it and we can’t dismiss it so easily because it is unfamiliar to us. At least, it is what I felt and still feel.

I’ve heard it said that if you hear the same thing said about you from three independent sources then it is probably true. Three people, independently, recommended I read The Chalice and the Blade by Raine Eisler and so I have started to read it. She describes the root of the problem as a:

Social system where the power of the blade is idealised….both men and women are taught to equate true masculinity with violence and dominance…

And that rigidly male dominant societies with a generally hierarchic and authoritarian social structure have a high degree of social violence and warfare.

One of my takeaways from the session on the theology of Girard that we had during my spiritual direction course is that Jesus’ crucifixion held up a mirror to the violence and cruelty in the human heart. My sense is that nonviolent protestors like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King did a similar thing. From the Spiritual Exercises themselves in the resurrection meditations of the fourth week, Jesus returned as consoler, not to gloat to His enemies.

What to do from here? The church is proudly patriarchal and hierarchical and I find that no longer acceptable to me. So my next question became: if I remove hierarchy and patriarchy, what does my spirituality look like? I remembered an imaginative prayer I did some years ago on the woman with the haemorrhage. I was this woman in the prayer, and when Jesus healed me, I immediately thought of my network of “sisters” who knew my intention for that day and were waiting for me to return. They were busy preparing a hopefully celebration dinner and laying the table. 

I’ve been exploring women’s spirituality more widely and deeply, within and outwith my own context and the patriarchal mould. I’ve begun to discern where women are speaking inherently with the voice of the patriarchy and where they are not. 

The image that has inspired this post is from the Rooted Women Oracle, image cards from Celtic tradition. I made my retreat at home this year and I pulled this image from the pack at the beginning of the retreat. My immediate response to the card was to think of the marriage feast at Cana, to be the servant, pouring wine for the guests. In The Cloud of Unknowing, and in Origen’s Commentary on the Song of Songs, wine is symbolic of spiritual wisdom. There is the obvious connection between the chalice and the Eucharist, and the chalice and the book I mentioned earlier. Eisler talks about the partnership model as one where:

Social relations are based on the principle of linking rather than ranking.

The commentary of The Grail Bearer card says:

 …women are central to Grail mythology: they’re the bearers of the Grail, and its messengers…what’s contained in the Grail, and offered by the Grail Bearer, is the creative, generative essence of the Otherworld, which animates the land. And so the quest for the Grail, the giver and sustainer of life, is a quest to respect and restore the anima mundi, the soul of the world. 

And:

 All of this life that we’re a part of wants to be in relationship with us. If only we can learn how to listen and to see, we can come to understand that every bird wants to sing to us, and every flower to open for us. 

This last paragraph reminds me “God in All Things”, of the Contemplatio in The Spiritual Exercises and of Rublev’s icon of The Holy Trinity.:

Second Point. The second, to look how God dwells in creatures, in the elements, giving them being, in the plants vegetating, in the animals feeling in them, in men giving them to understand:  and so in me, giving me being, animating me, giving me sensation and making me to understand…

The Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius Loyola

What also began to sink in as I made my home retreat this year is that here I am not necessarily the grail bearer. The grail bearers are my “sisters” and I am finding them. They are bringing their spiritual wisdom to me. I was already interested in The Beguines and in Julian of Norwich and I am exploring their spirituality more deeply. I became a Companion of Julian in May and this is the community I have attached myself to. I am continuing to explore what form spiritual practice and worship takes outside the patriarchal, hierarchical structure of the church and I am still at the beginning of that journey. I am currently exploring the writings of Hadewijch and Methchilde, as well as Julian. Although they had to be careful of accusations of heresy (cf. The Lollards and Marguerite Poirete), the voices of these early medieval women reach out from a time before the misogynistic gendering of the witch and before the industrial revolution and age of enlightenment. It  is to this “herstory” that I am currently drawn.

Turmoil of Spirits

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hanging gold colored pendant with necklace

I found this song by this amazing young man on one of those Tik Tok commentary posts – voice coach blind reacts to it.

You can find the lyrics here.

Then I watched several others comment on it from different perspectives including a psychiatrist and a videographer. For me of course, there is an Ignatian “God in All Things” perspective. I was deeply moved by Ren’s telling of his own story when I first heard it and immediately recognised in it the struggle and the cacophony of what Ignatius describes in the rules of discernment of spirits:

…it is characteristic of the evil spirit to harass with anxiety, to afflict with sadness, to raise obstacles backed by fallacious reasonings that disturb the soul. Thus he seeks to prevent the soul from advancing.

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, trans. L.J. Puhl S.J.

It is not my intention to equate mental illness with disturbances on a regular scale and I acknowledge the intensity and extremity that Ren describes when he says:

It wasn’t David versus Goliath, it was a pendulum
Eternally swayin’ from the dark to the light
And the more intensely that the light shone, the darker the shadow it cast

Here, I want to simply recognise that what Ren describes as a pendulum is similar in movement and oscillating direction to what many of us experience, if not in scale.

hanging gold colored pendant with necklace
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

The commentary videos I watched only showed the first part of the video, which is interesting and moving enough, but the second part and Ren’s monologue at the end are very powerful.

Ren exemplifies some of the characteristics of the evil spirit Ignatius describes. In the beginning he talks to Ren as if they are friends, in a similar way as the manner of acting as a false lover. We see how displeased and angry the response is when Ren reveals that he has been talking to his therapist. Ignatius says:

…he earnestly desires that they be received secretly and kept secretly. But if one manifests them to a confessor, or to some other spiritual person who understands his deceits an malicious designs, the evil one is very much vexed.

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, trans. L.J. Puhl S.J.

When Ren answers him back, we hear the evil spirit effectively throwing a tantrum. Ignatius says:

…if one begins to be afraid and to lose courage in temptations, no wild animal on earth could be more fierce than the enemy of our human nature. He will carry out his perverse intentions with consummate malice.

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, trans. L.J. Puhl S.J.

And:

…the enemy of our human nature investigates from every side all our virtues, theological, cardinal, and moral. Where he finds the defenses of eternal salvation weakest an most deficient, there he attacks and tries to take us by storm.

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, trans. L.J. Puhl S.J.

We see this spirit attack Ren with fallacious reasonings around his music, giving voice to the doubts, to faith in himself and to Ren’s sense of self worth. The tone is mocking and harsh, like water on a stone, and as Ren continues affirm his gifts we hear this desolating voice become louder and more angry. Any pretention or delusions of friendship and care disappear as its true identity and intentions are revealed explicitly.

I feel like things might be falling in place
And my music’s been kinda doing bits too
Like I actually might do something great

And then he stands up and sings:

I was made by His hand, it’s all part of His plan
That I stand on my own two feet
And you know me, my will is eternal
And you know me, you’ve met me before
Face to face with a beast, I will rise from the east
And I’ll settle on the ocean floor

And I go by many names also
Some people know me as “hope”
Some people know me as the voice that you hear
When you loosen the noose on the rope

This quiet, strong response give me chills every time I hear it. After all that bluster. It is like Elijah in the cave at Horeb, after the fire, the earthquake and the storm; and then the silence; the voice of God.

Ren describes the turmoil of spirits he demonstrates in this song as an eternal dance, a movement back and forth, a pendulum. Ignatius also recognises movement between consolation and desolation:

When one is in desolation, he should strive to persevere in patience. This reacts against the vexations that have overtaken him. Let him consider, too, that consolation will soon return…

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, trans. L.J. Puhl S.J.

I don’t think Ren explicitly intended to demonstrate turmoil of spirits as called by Ignatius in the Spiritual Exercises, but I would like to thank him for doing so, for making the spiritual struggle so clear. I will end with Ren’s final words in the song:

And I must not forget, we must not forget
That we are human beings.

The Pitchforks are coming…closer!

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person putting palm on face while holding prayer beads

I read an article some years ago (ten years ago) called “The Pitchforks are Coming...” which has come into my mind again more recently. I might describe it as arguing for the right thing for the wrong reason and I didn’t really warm to the author of it if I’m honest, but nevertheless, he made some very good points…ten years ago.

The problem is that inequality is at historically high levels and getting worse every day. Our country is rapidly becoming less a capitalist society and more a feudal society. Unless our policies change dramatically, the middle class will disappear, and we will be back to late 18th-century France. Before the revolution.

With reference to the French revolution, it was a furore on TikTok, prompted by a model outside the MET gala recently who used the quote from the Marie Antoinette film:

Let them eat cake!

which reminded me of the article. The outrage her tasteless video prompted a movement subsequently called the “digital guillotine” as millions of regular people started to block celebrity and corporation social media accounts they were and were not following. The excess on display at the MET gala was juxtaposed next to a march in support of Palestine, hundreds of metres away and the fury at the video using the sound at the insensitivity and deafness to the suffering of people at the hands of a genocide, where internationally agreed, illegal and barbaric tactics of starving a civilian population are being used.

The theme of the MET gala this year was “The Garden of Time“, a short story by J. G. Ballard. it is summarised in one of the comments in the goodreads link:

“The Garden of Time” by J. G. Ballard (1962) is a short story of speculative fiction. It is about an elegant couple living in a beautiful villa. They have a garden of crystal time flowers. When each flower is plucked, it deliquesces (melts) from a solid to a liquid and then disappears. When that happens, time reverses. A mob is coming towards them, and they use the flowers to hold back the mob as long as possible.

The goodreads post has many comments in relations to the story and this year’s MET gala.

Tiktok is an interesting social media app. When I set up as an online tutor a few years ago, I was very reluctant to sign up to it, but my business coach suggested I did and I post short videos solving chemistry problems. What I have found to my surprise, not withstanding the addictive nature of it, is the degree of conversation that goes on. Sure, there are the negative and vicious comments that you see from social media trolls, but it’s not just about leaving comments. Videos can be stitched and dueted. You can replay a section of a video in your own video and comment on it or you can make your own video alongside someone else’s video in a duet. One of the most inspiring examples I have seen of the latter was of one creator who signs to songs, being dueted by other creators signing to the same song in different sign languages – amazing! Regular people all over the world, talking to each other and sharing ideas. The model I mentioned earlier was stitched many times and ctiticised, leading to the boycott of celebrities at the MET gala and those who have been silent on the genocide in Palestine.

Social media content in support of Palestine is being suppressed. I saw it for myself when I shared a video from a pastor in Bethlehem showing their crib at Christmas time. It was blacked out on my facebook page, where other shared videos were not. Nevertheless, my tiktok for you page is overwhelmed by it and I find myself unable to look away. Videos have been posted regularly from the Gaza press, directly from people on the ground, unpolished, raw. We are able to see what it is like for other ordinary people around the world, in real time. Sometimes, when one of the regulars hasn’t posted for a while, there is a sinking feeling that they have finally been killed. It feels so trite to say it so simply like that and it doesn’t convey the feeling of dread, the hoping that today there will be a video from them telling us that they are okay. And at the same time, the same sinking feeling for all of the unknown faces dying every day, including children, Mansour was missing for two weeks at one point, Bisan didn’t post for a few days, leading people to worry and ask what had happened to them. Bisan used to begin her videos like this:

Hey everyone, This is Bisan from Gaza. It’s day #no. I’m still alive…

A mural of her has been painted in Edinburgh.

There is a feeling of relief to see her post with today’s date on it.

The feeling of bearing witness to the genocide in Gaza resonates with the third week of The Spiritual Exercises for me. The grace asked for is:

In the Passion it is proper to ask for sorrow with Christ in sorrow, anguish with Christ in anguish, tears and deep grief because of the great affliction Christ endures for me.

The Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius trans. Louis J. Puhl S.J.

Ignatius give additional directions:

I will rouse myself to sorrow, suffering and anguish by frequently calling to mind the labors, fatigue and suffering which Christ our Lord endured from the time of birth to the mystery of the passion upon which I am engaged at present.

The Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius trans. Louis J. Puhl S.J.

I am reminded from scripture:

44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

Matthew 25:44-45

It is all too easy to be blind and deaf to the suffering of people in another part of the world, to think that it is all too complicated to understand and it is upsetting, and what power do I have anyway? During the third week of my Spiritual Exercises, I prayed that I wouldn’t turn away, that no matter how difficult and painful it was to walk with Jesus in His passion, I prayed that I wouldn’t be one of those to run away from the garden. In my experience of praying the third week, I came to understand that it wasn’t for me. In my imaginative prayers, whenever Jesus was struggling, and struggle He did, when He caught sight of those who loved Him, those who were walking with Him, He drew courage and strength from them. To stand in solidarity with people is not for us, it is for them. If it is hard for us, how much harder is it for those for whom there is no escape, for whom there is no turning away?

Bisan posted a short video some time ago full of hope. Hope because the voices of the student protests in America had reached Gaza. The solidarity of the demonstrations around the world were providing the people under siege and bombardment in Palestine with hope and encouragement. When so many in the world can see the wrongness of Israel’s campaign against Palestine, when the International Criminal Court has named the war as genocide, what are the governments who are still holding out playing at? When most of the world can see the obvious, why do they refuse?

One of the Tik Tok videos I watched which has disturbed me the most was of a young Isreali woman who had done her time with the IDF and was talking about the fact that she had knowingly killed a young Palestinian boy of around eleven or twelve years old. This young woman was broken: she was filled with dread and fear, like someone standing on a precipice, oscillating between trying to accept what she had done and couldn’t undo, and to feeling pure horror in what she had done. How can anyone come back form such a thing and live peacefully with themselves? Israel is not only destroying Palestinian children, she is destroying her own.

17 Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:

18 “A voice is heard in Ramah,
    weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
    and refusing to be comforted,
    because they are no more.”[a

Matthew 2:17-19

person putting palm on face while holding prayer beads
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Rishi Sunak, in the first few days of the election campaign has told us that the world is a more dangerous place. What can I say? He is one of the super rich minority and it seems that the chances of his party winning are far too slim. Maybe it does indeed seem dangerous to him and others like him as the hordes come over the hill with their pitchforks. I will let Nick Hanauer close from his memo to fellow zillionaires:

If we don’t do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us. No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn’t eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It’s not if, it’s when…

Revolutions, like bankruptcies, come gradually, and then suddenly. One day, somebody sets himself on fire, then thousands of people are in the streets, and before you know it, the country is burning… If inequality keeps rising as it has been, eventually it will happen. We will not be able to predict when, and it will be terrible—for everybody. But especially for us.

Vive La Revolucion!

Fallacious Reasonings?

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a person wearing gas mask

There was a day in April/May of 1982 that is forever embedded in my memory, not necessarily because of the exact date, but more because of what that day felt like. I walked into the fifth year common room when I arrived at school but there was no chatter or music playing as usual. The room was filled with a grim silence and when I greeted one of my friends he said:

We are at war.

It was sickening. I had never experienced this feeling before.

Years later I was driving to the school where I was teaching and a song came on the radio:

My response this time on hearing this song was visceral: I came out in goosebumps and felt physically sick as the realisation that the soldier dying in this song was now; the second war in Iraq was in progress. I have to acknowledge that at the time I felt very conflicted about it. It made me sick to my stomach but I had read that chemical weapons had been used against the Kurdish people and with a chemistry degree and “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen deeply ingrained from high school English, surely it had to be stopped?

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

a person wearing gas mask
Photo by Freddie Addery on Pexels.com

The cognitive dissonance of that time raises the explicit question of the biased propaganda of the war machine and encouraged me to read and reflect on what I was seeing. I was particularly interested on “Just War Theory” and articles which reflected on live conflicts in the context of this theory. Currently I hear a lot of reference to self defense in the news and the underlying assumption is that it is enough in and of itself to justify actions of war. I find myself once more, not only feeling sick to my stomach, but shining the light of the just war principles on what I see and read.

The just war theory is a doctrine, also referred to as a tradition, of military ethics that aims to ensure that a war is morally justifiable through a series of criteria, all of which must be met for a war to be considered just. It has been studied by military leaders, theologians, ethicists and policymakers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_war_theory

The specific criteria are given:

Principles of the Just War

1.            A just war can only be waged as a last resort. All non-violent options must be exhausted before the use of force can be justified.

2.            A war is just only if it is waged by a legitimate authority. Even just causes cannot be served by actions taken by individuals or groups who do not constitute an authority sanctioned by whatever the society and outsiders to the society deem legitimate.

3.            A just war can only be fought to redress a wrong suffered. For example, self-defense against an armed attack is always considered to be a just cause (although the justice of the cause is not sufficient–see the next point). Further, a just war can only be fought with “right” intentions: the only permissible objective of a just war is to redress the injury.

4.            A war can only be just if it is fought with a reasonable chance of success. Deaths and injury incurred in a hopeless cause are not morally justifiable.

5.            The ultimate goal of a just war is to re-establish peace. More specifically, the peace established after the war must be preferable to the peace that would have prevailed if the war had not been fought.

6.            The violence used in the war must be proportional to the injury suffered. States are prohibited from using force not necessary to attain the limited objective of addressing the injury suffered.

7.            The weapons used in war must discriminate between combatants and non-combatants. Civilians are never permissible targets of war, and every effort must be taken to avoid killing civilians. The deaths of civilians are justified only if they are unavoidable victims of a deliberate attack on a military target.

from Vincent Ferraro,  Ruth C. Lawson Professor of International Politics, Mount Holyoke College <http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pol116/justwar.htm&gt;

Self defense is not enough – there are many other criteria that need to be met to consider a war to be just. And I don’t hear them being talked about in conflicts that governments, including the government in the country where I live, are taking up positions on. To parrot self defense as everything that is needed to make open ended atrocities all okay is galling and an example of a moral equivalence fallacy, which falls under the term of fallacious reasonings described by St. Ignatius in The Spiritual Exercises.

“it is characteristic of the evil spirit to harass with anxiety, to afflict with sadness, to raise obstacles backed by fallacious reasonings that disturb the soul.”

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola trans L J Puhl S.J.

I find myself particularly bothered by how an authority is deemed legitimate: What if the society and those outside the society are divided in whether they deem an authority legitimate? Are freedom fighters ever a legitimate authority when they are denied as such by the government within and outwith a society, even as they fight against the vested interests of those governments and the violent oppression of people by those said same governments? I find these questions difficult as I wonder if apartheid would have ever ended in South Africa without the actions of Nelson Mandela and others. And closer to home, what about Ireland? Or the Jacobite rebellion in Scottish history. Is an authority in a country deemed illegitimate by a colonial power within the country legitimately illegitimate? The violence of the human condition and the justification of the violence torments me and tears my heart apart. I cry in grief every day at what I am witnessing in the middle east in these times.

I have been in some abusive situations in my life and my usual tactic was to become silent, to walk away and consider my own position and feelings and to check the reasonability of my position with a third party. Sometimes, I returned with my arguments prepared. Sometimes however, the other party in the conflict persisted and followed into the space I had created and continued the provocation until there was no way out other than to fight back. When I did so, I noticed the satisfaction of the other party who now accused me for my unreasonable behaviour. I can see the DARVO pattern in such interactions.

DARVO (an acronym for “deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender”) is a reaction that perpetrators of wrongdoing, such as sexual offenders may display in response to being held accountable for their behavior.[1] Some researchers indicate that it is a common manipulation strategy of psychological abusers.[2][3][4]

As the acronym suggests, the common steps involved are:

  1. The abuser denies the abuse ever took place
  2. When confronted with evidence, the abuser then attacks the person that was abused (and/or the person’s family and/or friends) for attempting to hold the abuser accountable for their actions, and finally
  3. The abuser claims that they are actually the victim in the situation, thus reversing the positions of victim and offender.[2][4] It often involves not just playing the victim but also victim blaming.[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARVO

These are behaviours assigned to individuals, but to my mind, they are recognisable in those who perpetuate the self defense argument from the third principle of the just war theory endlessly and make no reference to and show no consideration of any of the other principles that make it justifiable.

I am reminded of Jesus’s temptations in the desert and how Satan used scripture to try to manipulate Him:

5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, 6 saying to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written,

“He will command his angels concerning you”,
    and “On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.”’

Matthew 4:5-6

These particular words are from Psalm 91, which continues:

You will tread on the lion and the adder,
    the young lion and the serpent you will trample under foot.

Psalm 91: 13

Using quotes to help make your point is all well and good – I am doing it here after all – but using them out of context is fallacious reasoning. We see Satan giving us a perfect example with Jesus in the desert.

Fallacy of quoting out of context (contextotonomy, contextonomy; quotation mining) – selective excerpting of words from their original context o distort the intended meaning.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

We see here that Satan conveniently omits the part of scripture that accuses him. Selectively using part of the just war argument and taking out of context with the just war principles as a whole is an example of this type of fallacious reasoning.

When I am reading or viewing anything to do with current conflicts in the world I am asking myself:

Where is God in this? Where is love? Where are the fruits of the spirit?

When I see angry people screwing their face up with hatred as they seek to justify their position, when I see people dying brutal deaths, the killing of innocent children and the glorification of violence by those carrying it out I do not see God in those actions. When I see people helping with medical and food aid, in risking their lives to speak out – we call people like this prophets – I see courage, self sacrifice for the sake of others, compassion and truth. Here I sense the presence of God.

In the end, I do not turn away, I’m holding the space and compassion and I cry every day for those who are suffering in it. I pray for the violence to stop.

Hope is an Act of Defiance

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I went to see “The Old Oak” at the cinema a few weeks ago. It is a Ken Loach film. I have a lot of respect for Ken Loach, even though I have to confess to it being the first film of his I have gone to see. He makes films that tell the stories of ordinary people living in Britain today and he shows the impact of the policies of the current government on people here who have the least. His films are not easy viewing.

The Old Oak is set in a village in Northern England, not far from Durham in 2016, prior to Brexit. The story is about the settling of some Syrian refugees into the village and the impact of it on the local people and the refugees themselves, and the relationships that develop. I’m not sure exactly why I was moved to see this film but avoided his other films on account of the anticipation that they would be gruelling, all I know is that I was moved to see it and I was deeply moved by it.

I felt angry at the blatant racism of the villagers towards the refugees and the bitterness that they espoused:

I’m not a racist but….

I felt angry at the lack of compassion and the spite that they showed to people who had been displaced from their home and who had nothing. I also felt angry at the deprivation and the hopelessness that the villagers themselves felt at being trapped in poverty in their own lives. And most of all I felt angry that these feelings had been stoked and amplified by the corruption and lies of those in the Brexit leave campaign who later came to form our government. I felt ugly inside and ashamed to be British – a strong, repulsive response. I recognise myself in the first week of the Spiritual Exercises at this response as I contemplate sin and the sins of the world.

A platonic relationship develops between Yara, one of the refugees and the publican Tommy Joe (TJ). In response to an idea from Yara, who was inspired from photos of how the community held together during the miners strike:

When you eat together, you stick together.

He opens up the backroom of his pub to cook community dinners for anyone and every one. The community pulls together to fix up the back room to make it functional for the purpose. However, some of his regulars who had asked for the back room to be opened and he had turned down due to the extensive work needed, sabotaged the room in a pique of spite and the dinners stopped.

The scene that moved me the most in the film took place in Durham Cathedral. We see a small part of that scene in the trailor for the film. Yara and TJ had gone there to collect some food that had been donated. Yara wandered into the cathedral during choir practice and the space, beauty and peace of it contrasted with the apparent bleakness in the rest of the film. She had a conversation with TJ about how her father had been abducted and imprisoned by the Syrian regime. She believed he was still alive at this point because they had had reports that someone had seen him in prison a few weeks previously. Yara talked about how this hope for him to be alive caused her despair. She conveyed that if they knew he was dead, they would know he was no longer suffering, or being tortured and that they would be able to mourn, to move on and live their lives. This conversation broke my heart, and even now as I write about it weeks later it still has the power to move me to tears. How can hope be the source of despair? An yet, there was truth in her words.

I remember the incident in London Bridge some years ago when the driver of a van deliberately ploughed through pedestrians. I’d read an article later somewhere where a mother had commented on her child asking where was God in such a thing. She had told him to look for the helpers, always to look for the helpers. This one simple response has stayed with me since then. It is the helpers and the hope for better that defies the violence that would otherwise overwhelm us.

I read somewhere – I think it was in “God in All Things” by Gerry Hughes – that as long as one person remains who stands up for what is right then evil will not prevail. As St Francis of Assisi puts it:

When I did the Spiritual Exercises, there was a meditation in the first week whereby I imagined myself in a river, seemingly teeming with life, but I was standing in front of an outflow pipe with what was effectively crude oil pouring out of it. I was trying to block it from reaching the children behind me but it was clinging to me and making me sick, and some of it was still managing to flow past me. More recently, I was in this river and in front of the outflow pipe again. This time my body was anointed in a different oil, fragranced with God and the black oil could not cling to me because of it. The words that accompanied this image in my prayer were:

Satan cannot take what belongs to God.

Evil and sin is tricky. Much has been written about it and I certainly don’t have the answer to it. The first week in the Exercises is spent in meditation of it and on contemplating the cross, Ignatius cries out in wonder:

This is a cry of wonder accompanied by a surge of emotion as I pass in review all creatures. How is it that they have permitted me to live, and have sustained me in my life? Why have the angels, though they are the sword of God’s justice, tolerated me, guarded me and prayed for me! Why have the saints interceded for me and asked favours for me!…How is it that the earth did not open and swallow me up, and create new hells in which I should be tormented forever!

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, trans. Louis J. Puhl SJ.

Like many others around the world, I am completely horrified by the violence currently being perpetrated in the Middle East. As a species, we have an intrinsic tendency towards violence. This point never hit more deeply as when I watched the jubilation portrayed in the film Oppenheimer after the bombs had been dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was sickening. I identified with the man shown vomiting in the bicycle sheds. In God in All Things, Gerry Hughes, who took a stand against violence in his life, talks about our destructive belief in redemptive violence:

Supporters of active non-violent resistance are generally considered to be romantic idealists, who are out of touch with the realities of the violent world in which the weak and oppressed will be trampled on by the ruthless unless the ruthless are deterred by violence.

God In All Things, Gerard W. Hughes

He also says:

Our advocacy of violence is not seen as being in conflict with fundamental Christian belief. If we believe in redemptive violence, we may find ourselves in strange company; in agreement with tyrants, dictators, totalitarian regimes and terrorists throughout the ages.

God In All Things, Gerard W. Hughes

I went on a retreat to Loyola in 2009 which had been organised by Gerry Hughes and I was, and still am, impressed by this quiet, gentle Jesuit priest who held such seemingly radical views. At least, by the response they would illicit in some, you would think they were radical. You would think that condemnation of violence and calling for peace would be obvious, logical, a common desire for everyone. Apparently not. I am proud to be Scottish this week because of the call by Scottish MPs for a ceasefire in the Middle East, and I am ashamed to be British because parliament voted against calling for a ceasefire. I genuinely do not understand it – how can anyone seriously vote against calling for wanton violence and destruction to stop? I may be one of those romantic idealists that Gerry Hughes was referring to, and I may be politically naive without a solution to the problems, but still. Surely the first step to stop the killing is to stop the justification of the killing?

When the scapegoat mentality takes hold in a country it destroys any sense of proportion, threatens to banish the rule of law, tends to demonise any who are suspected, and frightens people from speaking the truth, lest they are accused of colluding with the accused.

God In All Things, Gerard W. Hughes

While I recognise a grain of truth in Yara’s words in Durham Cathedral, and agree within the context in which she spoke them, I don’t agree in a general sense. Hope is the defiance of the violence we see. It is the message of the cross, it is the message of all of those who stand for peace. We dare to hope for more than the violence we are capable of, and while there is one person alive who advocates for love, there is hope. There are many of us and the darkness cannot extinguish this light. This hope is our defiance and we dare to speak it out.

The Female Election

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After writing about Barbie making an election, and in general with questions I’m asking about myself and my life, together with conversations with my own spiritual director, I have been thinking a lot about my own election. I made my election, my choice for a way of life a few months before I did The Spiritual Exercises and it was confirmed during the Exercises. I wasn’t aware at the time I was making an election, just wrestling with life, which to be honest, is a regular state of affairs, but in the conversation with my director he asked a very rare, and very deliberate closed question:

This sounds to me that you are making an election here. Is that what you are doing? Are you making an election?

I was already training to be a spiritual director so he knew I knew what it meant. My director very rarely asks closed questions like this and if he notices he has, he reframes the question to make it more open. Not here though: this felt deliberate and as such, I knew it was important. No matter what I answered here, yes or no, it would change my life. A denial would not be honest and would be a turning away from what I was being called to, and admitting it would (and did) bring about an avalanche that turned my world upside down. It’s not my intention here to go into the nitty gritty details of my own election, simply to offer a contemplation of the choices of a way of life from the female perspective. As with the Barbie post, yes, men do make elections and here, I am reflecting on the choices from the position of female as norm.

The featured image on this post is a photograph I created after being inspired by a Vanitas/Memento Mori painting in the Kelvingrove Art gallery in Glasgow about six months after I returned from The Exercises. I don’t remember the name of the artist or the painting, but I was captivated by it. In an interesting convergance, it was that very day that I came down with glanduar fever which first triggered the ME/CFS I experience now. I can relate that to something in my experience of The Exercises – maybe I will write about it another time. Up until today, I have never explained what this picture is about to anyone other than my art teacher/artist friend and my director.

The first thing to notice is the darkness surrounding the image, and how difficult it is to see some aspects around the edges. It is intentional; to suggest that our choice for a way of life emerges from a lack of vision and clarity, and even from the darkness of the “wrong” choices we make on our journey to get there. To go back to how Barbie describes election:

Not someone I become, but who I discover I am.

Barbie, The Barbie Movie

When my attention was drawn to the painting in the Kelvingrove, my art teacher/artist friend was unenamoured by it. I told her the painting was about sex and she asked me increduously:

How are you getting sex from that?

So I explained. My photo is also about sex on the surface, but like the painting that inspired it, it is about so much more than that. So let’s look at the details more closely, moving from left to right, bearing in mind that the picture is a contemplation – lots of questions, but not necessarily answers.

In the original painting in the art gallery, there was a set of armour, sword(s) and a half open jewellery box with pearl beads pouring out of it. In the language of memento mori, such things represented power and wealth and the images are inherently masculine and patriarchal, with the allusions to war and “ownership” of women. Here in my photo, I have used a corset and high black leather high heels as symbols of female sexual power. The riding crop and whip serve as replacements for the swords in the original painting and further emphasise female sexual power by their explicit reference to sexual bondage and the image of the dominatrix. The rope and chains drive that image home. The ropes and chains are also representative of what binds and enslaves us, be it patriarchy, sin etc. – fill in the gaps here for yourself. In the first instance, the question or intention is to subvert male power and to put the female in control of her election, it is not a choice to be made in submission to patriarchal authority.

The rose in this part of the image symbolises two things. The first is eternal life. This is a motif used by Seiger Koder, an artist whose work I love. The second is romantic love – the secular understanding of a red rose. The rose is facing away, to the back, which suggests that the meaning is perverted or negated; this is not eternal life or romantic love. To the right of this section there is a bottle of erotic oil, a glass bauble with red fractured glass and a purse spilling out thirty pieces of silver. The oil is reminiscent of the woman of ill repute in scripture anointing Jesus’s feet while he dined with the pharisees. Is this an erotic act? In the film Pulp Fiction, the John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson characters spend some time at the beginning of the film arguing about whether their gangster boss beating someone for massaging his wife’s feet was or was not an overreaction.

NB: There is a lot of swearing in this scene, so if you are sensitive or offended by such, please don’t watch it.

The appropriateness of it is open to question. And there is also the implict understanding that when Mary anointed Jesus feet at the last supper, that she was anointing him for death. The red in the image is symbolic of desire and the black of sin and death. The bauble is standing in for a bubble, which in the language of Vanitas means something transient, temporary, short lived and the fractured red glass is suggesting the fragility of our desires, especially sexual desire, and their incoherent and unintegrated nature. The thirty pieces of silver of course, represent betrayal with their implicit reference to Judas Iscariot, but in the context of everything else in the image, they suggest prostitution, a women selling her body, trading in her sexuality for material gain. This part of the image speaks about a certain type of woman or the sexuality of all women, and how woman are judged and criticised in the patriarchy for being the “wrong sort of woman” whether they are or are not. How many women reading have been called those names, and by men (and other women) in the church? I know I have. This part of the picture is about female sexuality, where we are strong, where it is used against us, where we are betrayed by it, even possibly by our own sexual desire.

The central part of the photo provides the counterpoint. The triangulation of the purse spilling out the thirty pieces of silver, the broken pestle and mortar and the key on the pillow raises the question of marriage. In memento mori language, a key on a pillow symbolises marriage. They key is held by a red ribbon, red again being symbolic of desire. I suggested earlier that the purse and the money pointed to betrayal, so the proximity of these items in the overall picture is to question the betrayal of marriage with respect to women. In our not so distant past – and still with some in the present – the dictat was that the husband “owned” the wife; he kept her and she served and obeyed him. It is in the traditional marriage vows a woman might take in the church. The purpose of the woman was to secure a good husband, where the emphasis of “good” was around material wealth. It was only in the year after I moved to England that it became legally possible for a man to be accused and tried for raping his wife. The pestle and mortar represent male and female. The empty mortar suggests female virginity – something to aspire to (although that’s a contradiction in itself) but not for too long: wife and mother is the ultimate suggested reality for women. The broken pestle may be suggestive of a broken patriarchy, although it was not what I intended when I created the photo. It was more to represent the rejection of sexual relationships with men and with it the rejection of marriage, and to present an alternative choice of celibacy in this image. Women rejecting marriage is on the increase I hear and I acknowledge that in my contemporary culture at least, there is a wider range of choice open to woman, but again, not without its pressures. I read something a long time ago that stuck in my mind. It was in praise of convents and the religious life because historically they offered a woman a respectable and acceptable alternative to marriage. Marriage is one of the key choices to be made in the election.

There are some things which fall under unchangeable election, such as are the priesthood, marriage, etc. There are others which fall under an election that can be changed, such as are to take benefices or leave them, to take temporal goods or rid oneself of them.


The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola translated by Elder Mullan

For a woman, to marry is a huge social pressure point: the church tells us we should, Disney tells us we should, the fairy stories tell us we should, Rom Coms, the whole of society tells us we should. But what if we were to say no? The traditional choices as presented when I was growing up were to marry or become a nun. The latter was not the desirable choice and held the unspoken undercurrent that it was a waste of a life. It might even have been spoken out on occasions, it was definitely a palpable opinion.

Also on the pillow or cushion is a copy of The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. It is the actual book that was given to each of us as a gift when we had completed The Exercises. It is open on the page of the election and represents the choice being made. The open padlock on the pillow is suggestive of freedom – the freedom from those chains and ropes that bind us in some form of slavery, and the freedom to be who God is calling us to be.

The positioning of the guitar at this point was inspired by a set of classical guitar music books I have that line up a guitar with a woman lying down.

The positioning of it behind the marriage cushion is to make the often made link between “wife and mother” with the implication of roundness in the abdomenal area. Again, questions around the choices and societal positions of women around childbirth. Even this issue of reproduction was raised in the Barbie movie and in Barbie’s election.

Before looking at the last section of the photo, I just want to connect the structure of the image in a similar way as I did when I was looking at the Ecstasy of St. Francis by Caravaggio. In the Positive Penance post I likened the downward movement to a deconstruction of our false self and the upward movement as a reconstruction, bringing us closer to our true self in God. In Caravaggio’s image, the gaze of Francis is to God, even though his eyes are shut. In my photo, the counterpoint is in The Spritual Exercises, specifically in The Election. It is where the movement changes from deconstruction of the false self on the left to reconstruction of the true self in God on the right of the image. So, let’s look in more detail at the elements on the right hand section of the photo.

The sunflower is opposite the backward facing rose with the purpose of opposing it. It is upright and is facing forward, the “right” way. The sunflower symbolises devotion, and it’s uprightness and forwardness indcates that it is the intended meaning, rather than inversion or perversion. The intention is that it is devotion to God. It is beginning to open, suggestive of awakening. Sunflower is also, obviously, one of my spiritual alter egos and was the name I was called by in many (but not all) of the imagnitive contemplations I did during The Exercises. It’s inclusion here for me is personal and intimate, and by extension, The Election is personal and intimate for everyone who makes it. The white vase, the holding vessel, symbolises the purity of the intention with which the choice is made when the conversation throughout the process is with God. The page is a copy of the front page of the Exercises, which emphasises this process and that it is for the greater glory of God. The necklace is on a purple ribbon which reaches back to the open page on the pillow. The purple signifies suffering, or the price of discipleship, which is the theme that develops more deeply through the third week of the Exercises after the Election is made as we walk with Jesus through His passion and death. We begin to understand a bit more deeply the meaning of our undertaking. The necklace is an image used in The Song of Songs to mean the yoke of God and it is in this picture a spiral, which I visualise as one path leading more deeply into God. The image of the spiral path is one of the central themes in my mandalas.

The skull represents contemplation in memento mori art, and this one I have and use in my Vanitas photos has roses on it. I said earlier that I am using the rose as a symbol of eternal life, inspired by the artwork of Seider Koder, so this skull in my Vanitas photos means contemplative prayer. The books it sits on are previous diaries of mine – they represent “before” in this image. Obviously there are many personal details of my life in those books that have led me to this point. The book on top of the diaries is an old illustrated bible history I found when I was a child around the age of seven years old and I kept. I remember it clearly as a touchstone experience. The upright book behind the skull is a blank notebook of the type I use for my diaries. It is the new way of being after The Election, that is yet to be written.

The candle represents the soul, and here it is on fire. The “hour glass” (actually minutes) represents time, eternity, the fleeting moments of this mortal life and God time, which to my understanding is every moment all at once. The wine represents everything that we are familiar with: the covenant with God and in the language of the mystics, spiritual wisdom. The glass I have used here was a gift from a friend and it has my name etched onto it. Again, The Election is our own personal covenant with God. Part of the rope from the bindings on the other side of the photo appears here, and the meaning in the context of the items on this side of the picture is freedom from what enslaves us.

To take in the image as a whole then is to recognise that the choices of a way of life for women are loaded with expectations and judgements that may pressure us one way or another to live lives where we are not being our authentic selves because we have absorbed the limitations that patriarchal institutions and society have placed on us. The Exercises and the Election contained within allow us the sacred space to have the conversation with God about who we are in Him, who He is calling us to be (not necessarily do), or in the immortal words of Barbie:

Not someone I become, but who I discover I am.

Barbie, The Barbie Movie

My photo is my visual expression of that journey and my experiences of the pressures to be a particular way as a woman in the society in which I live. The point of the election, the moment when you understand who you are is the most liberating feeling in the world because you can confidently put down everything that is not you. There may be painful changes to be made as a result but His yoke is indeed light.

Dualism, Dichotomy and Discernment

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The first time I became aware that I didn’t know what “dichotomous” meant was when I was beginning my PhD in Atmospheric Chemistry and part of the project was described as collecting “dichotomous rain and aerosol samples”. Of course, I looked it up in the dictionary:

Dividing or branching into two pieces.

In the context of my research project, these dichotomous samples were to be collected simultaneously to get a deeper understanding of what processes were going on with trace metals in the atmosphere. My online dictionary elaborates on such a division as involving apparently incompatible or opposite principles, a duality. But other definitions of dichotomy include:

The division of a class into two disjoint sub-classes that are together comprehensive (logic)

The division of a genus into two species: a division into two subordinate parts. (biology, taxonomy)

There is a subtle difference between duality and dichotomy and if I were to sum up what I mean by the title of this post I would say it is about discernment when we have two opposite things going on at the same time, when we are split in two. In Ignatian terms, discernment in such conditions is most likely to be second time choice – involving turmoil of spirits – or third time choice, where there is indifference. Ignatius gives a very useful tool for making decisions by third time choice.

This will be to weigh the matter by reckoning the number of advantages that would accrue to me…solely for the praise of God our Lord…I would do the same with the second alternative, that is, weigh the advantages and benefits as well as the disadvantages and danger of not having it.

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola trans. Louis J. Puhl SJ

Third time choice can be worked out using a table:

I should apply for the job at School. I should NOT apply for the job at School.
Advantages Disadvantages Advantages Disadvantages

Church school – ethos  
Has a prayer room!  
Energy to pursue spiritual direction 		Hassle of moving when I’m settled  
Would feel disloyal to people who have supported me   		Familiarity – established here   Good colleagues I know I work well with Have not enjoyed being here since last years stress
An partial example of making a third time choice.

While I have a few notable experiences of what Ignatius describes as first and third time choice, by far my most common experience of discernment involves wrestling with the turmoil of spirits as Ignatius describes when he is talking about spiritual desolation:

I describe desolation…as darkness of soul, turmoil of spirit, inclination to what is low and earthly, restlessness rising from many disturbances and temptations which lead to the want of faith, want of hope, want of love….

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola trans. Louis J. Puhl SJ.

Although we might view spiritual consolation and desolation as a duality, maybe that is an over simplification and our experienced reality is more of a dichotomy in the sense that I’m thinking about two opposite things going on at the same time. Ignatius gives some good advice for when we find ourselves in desolation:

6. Although in desolation we ought not to change our first resolutions, it is very helpful intensely to change ourselves against the same desolation, as by insisting more on prayer, meditation, on much examination, and by giving ourselves more scope in some suitable way of doing penance.

7. Let him who is in desolation consider how the Lord has left him in trial in his natural powers, in order to resist the different agitations and temptations of the enemy; since he can with the Divine help, which always remains to him, though he does not clearly perceive it: because the Lord has taken from him his great fervor, great love and intense grace, leaving him, however, grace enough for eternal salvation.

8. Let him who is in desolation labor to be in patience, which is contrary to the vexations which come to him: and let him think that he will soon be consoled, employing against the desolation the devices, as is said in the sixth Rule

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola translated by Elder Mullan
[1914]

In the context of this post and the current turmoils in my life, I have been thinking about the fourth of the twelve steps:

Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

Alcoholics Anonymous: The Twelve Steps

When I did the work on this step as a young woman I used the workbook “Blueprint for Progress” that was suggested and designed for this purpose. One of the aspects in the presentation was different characteristics and their opposites, and we are invited to propose where we sit in the scale in between them. We are asked to describe examples that support our self assessment. It is not so easy as it sounds.

I know that I brought a wealth of judgement to each pair of characteristics. Take for example, selfish and unselfish. Straight away, there is the judgement that unselfish is good, selfish is bad, and I want to be unselfish. And actually I did and still do think that I am closer to unselfish than selfish on such a linear scale. But, and here is the kicker, what if being too unselfish is not a “good” thing, what if it is something that actually leads to spiritual desolation? It is a common misconception that spiritual consolation is what feels good and that spiritual desolation feels bad. Ignatius says:

We must carefully observe the whole course of our thoughts…But the course of thought suggested to us may terminate in something evil, or distracting, or less good than the soul had formerly proposed to do. Again it may end in what weakens the soul, or disquiets it; or by destroying the peace, tranquility, and quiet which it had before, it may cause disturbance to the soul. These things are a clear sign that the thoughts are proceeding from the evil spirit, the enemy of our progress an eternal salvation.

Notice, that Ignatius is talking about our thoughts and not necessarily our actions, even though these thoughts may lead to a particular course of action. How does it relate to the duality I was describing above? It comes down to those two very useful discernment questions:

Where does my impulse to be unselfish come from?

Where does it lead?

For me, sometimes, it is a critical voice in my head telling me not to be so selfish, and it is sometimes loud and sometimes quiet. It brings with it a feeling of shame, of not being good enough, and it emotionally blackmails me to over generosity, which ultimately leads to resentment and enslavement to fear. Being unselfish may be good, but if the reality of it is as I just described, I am describing spiritual desolation, not spiritual consolation. John Ortberg offers a similar dualism in “The Me I Want to Be” when he talks about signature sin in relation to our strengths and weaknesses. He describes our signature sin as being our greatest strength overreaching.

We come to know ourselves as loved sinners in the Principle and Foundation of the Spiritual Exercises and my own inner journey and listening to others has shown me that we are creatures of mixed motives: our pure motives to do the good and right thing which is more for the glory of God gets hijacked by other movements which can pull us off course from the greater good and we find ourselves in spiritual desolation as Ignatius describes it. In effect what I am suggesting is that the duality of spiritual consolation and desolation may be happening simultaneously, and may be the experience of turmoil of spirits.

I read an article on Linked In this week on The Art of Enough. (The Art of Enough; 7 ways to build a balanced life and a flourishing world). I was drawn by the diagram to begin with because it resonated with what I have been pondering and writing about.

On the one hand, there is the duality of the two extremes and on the other there is the position of balance in between the two extremes. Ignatius talks about equilibrium in the annotations:

Therefore, the directors of the Exercises, as a balance at equilibrium, without leaning to one side or the other, should permit the Creator to deal directly with the creature and the creature to deal with his Creator and Lord.

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, trans. Louis J. Puhl SJ.

The things is, my subject is chemistry, and in chemistry “equilibrium” means something subtly different. It is firstly dynamic: the forward and backward reactions are ongoing, reactants turning into products and products turning into reactants at the same rate. Secondly, the equilibrium position is not necessarily in the middle of the two extremes as represented in the diagram or in popular understanding, but can be anywhere between the dualities. In terms of Ignatius’s instructions to the spiritual director, they should position themselves in the centre so as not to influence the directee to make a particular discernment, but the position of equilibrium the directee reaches may not be in the centre. In chemistry, when a reversible reaction is set up, it takes some time to reach equilibrium and if it is disturbed in some way by changing conditions, it settles back into its equilibrium position, wherever that was. What if turmoil of spirits is a bit like this? What if turmoil of spirits is a multi faceted process where we oscillate between spiritual consolation and desolation in our discernment process until we finally come to our equilibrium point which may be indifference in the centre, but closer to one duality than the other in terms of the decision or action we take? To be selfish rather than unselfish, angry rather than meek, soft rather than hard? My work on Positive Penance has deeply impacted my thinking here.

I used to do a review of my year at the end of the year by picking a mood or process word to summarise each month and I would make some sort of summary picture from it. One year, the word I chose was oscillation and when I googled it for an image it gave me a paisley pattern.

Blue paisley background, traditional Indian pattern illustration vector

I imagine discernment of spirits as being like this pattern, with the oscillation beginning in the wide section and moving gradually ever closer to the the point where a decision is made and there is peace. It is the final point of consolation where we are indifferent and have decided, with God, on our course. It may not be in the centre of our duality, but we are at our equilibrium position.

We are not two dimensional creatures however and the Al Anon book I referred to earlier set up many such dualities covering a lot of different personality traits and leading to many different equilibrium positions. Moreover, like a chemical equilibrium, our position may change depending on our circumstances at any given time so we are always in movement. Discernment ultimately is about being sensitive to those movements, to connect with God to notice whether the movement is leading us closer or further away from Him: spiritual consolation or spiritual desolation. It’s not that we can control those movements per say, it may be more like when we shine and x-ray on electrons: they absorb the energy and move away. We know where they were, but not where they are. Being aware of how we moved into spiritual desolation, with the grace of God, can be enough to turn us around and to guard against something similar in the future.

Barbie Makes an Election

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Like half the rest of the population, I went to see the Barbie film. Twice, actually. Once to see it and as I pondered it this post began to formulate in my mind, I realised that I needed to see it again for clarity on what I was thinking. Suffice to say I enjoyed it in the fluffiest and most feminist of ways and I found it provoking deeper thoughts around the role of women in society, as it was intended to do. That very naturally led to election in The Spiritual Exercises, and my own election that I made just before I did the Exercises and which was confirmed for me during them.

What about men? They make elections too. Let’s get that one out of the way before getting into it. There has been much commentary on social media about Ken and the place of the Ken’s in the movie. I’ve been exploring the spirituality of the Beguines recently and a man reassured me that there were male Beguines too. It’s the same point. In the patriarchal world in which we live, male is norm. Ken realised that patriarchy worked better for him and he wanted it and then actively sought to take over Barbieland. So in the spirit of The Spiritual Exercises Reclaimed, I am putting the male norm on the shelf and focusing on how and where it might be different from the female perspective. Sure, you may be a male reading this post and finding similarities and common interests. I celebrate the Alan in you, and invite you to step into our frame of reference where female is norm. I’m not going to argue against the patriarchy, I’m simply taking the point of view that female is norm.

I’m not going to try to avoid spoilers here, so if you haven’t seen the film yet and you want to, you might want to stop reading at this point and come back later. I’ll leave that up to you.

In the film, Barbie experiences an existential crisis and her belief system crashes. She meets her creator twice and has what can be described as a colloquy about her choice for a way of life. She can no longer live as she did before and she makes her election. We see her begin to live it in the last scene.

I have to confess that I found the last scene disappointing and unsatisfying on my first viewing. I thought:

What exactly does that mean?

Greta Gerwig addresses ‘mic-drop’ ending in Barbie movie

My eldest also didn’t appreciate the ending that much either. For me though, it was exactly the point because I was left questioning. I now think it is a very clever ending.

The journey towards the election, and it is represented as a journey, begins with unease, sadness and confusion. It’s a movement from a superficial eternity of perfection (a loaded word) and peace for Barbie to disturbance, conflict and the sense of not being good enough; a movement from a place where she is affirmed and loved to where she is surrounded by critical voices and people of dubious motive presenting themselves as having her best interests at heart. I’m thinking about Mattel as I say this. I didn’t like Mattel from the off and I found Barbie’s implicit trust of them a little disconcerting. It has taken me a while to unpack it. In spite of the pink shirt and tie on the CEO and the heart shaped conference table, the board were all men. Empowerment of girls was given lip service as it was stated explicitly:

What we are really about is sparkle.

They exemplified the conversation Ken had with one man in the real world:

You guys are not doing patriarchy very well.

To which the man replied:

We are. We are just hiding it better.

Barbie moves from trust in Mattel to mistrust as the men of the board try to persuade her to “get back in her box”, to be as they prescribe she should be. I was so pleased when she ran away from them. Here she was trusting the voice inside and recognising that there was something not quite right in the coercive behaviour of those who were supposedly looking out for her. As we grow more deeply in our own faith journey, whether we are at the beginning of a conversion experience or living with the consequences of our conversion, when the dust has begun to settle, we may find ourselves experiencing pressure from our loved ones to have things go back to the way they were before, for us to “get back in our box”. In the scene I have just described, Barbie is fairly near the beginning of her conversion process, but there is another scene towards the end of the movie, just before she definitively makes her election where Mattel, again, seek to define her by telling her that she is in love with Ken. Barbie denies it outright and looks to her Creator.

She first meets her creator when she runs away from Mattel and although she doesn’t recognise Her explicitly, she finds an oasis of peace in Her presence, and she trusts Her implicitly. Barbie is able to be her now imperfect self and her Creator helps her to escape from Mattel. It is in her next meeting with the Creator that Barbie makes her election. As I said earlier, she is unable to live as she did before: she cannot simply get back in her box. As a result of the journey she has made and the turmoil of spirits she has experienced, she is different, no longer stereotypical Barbie. So what does she do now? -my favourite bit – she takes a walk with her Creator and has a conversation. To me, she expresses the nature of The Election in the second week of the Spiritual Exercises beautifully. She says to her Creator:

Not someone I become, but who I discover I am.

In the introduction to the consideration of different states of life, St Ignatius closes with this paragraph:

Therefore, as some introduction to this, in the next exercise, let us consider the intention of Christ our Lord, and on the other hand, that of the enemy of our human nature. Let us also see how we ought to prepare ourselves to arrive at perfection in whatever state or way of life God our Lord may grant us to choose.

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, trans. Louis J .Puhl S.J.

In talking about being real meaning she will no longer be perfect and that mortality leads to death, the Creator tells Barbie that she could not let her make the choice without being fully aware of what it meant. Making an election in the second week of The Exercises immediately precedes the third week , where we walk with Jesus to His passion and death, contemplating the price of discipleship in the process. The result of the conversation with her Creator is that Barbie makes the election to become a real woman and the film ends with her making a visit to her gynaecologist, the implication being that she now has a full reproductive system. The symbolism in this final realisation is multi layered and coming at it from a culture war, gender politics perspective is not in my remit or area of expertise and it is a bitter battleground as far as I can tell from what I read or see on social media. Here I choose to remain consistent in my theme of my analysis of the Barbie movie in the context of the Spiritual Exercises and of the Election process within that context. Quite simply it represents to me that Barbie, after her journey and a deep conversation with her Creator, has made the life giving choice: she has stepped away from the misguided direction of those who would keep her as she always was; she has drawn inspiration from her friends who have supported and encouraged her in her journey and has committed to a new way of life, fully aware of the price of it.

I enjoyed this film because it is so much more than superficial pink and sparkle. It is a clever film that is multi faceted and multi levelled, and has something important to say whatever your perspective. In the true Ignatian tradition of God in all things, God is there too in that life changing colloquy as one friend speaks to another.

Are you impressed?

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ornamental dome of grand catholic cathedral

I’ve received a text message this week from an organisation that I do some work for. Here is what it said:  

We are really impressed by your past experience and your background. We firmly believe that you are a valuable asset to our college. 

It reminded me of another email I received a few months ago from another organisation I was doing some work for. The email began 

Thanks again for your excellent sample chapter- we were really impressed with how well you understood the brief and the quality of your content. 

I started to think about my previous job, and I tried to remember the last time someone in my previous job told me they were impressed with my work. I’m sorry to say I can’t remember when that happened. Here in my new job, I’ve heard it twice in the last three months. It made me feel quite sad. I’m thinking about the teachers who have just voted to strike in the UK and how undervalued they are. I was part of the union that has voted to strike and would have voted with the 90%. 

I am also currently involved in “The 40-day Journey with Julian of Norwich” with the Friends of Julian of Norwich. In this last month we have been praying with Day 13 to Day 16 of the journey and on Day 15 the reading from Julian says: 

God also showed me that sin is no shame but honour to us… shame is no more in the bliss of heaven – for there the tokens of sin are turned into owners. 

40 day Journey with Julian of Norwich, edited Lisa E. Dahill
close up photo of splashed water
Photo by Ave Calvar Martinez on Pexels.com

As all these thoughts swirled around my brain I found myself thinking of the feeling of not being good enough and of spiritual desolation. I found myself thinking of the critical voices, those voices that tell us that we are worthless, unworthy, it’s all our fault: the “mea culpa” that has us feeling guilty and ashamed. 

What does it feel like when someone tells us that they are impressed by something we have done? Is the temptation to dismiss what has been said? After all, no one likes a show off. It may be false humility. 

In the first week of the Spiritual Exercises by St Ignatius of Loyola the focus of the prayer is sin: our own personal sin, original sin, the sin of the world: and the grace of the first week that we asked for at the beginning of prayer is for sorrow for our sins. Importantly, the First Week of the Exercises comes after the Principle and Foundation, and it is important to enter the first week knowing that we are loved by God. How else could we bear shame of our sinfulness? 

How does it feel in the Principal and Foundation when we experience ourselves to be loved by God? Julian very famously talks about the hazelnut and how in her visions or showings she saw three properties in the hazelnut: 

The first is that God made it, the second is that He loves it, and the third is that God preserves it. 

Revelations of Divine Love: Julian of Norwich

I remember one day in school, in one of the after-school training sessions, there was a statement on a piece of paper which linked negative judgments by Ofsted with a teacher feeling personal shame. It made me feel very angry. I know for me personally being a perfectionist, it is uncomfortable to get things wrong, but I would stop short of declaring that a reason to feel ashamed. I might also argue that the person or organisation making the judgement may not necessarily be accurate or may have their own agenda or priorities that the teacher may not agree with. 

Of course, feeling proud when someone tells you they are impressed may simply be the opposite side of the same coin: a point to be cautious of. Pride itself, for its own sake, can also get in the way. 

So, what is the balance? Because self-denigration, feeling ashamed in response to unjustified criticism, or maybe even justified criticism from self-appointed judges, may be inverted pride. 

The grace of the first week of The Exercises is key: it is to know ourselves as loved sinners, to hold the tension between imperfections and the harm that we may do, the lack of love in our hearts, the lack of virtue, generosity, magnanimity: to hold it in one hand and God’s love of us in the other. 

Is it good to accept compliments? To feel good when people tell us they are impressed? I would say of course: when someone recognises and appreciates our gifts it allows us to recognise and appreciates the gifts that we have been given. We may have done our best job with the work we were doing, and we know our work is appreciated. That is a satisfaction in doing the work regardless of any external reward. It’s like walking outside into the mountains and exclaiming how beautiful it is to God; an appreciation of the work, an expression of the appreciation, it is to praise God. It is to give glory to God when we are exclaiming how impressed we are with God’s work. When we allow someone else to express their appreciation of our work, it connects us to our giftedness, the abilities and talents we have received from God and that we have put them to use in the service of others. 

achievement confident free freedom
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In The Spiritual Exercises in the fourth point of the Contemplation to Attain Love, Saint Ignatius says: 

This is to consider all blessings and gifts as descending from above. 

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, trans Louis J. Puhl S.J.

The danger of modesty or false humility is that it denies those gifts, diminishes them, makes them as nothing: unimportant. Sure, there is a danger in arrogance and pride when we can think of ourselves as the big, “I am” because people are impressed with us, but, as one of the tutors on my spirituality course said several times: 

We can become attached to our smallness.

There are many “haters” out there in the world, on social media, on television, in the newspapers.  There is criticism to be found everywhere, of anyone and everyone; a lynch mob mentality. It’s all around. It is very easy to become bogged down in fear anger, negativity: to feel a lack of faith, hope and love. Such hopelessness and fear are spiritual desolation. Perhaps we need to complement each other more, not falsely, but genuine heartfelt compliments. If we’re impressed say we’re impressed. If someone tells us that they are impressed to accept that acknowledgement of our gifts and for ourselves to also acknowledge those gifts and expressed gratitude for them. 

photo of women hugging each other
Photo by Anna Shvets on Pexels.com

So, the next time you are impressed with someone, tell them. Acknowledge their giftedness out loud so they can hear it and own it too. And when someone complements you on your gifts, accept it, don’t dismiss it: accept it and than God for the gifts He so generously bestows.

Looking the Gift Horse in the Mouth

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I’ve been thinking a lot about my mum recently. Probably because the family have now got the house cleared, cleaned and ready to sell. My eldest came back from Scotland last weekend with some things for us from my mum’s house, including the piano, which has gone to my youngest. My mum will well pleased with that arrangement I imagine. My mind wanders to a story that she repeated many times to me in the last few years of her life. She struggled a lot with restless legs and it meant she often had poor sleep and spent the small hours “walking the floors” as she described it. She had a great devotion to the Sacred Heart – her name was Margaret Mary, like mine, so no surprises there I guess. She was constantly speaking to Him through the many pictures around the house, and one of her favourite prayers was, when driving into a car park:

Please Sacred Heart, find me a parking space.

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One always opened up immediately no matter how busy the car park was, I kid you not. It happened so consistently that other members of my family, who do not necessarily believe, use it when they cannot find a parking space! Sure, we can argue about coincidence and patience and whatever rational explanation you like, I’m just telling you what I’ve witnessed. Anyway, I digress – back to walking the floors. One night, after about a week of broken sleep, when she couldn’t stand it anymore, she turned to her picture of the Sacred Heart and challenged Him with words to the effect of:

Don’t tell me to offer it up and to think about everything you went through! You only suffered for a day, I’ve been going on like this for a week and I can’t stand it any more!

An honest prayer, even though I think she believed herself to be disrespectful. She had the sense of God laughing in response and the restlessness disappeared, allowing her to get a good night of sleep.

Within this context, I also found myself reaching this point of:

Enough already!

regarding my own health condition – myalgic encephalomyelitus (ME/CFS). I described before how I had accepted it as a gift, and an answer to my prayers arising from the desire to live more slowly: to realise that it is the cure for my workaholism, because I was not going to let that go on my own. It’s been nearly eighteen months since I got sick, and then failed to completely recover from it. My first experience of chronic fatigue lasted thirteen months and then I got well. Maybe subconsciously I was holding onto the belief that that would happen again, especially with all the ways I am being proactive and that my energy does improve when I look after myself. But that is unlikely to happen this time…it is for life, not just for Christmas, as they say. In football, it is the last ten minutes of the game, when you are so very tired because you have given it all you have, but you have to dig even deeper to keep it going to that final whistle…you don’t want to lose the match at this point! It is where I am on my journey with ME/CFS and with God. I’ve accepted this gift horse and I’m looking in its mouth and not liking what I see, maybe even struggling with it sometimes, and I know that those dark clouds of despairing or anxious fear are swirling around in the distance. It’s like the Battle of Hogwarts in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows where they createe a defence bubble around the school that keeps Voldermort’s army at bay, but it starts to dismantle as the dark forces continue to attack it. I’m in Hogwarts, protected, but watching that protection begin to disintegrate.

There is another image from my prayer that plays alongside this one though: I’m sitting in the deep calm of the storm, leaning against Jesus, as it all swirls around above us. Both of these images for me are spiritual consolation. It might seem strange to say that about the first image because I mentioned fear, but when we apply some useful discernment questions here it will show what I mean.

Where is it coming from?

Where is it leading to?

In the Hogwart’s image, even in the midst of a community taking a stand against evil and working together for the common good, I am relying on my own magic power to protect me from the forces of darkness which are driving me into spiritual desolation:

I call desolation…as darkness of soul, turmoil of spirit, inclination towards what is low and earthly, restlessness rising from many disturbances and temptations which lead to want of faith, want of hope, want of love. The soul is wholly slothful, tepid, sad and separated, as it were, from its Creator and Lord.

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius trans. Louis J Puhl S.J.

I may be in the quiet centre of the dome, but without God, with only our own power, the safety shield crumbles and the darkness comes flooding in and I am afraid and overwhelmed. In my imagination I oscillate between both images. In the storm image, I am leaning on Jesus and the quiet centre is more than quiet, it is serene and safe. It is spiritual consolation:

Winter storm over the Northeast (night time thermal image)
Winter storm over the Northeast (night time thermal image) by NASA Goddard Photo and Video is licensed under CC-BY 2.0

I call consolation every increase of faith, hope and love, and all interior joy that invites and attracts to what is heavenly and to the salvation of ones soul by filling it with peace and quiet in it creator and Lord.

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius trans. Louis J Puhl S.J.

For me, to flip between these two images is no accident. It is like being shown desolation and consolation side by side in similar, but different images. Ignatius says of being in desolation:

When one is in desolation, he should be mindful that God has left him to his natural powers to to resist the different agitations and temptations of the enemy in order to try him. He can resist with the help of God, which always remains, though he may not clearly perceive it.

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius trans. Louis J Puhl S.J.

I do not believe that this desolation is where I am, although I can definitely feel the pull of it at times and I am guarding against it. The second image of the storm is explicitly inviting me to lean on Him, to discern the movements of spirits within me, to not try to rely all on my own strength or determination. And so I come back to the Principle and Foundation of the Exercises and the room of indifference:

Consequently, as far as we are concerned, we should not prefer health to sickness, riches to poverty, honour to dishonour, a long life to a short life. The same holds for all other things.

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius trans. Louis J Puhl S.J.

The essence of looking a gift horse in the mouth is to see its age. I guess the discouragement in doing so is in finding out that we have been given an old nag – a negative judgement of the gift. Where does it lead? Ingratitude. What if we were to accept the gift horse as a gift, regardless of what is in its mouth? I learned from the Spiritual Exercises that sorrow is a grace: uncomfortable for sure, but grace nevertheless. So, I’m looking at what spiritual desolation and spiritual consolation look like in this space and as I acknowledge my swirling emotions, I imagine myself in the quiet of the storm leaning against Jesus. I am not praying for healing from ME/CFS because I recognise it as the gift of healing of workaholism that I asked for so fervently and for so long, and believe me, that has not gone. Instead, I am praying for indifference in those “enough already” moments and serenity when I see those swirling dark clouds, knowing that He is here with me and I am leaning on Him.