Tag: spirituality

Light in the Darkness

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Light in the darkness
Light in the Darkness 1: Reading of this post.

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined.

Isaiah 9:2

There has been a convergence in my thoughts recently in the contrast between light and darkness as metaphors for spiritual life. I posted a guided prayer with the image above, inspired from Isaiah, and Matthew’s gospel, which we are studying in our bible study group at church, which made reference to it. Also, in writing about my mandalas, I mentioned that they were in response to one particular imaginative contemplation that I had had on a retreat and that I was still trying to process that one prayer experience. Carl Jung says of mandalas:

In such cases it is easy to see how the severe pattern imposed by a circular image of this kind compensates the disorder of the psychic state– namely through the construction of a central point to which everything is related, or by a concentric arrangement of the disordered multiplicity and of contradictory and irreconcilable elements. This is evidently an attempt at self-healing on the part of Nature, which does not spring from conscious reflection but from an instinctive impulse.

Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious

In other words, according to The Mandala Book, Jung felt that mandalas represented an unconscious attempt to heal psychic disturbances. In the contemplation to which I am referring, I spent some time simply touching Jesus’ face, as if I were a blind person, and what I could see was only light: more and less light, luminosity of differing intensity, rather than a skin and bones face. I do not have the words or images to describe completely the effect it has had on me, only that I have never been the same since then and that creating mandalas is a compulsion in response to it, which surfaces regularly, even ten years on from the prayer experience itself. I would describe it as a profound disturbance that is deeper than anything I am conscious of, still.

In the Spiritual Exercises, on the way the evil one acts, when using the analogy of the false lover who whispers and urges us to secrecy, Ignatius says:

But if one manifests them to a confessor, or to some other spiritual person who understands his deceits and malicious designs, the evil one is very much vexed. For he knows that he cannot succeed in his evil undertaking, once his evident deceits have been revealed.

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

My own spiritual director uses the image of shining God’s light on things that might want to remain in the dark when helping me to discern consolation from desolation, and the direction of my path. I have found it to be very helpful and it is an image I use myself. It is as if, with God’s help and guidance, you could pick up the lantern in the featured image, and move it around the dark areas in your soul, one by one, so that with Him, you could face all of your deepest fears and shame, and He would heal you.

However, it does not feel as simple and lovely as all that. I am reminded of my prayer that no-one can see the face of God and live.

We shall surely die, for we have seen God.

Judges 13:22

And that St. Paul says:

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face.

1 Corinthians 13:12

I am also moved by “The Light” from The Proclaimers:

Light in the Darkness 2: Reading of this post.

I’ve been stumbling in the dark for years, and the light just made me blind.

The Proclaimers; The Light

I am only left to concede that there is trauma associated with stepping into God’s light, to look at Him face to face is blinding and causes a death within us. We can no longer see anything good in our inordinate desires and the way we lived before is no longer possible. It can be easier, and more comfortable to cling to the darkness of our shame than to look at it in the full glare of God’s light. We are unable to bear the pain of it alone. I would put my experience of touching His face in this category. It is as if there are moments when He does not hold back so much as previously in His desire to show us Himself. In my prayer on my journey with Julian of Norwich this week, one of the phrases that stood out for me is:

God wishes to be seen, He wishes to be sought…

40 Day Journey with Julian of Norwich, Day 1

It is almost as if His enthusiasm gets the better of Him, and the usual tender and gentle respect with which He regards our protective boundaries dissipates as He gathers us up and brings us into His heart, simply because He cannot resist us. It is God who takes the initiative. And it splits us wide open. Perhaps it is what the mystics mean when they describe union with God, and it is as searingly painful, as it is blissful and transformational.

Rather than make this happen, we should simply let it happen.

The Way of Paradox, Cyprian Smith

and in a way, is it not what we desire?

…we can pine for God, reach out to Him, yearn for Him who lies hidden in an impenetrable cloud of mystery.

The Way of Paradox, Cyprian Smith

When I look at the image featured in this post, and from my prayer with it, I notice that the light is neither glaring nor harsh. The image is mostly darkness, but the warmth of the light draws us gently out of the darkness, it invites us not to remain there. There are many places in that image where we may dwell: I least wanted to be in the bottom left hand corner, furthest away from the light: I most wanted to be protected, inside the shade, but not in the full glare of the light source. I was invited to dwell outside of the shade, in the bright spot to the bottom left of the image of the cross that is projected onto the wall. There is both pain and death in standing in this place.

The third week of The Spiritual Exercises invites us to enter into the Passion and death of Jesus: the desire we ask for is:

…sorrow, compassion and shame because the Lord is going to His suffering for my sins.

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

In my own personal experience of The Exercises, I knew that I wanted to stay, to remain with Him through it all: I could not bear to be one of those who ran away, no matter how painful it was to stay and to watch Him suffer, and to be powerless in the face of His suffering. To experience this sorrow is spiritual consolation, and is to receive the grace asked for at this point in The Exercises.

Light in the Darkness 3: Reading of this post.

So it seems to me that in terms of our spiritual journey, we exist in a darkness that is both comfortable and uncomfortable. The darkness itself is not infinite, and does not have power over the light. It is diminished by the smallest presence of light. Even as we are attracted to it, we can choose to turn our back on the light and face into the darkness, and there are times of spiritual desolation when we do. We can also face the light and choose to be drawn by its warmth and move closer to it. Such invitation and movement is spiritual consolation. Just as the light is comforting, it is also painful when we are unused to its intensity, and may even blind us. In time, our eyes adjust to our new reality.

The Perfect Imperfect

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Sunflower mandala.
The Perfect Imperfect 1: Reading of this post.

Perfectionism is an issue. From my training as a scientist I know that accuracy and detail is important: it makes the scientific conclusions drawn from valid data as rigorous as possible, without overstating explanations as fact. Science is careful when it is done formally. Public perception and popular science expressing opinion are not necessarily so rigorous, and there are counter arguments presented to those opinions parading as science because the author also happens to be a scientist. My concern here is not with science, because I see no contradiction between science and religious faith. In my opinion, that argument is contrived.

I remember a distant conversation with a man, but I do not remember the occasion or circumstances, nor the man. He may have been a Muslim man, and I think that he was, and he was talking about the weavers of Persian rugs. He told me that although the patterns in the rugs are clear and logical, the weavers always weave into the rug a mistake: imperceptible, but they never make them perfect:

…because only God is perfect.

And while I do not remember the occasion or who this man was, I do remember the warmth in his voice, and the light in his eyes, when he said this. It is why the truth of it has remained with me, even when everything else around it has faded in my memory.

If you have looked at my Mandala page, and other posts where I have included a mandala image, you will know that I create these pieces of art out of prayer, and that it is a compulsion that began from an imaginative contemplation I had once on a retreat, where I was trying to express, albeit inadequately, my prayer experience: words were not enough, and neither is the art. I am still trying to express this one prayer, and it draws me deeper each time and sustains me. In the course of my journey with the mandalas, I discovered the book “How the World is Made, The Story of Creation According to Sacred Geometry“ and was struck by the contrast in the images of the Heavenly City mandala when drawn by hand and generated by computer:

The Hand and The Computer, A Note on the Illustrations: How the World is Made, The Story of Creation According to Sacred Geometry, John Michell
The Perfect Imperfect 2: Reading of this post.

The architect and geometer Jon Allen is quoted as saying:

We lose something when we use computers to draw geometry. However beguiling their mechanical precision, they lack “heart”: in some subtle way we become observers, rather than participants.

Jon Allen, Drawing Geometry, as quoted by John Mitchell, Sacred Geometry.

The second mandala in the above image, I have to acknowledge, leaves me feeling a bit cold: not because it is in black and white, but because it is too clinical. It does not move me, whereas the hand drawn one above it captures my interest much more. I know it is not an issue of colour, because I am a member of a mandala group on another social media site and I scroll past the computer generated ones, no matter how colourful they are. I am always more likely to pause to ponder those that have been hand drawn.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says:

Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Matt 5: 48

So what it is that draws me to those mandalas that are imperfect, and repels me about the ones that are perfect? For me, the essential element is process, or movement. In the retreat when I first created my mandala and I spent another day, as suggested by my director, writing down my journey to the final drawing, I finished with the realisation:

…it is the process itself that is important, because it is the process we engage in that skews us towards God, that draws us closer to Him, that transforms us so that we become more like Him.

God in all Things mandala, drawn at Loyola IGR, 2009.
The Perfect Imperfect 3: Reading of this post.

One of the meditations during the first week of the Spiritual Exercises is on hell. Ignatius encourages us to imagine the place of fire and brimstone, as tradition describes. I imagined however, a place where nothing every changed, where there was no stimulation to the senses at all: no sound, smell, taste, no texture to feel, neither hot nor cold, and everything was white, no shadows, colour, nothing; for all eternity, nothing. And being fully conscious of that. I screamed, there was no sound, I cried, there were no tears. I could not hear my own heartbeat nor my own breathing. To feel, even for a moment, that there was no escape from such a place was indeed hellish.

  • Triquetra
  • Rublev, Hospitality of Abraham
The Perfect Imperfect 4: Reading of this post.

When I see the triquetra, I do not see a static shape, I see a constant flow. It is also what I see when I look at Rublev’s icon of the Hospitality of Abraham, a constant flowing love between the three persons of the Holy Trinity, and with a gap, where I am invited to join the flow. It is as described by Richard Rohr in “The Divine Dance”. God is constant movement. In the Contemplation to Attain Love in the Exercises Ignatius asks us to consider:

…how God works and labors for me in all creatures upon the face of the earth, that is, He conducts Himself as one who labors.

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

As I understand it, the perfection of God is in the eternal movement of God.

St Beunos. Mandala on wood.
The Perfect Imperfect 5: Reading of this post.

The above mandala is of the labyrinth at St. Beunos, painted on wood. Normally, I would have tidied up where the colour has spilled over onto the gold by way of finishing off the mandala, and here, even though it seems sloppy and a bit embarrassing, it was clear in my prayer, that it had to be left this way. The colour spectrum represents the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit:

…does not stay between the lines.

It represents the wildness of God, that He will not confine Himself to our expectations of Him. And this is my point. When we see a pattern, our brain knows what that pattern is supposed to do. When something is off about it, we are drawn to that imperfection, it bugs us and leads us into contemplation, from the imperfect as we see it, to the perfect, as we would like it to be: it is the process, the journey, the desire for improvement.

A computer drawn mandala has no room for improvement. Any change to it leads away from perfection. If God is perfect, moving away from perfection is a movement away from God, into spiritual desolation.

However an overdrive for perfection, into the area of the law of diminishing returns, can also be spiritual desolation. I recognise it within myself, the tendency towards pride, and it leads to obsession with work and neglect of other aspects of life, such as relationships and prayer. In his book “The Me I Want to Be”, Jon Ortberg talks about “Signature Sins” . He says:

The pattern of your sin is related to the pattern of your gifts…

…it starts close to home with the passions and desires that God wired into us and tries to pull them a few degrees off course. That subtle deviation is enough to disrupt the flow of the Spirit in our life, so coming to recognise the pattern of sins most tempting to us is one of the most important steps in our spiritual lives.

The Me I Want to Be, Jon Ortberg

Recognising our own pattern of sin is an important movement that occurs during the first week of the Spiritual Exercises.

At the other end of the scale, the push for perfection can cause paralysis, rather that obsession. For example, I was helping a child with ionic bonding recently. She was refusing to draw dot/cross diagrams into her beautifully and perfectly presented exercise book because she deemed them to be messy. The unattainabilty of perfection was getting in the way of the learning process. And so the feeling of it never being good enough can get in the way of doing anything at all. It is the process that draws us to God, not the final result.

The final result, because of its imperfection, will, if we allow it, continue to draw us into this process with God.

The Perfect Imperfect 6: Reading of this post.

The mandala above was the third one I coloured on the Loyola retreat after creating this design. It was a prayer for my younger child who had been bullied at school that year by a group of three boys. The purple represents suffering, the yellow, hope; the red, faith; and the blue, love. In following the pattern, one of the shapes which should have been yellow, is in fact blue. When I realised my “mistake”, I heard Him say within me, that for a child to recover from such a thing as bullying, it takes a little more love. I knew how I needed to respond to my child when I got home from my retreat.

In our imperfection, there is God’s perfection. We live in His freedom and are open to His grace when we live in our imperfection and allow it to be the case.

Sanctuary in a Carmelite Hermitage

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Sanctuary in a Carmelite hermitage 1: Reading of this post.

While I have been making annual individually guided retreats for nineteen years now, since I returned from the thirty day spiritual exercises three years ago, it has no longer been enough: a year between one and the next is too long to wait. My answer to this longing to be alone and silent with God is to spend a weekend, every three months, in a hermitage. At first I went to All Hallows Convent in Ditchingham, which was only a fifteen minute drive from where I live, but since the community was disbanded there, I started going a little further away to the Carmelite Monastery at Quidenham. I was there last weekend.

I said previously that we had studied a little bit about different spiritualities on the first year of my course when I was training to be a spiritual director, and Carmelite spirituality was one that we had a look at. I was amazed to learn about “Nocturnal” mysticism and “Solar” mysticism, and that these were different in their perception of how we know God. Nocturnal mysticism comes from the direction that God is unknowable, that we cannot know God, and the more we think we know, the less we actually know. Solar mysticism comes at it from the other angle, that we can know God, and we can come to know Him more intimately in our journey of faith: at least, this is what I understood of the distinction. St. Teresa of Avila, the founder of the Carmelite order, along with St. John of the Cross and the author of “The Cloud of Unknowing” fit into the former category, while Origen and Gregory the Great fit into the latter. I would suggest that Julian of Norwich also fits into the latter, but I am not an expert. I read The Life of St Teresa of Avila by Herself some years ago, and I have to be honest, I do not think that I really understood much of what she was saying. I felt much the same about “The Cloud of Unknowing“, and I have not felt particularly drawn by St. John of the Cross. I used to keep a notebook of all the things that had struck me when I was reading, but these days my “to read” pile is so high I highlight and write annotations in my own books. It is easy to tell how deeply the book spoke to me by the quotations in my notebook, or by how much colour I have added to it. One point I did write down from “The Cloud of Unknowing” is:

For were the soul not strengthened by its own endeavours it would be unable to withstand the pain the awareness of its own existence brings.

The Cloud of Unknowing

I remember reading this on retreat at Loyola Hall and being struck by it: it puzzled me, I did not completely understand it. The first part made some sense, I recognised that making the time to pray and go on retreat strengthened me and my relationship with God but the second part was outwith my experience. A couple of years later though, again on retreat, there was an imaginative contemplation I made with the Garden of Gethsemane, and the words I heard Jesus say in His prayer were:

May my will be in accordance with your will.

and I had the image of a mirrored box, both on its inside and outside, so that you were looking in a mirror through a mirror: infinity. And I heard Him say:

You can’t put my love in a box.

Then nothing: no images, sounds, movements, no sensations. I have no idea how long it lasted and I was overwhelmed by it. And I realised that this “nothing” that completely overwhelmed me barely scratched the surface of God. It was a drop in an ocean that was a drop in another ocean that was a drop in another ocean and so on. I was a barnacle on a ship becoming aware that the surface I was clinging to went on in all directions around me, and had no ending. Emily Dickinson’s poem reminds me of how it felt:

He fumbles at your spirit
As players at the keys
Before they drop full music on;
He stuns you by degrees,

Prepares your brittle substance
For the ethereal blow,
By fainter hammers, further heard,
Then nearer, then so slow

Your breath has time to straighten,
Your brain to bubble cool, —
Deals one imperial thunderbolt
That scalps your naked soul.

Emily Dickinson: He Fumbles at your Spirit

After that prayer, I was exhausted and I slept a lot in the next two to three days. I knew something had changed in me, I had felt some sort of searing pain within me, and it was like my soul had simply been slashed with an instrument as precise as a scalpel, leaving a single, fine cut that would never heal. I do not know if it is what the Nocturnal mystics speak of, I’m not sure that it is, but it resonates with the quote from “The Cloud of Unknowing” and stands out as being different from my other “up close and personal” experiences of God.

Sanctuary in a Carmelite hermitage 2: Reading of this post.

Nevertheless, there is something perfect for me as a visitor at Quidenham. I have described myself before as a spiritual solitary, and the Carmelites are a closed order, so I am not invited into the monastery itself: I stay in the hermitage outside of the enclosure. I am not a part of the community. I am invited to their prayers, and to be in their visitor’s chapel, which is across the altar from where the nuns are. It is separate from both the enclosed Carmelite community, and on Sunday mass, the Parish community that congregates there, so I am not part of that community either. I am both alone with God and part of the bigger community of my church at the same time. When I was making the exercises, during the second and through the third week, I often appeared in imaginative contemplation as one of the unknown women described in the gospels, who followed Him, and provided for them out of their own resources. In keeping with the sixth – ninth additions, where we seek to keep our environment conducive to what we are praying:

I should rather keep in mind that …

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

I started to cover my head with a pashmina during my prayer, and have continued with this practice since then, when I am alone with Him in my room. I laugh at the irony in covering my head because as a child, there was pressure to wear a mantilla at mass, and I resisted furiously, and well as railing against the use, or misuse, of Corinthians when Paul answers a question form that gentile community by saying:

For if a woman does not cover her head, she might as well have her hair cut off; but if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, then she should cover her head.

1 Corinthians 11:6

When I do this in the intimacy of my room and in my prayer I am promising Him:

I will serve you in obedience and humility.

I do not pray like this in public. It would feel ostentatious and a bit like those pharisees beating their breasts, showing off how devout they are. Ignatius says in the exercises, with reference to position in prayer, in the fourth addition:

The fourth Direction is never to be followed in the church before others, but only in private, for example, at home.

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

It is a personal thing, between me and God, and it continually confirms the choice I made and the path I walk when I made my election and it was confirmed in the Exercises. Somehow, in this space in the visitor’s chapel at Quidenham, I can be more as I am alone at home. I might feel a little shy about it, but it does not feel inappropriate when sitting across from those who have given their lives so generously to humility and prayer.

Sanctuary in a Carmelite hermitage 3: Reading of this post.

The first time I went to Quidenham I was moved by the simple beauty of the Church there, and by the Stations of the cross. My sense of God’s feelings about the community there was one of absolute joy and pleasure. Here is something that He treasures, something He takes pride in and holds close to His heart. It was like He was saying to me:

Here I want to show you something that is very special to me.

And I felt very privileged, like you do when someone has shared something intimate and important with you. The Carmelites at Quidenham, by offering hospitality in their hermitage, provide me with a sanctuary, a place where I can withdraw from the world for a short time and share quiet moments with God in a way that is different from day to day life: a weekend break, as opposed to a summer holiday. My question to you is where, how and with whom do you find sanctuary within your day to day life? How do you find and spend your quiet moments?Where might there be a desire in you for more? And how could you facilitate that desire?

Sanctuary in a Carmelite hermitage 4: Reading of this post.

As for me, I think I’m going to put some books about St Teresa of Avila on my reading pile, maybe even try reading her own story about her life again, this time with my highlighters and coloured pens, rather than my little notebook of quotations.

Entrance to the Church at Quidenham.

The Spiritual Exercises and The Twelve Steps

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Vanitas – Inhertiance
The Spiritual Exercises and The Twelve Steps, reading of this post.

I read in Fr. James Martin’s book “A Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything” that one of the founder members of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill W., had received spiritual direction from a Jesuit priest, and Andrew Garfield in his interview about the film “Silence” on the Late Show, mentioned that The Twelve Step program is based on Ignatian Spirituality. Andrew Garfield did the Spiritual Exercises by the nineteenth annotation with Fr. James Martin, so I expect it is where he learned this particular gem. I said in an earlier post that I had spent some time in a support group and I quoted the third of the twelve steps. The group to which I belonged was firstly Alateen, and then Al Anon, since my dad was an alcoholic. Alateen and Al Anon are twelve step fellowships for family members and friends of people whose lives have been affected by alcoholism. Knowing what I know about The Twelve Steps and The Spiritual Exercises, it would not surprise me in the least if the first is built on foundations of the latter. In the first year of my formation as a spiritual director, we were asked to write about other spiritualities that had influenced us in our lives: I wrote about the Twelve Steps as one of mine, because it is fundamentally a spiritual programme, without having any specific religious affiliations. It truly expresses and lives “God in All Things”. As it is Alcohol Awareness week in the United Kingdom this week, and the theme for the week is “Alcohol and Me”, it seems the most appropriate time, and the most appropriate post, for me to write, especially since I am now attending Al Anon meetings once more. The Twelve Steps and the Twelve Traditions are read at the beginning of each meeting.

The Twelve Steps

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics* and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

https://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org.uk/About-AA/The-12-Steps-of-AA

*In the twelve steps used by Al Anon and Alateen, step twelve is modified to read “others” rather than “alcoholics”.

St. Beunos: main garden steps
The Spiritual Exercises and The Twelve Steps 2, reading of this post.

The first point to stress is that this program does not belong to any particular religion, and the mention of God can be problematic for some people. However, the phrase “Power greater than Ourselves”, or “Higher Power” is both helpful and challenging. I knew an AA member once who told me that having no religious faith, he struggled with the concept: not with accepting that he was powerless, the first step made sense to him by the time he came to AA, because he knew that alcohol was more powerful than he was by the way that it had affected his life: it was the idea of God he struggled with. In the end, he accepted GOD as an acronym for “Group Of Drunks” because he accepted the Higher Power of his AA group and knew that it helped him to sobriety, to stay sober and was ultimately life giving, leading him to better health, self esteem and reconciliation with his family.

One of the slogans used in twelve step fellowships is:

Let go and Let God.

and Saint Ignatius calls consolation:

…every increase of faith, hope and love.

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

Regular use of the above slogan leads to a deeper trust in God. The enemy does not lead people into life, ultimately, and it was in Al Anon, through the Twelve Steps, when I first learned to recognise the action of God, as I understand Him, in the lives of these courageous and honest people, even if they did not call Him by the same name as me.

Where steps 1 – 3 might have echoes of the First Principle and Foundation of the Exercises, where the movement is towards indifference to created things and to seek only what God would have us do and be, steps 4-6 overlap with the First Week, where the grace to be asked for is sorrow and knowledge of myself as a sinner, and to come to know the nature and patterns of my own sinfulness, while still holding onto the knowledge that I am loved by God. Making a personal inventory, the fourth step, is no joke: it is a warts and all approach and is consistent with the movement in the first week of the Exercises. I allow light to shine on all my defects of character, to recognise the pattern of them, to feel the sorrow of them, and so come to the point of desire to be free from them.

Step 5 is important here, and probably worth repeating:

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

The Path
The Spiritual Exercises and The Twelve Steps 3, reading of this post.

It is very easy to delude ourselves into thinking that we do not really have to share our wrong doings with another person, that God forgives us anyway. Absolutely, He does, but one of the ways the enemy works, according to Saint Ignatius, is as a secret lover, whispering lies to draw us away. His answer is to tell: a spiritual director or some other person well versed in discernment. In Al Anon, or another twelve step program, the other person may be our sponsor, someone who understands where we are and sees the patterns by which we can be tied up in knots. Sharing the exact nature of our wrongs is not about self abasement or self loathing, and it is not necessarily a good friend who simply comforts and affirms us in the error of our ways because they want to cheer us up and reassure us that we are not all that bad. The challenging and loving director or sponsor encourages us in our spiritual growth, and yes, while that can be painful, it is life giving and worth it. In the Roman Catholic tradition, receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation at this point in the journey may be spiritually refreshing.

The Spiritual Exercises and The Twelve Steps 4, reading of this post.

Steps 7 – 11 echo the second week: they are about making a decision about how we live, and to trust it to God, being willing to be guided in our decision by His will. There is discernment involved here in all aspects of our lives and in the individual decisions we make in every day situations, and while some of our decisions can be big decisions, many of them are not. In the Al Anon book “One Day at a Time in Al Anon” the meditation for October 8 ends with a quote from Thomas A’ Kempis:

Whensoever a man desires anything inordinately, he is presently disquieted within himself.

Thomas A’ Kempis: The Imitation of Christ

Ignatius cites as the purpose for the spiritual exercises as:

…the conquest of self and the regulation of one’s life in such a way that no decision is made under the influence of any inordinate attachment.

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

It is an important business: it is about making the right decisions and for the right reasons, and enabling us to live peacefully with the consequences of our decisions. It brings serenity, that much used word and sought after grace of the program. Sometimes it may simply boil down to the decision to be kind and courteous in this particular conversation: to choose our attitude. Another tool the program has to help us to focus this principle in our little decisions in the course of a day is the Just for Today card, which is something I use regularly:

Just for today I will be agreeable. I will look as well as I can, dress becomingly, keep my voice low, be courteous, criticize not one bit. I won’t find fault with anything, nor try to improve or regulate anybody but myself.

Al Anon Just for Today card.

The one above is one of my favourites, and one I find quite challenging. It encourages me to find the right balance between superficial vanity and slothfulness: to love myself and to see myself as God sees me. And of course, it also encourages me to see others as God sees them, and to love them as God loves them, and to refuse to see it as my job to fix or convert them to my way of thinking.

The Twelve Step program diverges from the Exercises at the second week however. The second, third and fourth weeks of the exercises have their focus centred on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and therefore locates them very specifically within the Christian faith. The Twelve Steps is a non religious program for everyone. In the preamble to the steps it says:

The principles they embody are universal, applicable to everyone, whatever his personal creed.

The Twelve Steps, preamble.

Ignatius offers an eighteenth annotation of The Exercises where he says:

The spiritual exercises must be adapted to the condition of the one who is to engage in them…

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

and he goes on to describe different situations and ways that it might be done. He begins his conclusion with:

But let him go no further and take up the matter dealing with the Choice of a Way of Life, nor any other exercises that are outside of the First Week.

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

Ignatius is effectively saying, horses for courses: if beyond the first week is not appropriate, then there is no need to pursue it further. It might be considered that The Twelve Steps is in effect an Eighteenth Annotation of The Spiritual Exercises, where we:

…take what we like and leave the rest.

It is not to say that The Twelve Steps are less: in one sense they might be considered more, because of their adaptation beyond the Christian faith to all religions and none. It is analogous to the movement of Christianity itself from the Jewish faith where it began, outwards to the Gentiles, and to the whole world. I cannot help but feel that both Ignatius and God approve.

Steps 7 – 11 also incorporate within them The Examen, the purpose of which is “to improve our conscious contact with God” and Ignatius is known to have encouraged the Jesuits in that,if they only had the space in their day for one prayer, then it is this one that they should do.

Can be printed onto A6 or A4 card to have in your prayer place if you would find it helpful.
The Spiritual Exercises and The Twelve Steps, reading of this post.

In fact, steps 4-6 also echo The Examen in their movement.

The twelfth step is suggestive of the Contemplatio, where Ignatius makes the first point:

…love ought to manifest itself in deeds rather than in words.

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

The concept of service is a principle which runs through The Twelve Traditions of twelve step fellowships, the purpose of which is:

…personal progress for the greatest number….

Al Anon, Tradition 1.

and members volunteer for a variety of roles from maybe chairing at a meeting one week, to speaking publicly at conventions. I once spoke at a convention in Edinburgh as a member of Alateen when I was eighteen. It is an important witness, because when people living in this chaos see that it is possible to find serenity, whether the alcoholic is still drinking or not, it is powerfully attractive. Ignatius describes in the Two Standards meditation of the Exercises how those under the standard of Christ attract and draw, rather than drive, bully and coerce. The eleventh tradition states this principle explicitly:

Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion;

Al Anon, Tradition 11.

Both The Twelve Steps and The Spiritual Exercises offer transformative processes by which to change our lives. The former provides emergency support and hope for those living in the chaos of deeply destructive addictions, and its byte sized slogans and steps give oxygen immediately in instances of suffocating despair and desolation, securing the idea that “no unhappiness is too great to be lessened.” Continual engagement with the program, with meetings and with the help of a sponsor fosters a deepening of these principles, in faith and love, as we continue to apply them to our lives, irrespective of our religious practice. They are a great gift. I once heard Bill W. and Dr. Bob, the other founding member of AA, described as the greatest social architects of the twentieth century and I believe that there is some truth in that statement. The Spiritual Exercises provide a similar process specific to Christian faith, and for everyone in acceptance of that faith, a means to deepen their personal relationship with God and live according to His will, regardless of their personal circumstances. There are some of us who are grateful to know and have both.

Serenity Prayer – used to close Al Anon, and other twelve step meetings.

Spotlight

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Reading of Spotlight 1

I watched the film “Spotlight” a few weeks ago with a heavy heart. I like a good thriller and usually enjoy those that involve investigative journalism, but the subject matter of this particular film, the exposition of the child abuse scandal in the Church by the Boston Globe, so profoundly upset me that I could not bear to go to see it at the cinema. I thought at one point that I would not watch it at all. However, I found myself a few weeks ago, on Film Friday, putting it on via my daughter’s Netflix account.

Spotlight: a film based on the investigative journalism by the Spotlight team of the Boston Globe into the systemic problem of child abuse by priests in the Catholic Church.
Reading of Spotlight 2

While I enjoyed the investigative journalism aspect of the film, I am deeply affected by it’s content. I wrote in a previous post about the silence of abuse, and I was in part, dwelling on my response to the film, and to the crisis this issue has raised, especially, but not solely, in the Catholic Church. There were a few points that the film brought out for me. The film is based on a true story and I am reflecting on the story in the film. I am currently unaware of exactly where it digresses from real events, although I am aware that Richard Sipe, who suggested to the journalists the figure of six percent, is a real person and his credentials are real.

The first is that the editor, rather than pursue particular individual priests regarding their sexual abuse of children, insisted that the Spotlight journalists look for something more systemic that allowed the abuse to be perpetuated, rather than terminated. To me, this insistence showed great insight, and his, and their, refusal to give in to the voices and threats to silence them, not only showed great courage, but also demonstrated the ways in which the enemy works, as described by Ignatius in the exercises: the tantrum of the spoiled child, the secret whispering of the false lover, even as the general, circling the castle, looking for the weaknesses in the journalists in order to silence them. And the responses of the Spotlight team, to stand strong, and together, to speak out and refuse to have their weaknesses exploited, even as it meant exposing their own failings in not speaking out earlier when they had the information, illustrates how God is able to use us to work against evil in the world.

Reading of Spotlight 3

I have been a teacher long enough in the UK to have been in the system before the current safeguarding practices were in place, and to have seen their evolution from the first introduction of the CRB check and List 99, to the now mandatory DBS check before anyone can work alone with children in a school: from ensuring that all areas where we might meet with a child have glass windows to be visible to people outside of the room, to the mandatory annual safeguarding training, with updates, at the beginning of every school year, for which we have to sign a declaration that we have attended and read the necessary paperwork. I find it excruciating, especially the part where we go over the different types of abuse and the signs that may go with them. Please do not get me wrong here, it is horrifying to hear of all the ways that adults can, and do, hurt and permanently damage children in our care, but I absolutely understand the necessity of these procedures and see that they have altered the culture in the education system to the point where it has become ingrained that safeguarding of children is the responsibility of everyone, and that even the slightest doubt or suspicion is reported to a safeguarding lead, who, if they do not already have a big picture, will raise the question and potentially start the investigation. It is enough to say to them:

Something doesn’t feel right here.

I also see measures in my parish and in other parishes in my diocese: the sacristy door is open when the priest and the altar servers are getting ready for mass, and has glass in it to see into the room, the priest participates in safeguarding training, there is a designated lay person as a safeguarding lead, and their contact details are there, for all to see, on a notice board as you go into the church. Schools and churches are reeling from child abuse disclosures, and the systems which hid and allowed them to continue are being changed. My heart is broken for every single person who suffered from this abuse and complete betrayal of trust, and it is something that we can never makes amends for, we can only feel anger and profound sorrow. The challenge for all of us in the Church is to speak out and make sure it stops. Pope Francis acknowledged as much when he opened the summit on child abuse in February 2019.

The weight of pastoral and church responsibility weighs on our meeting and forces us to discuss in a synodal, deep and sincere way about how to face this evil that afflicts the church and humanity,” Pope Francis said. Catholics were “not looking for simple and obvious condemnation, but concrete and effective measures to put into place.

Pope Francis at the summit on child abuse in Rome, February 2019.

I am not privy to how the BBC has addressed similar scandal within that particular organisation, so I will leave it here.

The second point that the film made was the statistic of six percent of priests were likely to be acting out sexually in this way. While in other contexts it seems like a small proportion, when it was translated unto actual numbers, it was a huge number of priests (around ninety in the Boston scenario) and a larger number of victims, where even one is too many. I remember a conversation with my mum soon after the scandal broke, and she had been talking to her local parish priest who had said that he felt ashamed to walk down the street wearing his dog collar because of it. While not forgetting the six percent, perhaps it is also worth remembering that around ninety four percent of priests are not paedophiles.

Reading of Spotlight 4

The third point, also made in the telephone call with Richard Sipe, was that clericalism provided a respectable hiding place for people with unacceptable tendencies. Perhaps there is an element of thinking that submitting to an external control will keep these urges dormant. Such an undertaking has echoes of the tenth addition of the exercises on penance, where here, a decision to live a life of abstention is made using reason, the second power of the soul, based on understanding of one’s own particular pattern of sin. If sincere and conscious it can be considered to be an exterior penance. However, to live it requires interior movement, for there to be a sincere desire to refrain from the offending behaviour, and also the grace of God. In the tenth addition of The Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius gives a sincere desire for grace as one of the reasons we undertake penance, and it is not something we earn; it is a grace we beg for, and is given by God. A. W. Richard Sipe in his book “Living the Celibate Life: A Search for Models and Meaning” suggests that to live this vocation requires constant vigilance, and for it to be a focused part of a daily examen:

How did I live my celibacy today?

Where might I have been drawn away, in my thoughts and feelings?

For the one offending priest the journalists managed to talk to in the film, there was only fallacious reasoning and pride, and an inability to recognise his own sin. It revealed something ugly and cold, and definitely not the love of God.

In The Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius encourages us to accept the authority of the Church, and when read in the light of the child abuse scandal, the way in which he does is difficult to swallow:

What seems to me white, I will believe to be black if the hierarchical Church so defines.

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

It is pertinent to remember that Ignatius was operating at the time of the Spanish Inquisition and that he also says:

But while it does harm in the absence of our superiors to speak evil of them before the people, it may be profitable to discuss their bad conduct with those who can apply a remedy.

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

It is important to be clear to what we are referring and here, Ignatius refers to clergy in higher positions of authority. Similar clarity is needed, for instance as regards the abuse survivor in the trailer saying:

How do you say no to God?

The priest is not God: neither is a particular priest, bishop nor cardinal the Church. And the Church is not God. They are not all the same. Priests, bishops and cardinals can be as guilty as anyone of bad conduct because they are human: the Church is an imperfect institution, subject to the flaws of human frailty. George A. Aschenbrenner in his book “Stretched for Greater Glory” draws a parallel with the parable of the wheat and the darnel in Matthew’s gospel. He says:

“Some enemy has done this” (13.28). Yet Jesus is also clear that the darnel and the wheat will be allowed to grow together until the end. The mixture of consolation and desolation will continue in all human hearts, which therefore are the only field in which holiness can germinate, bud and blossom.

George A. Aschenbrenner. Stretched for Greater Glory

While we may expect, on a superficial level, for the church to be perfect, we must recognise that it is not: it is managed by human beings engaged in the process of discernment, and we must therefore be vigilant for where the enemy has sown the darnel in with the wheat. Saying no to a priest, or the Church, is not necessarily saying no to God. And I do appreciate that the survivor was speaking from the perspective of a child, and a child might not appreciate the distinction. But as discerning members of the Church, we do have a duty to discuss their bad conduct with those who can apply a remedy. In the case of the child abuse scandal, since the problem was systemic within the Church, that duty fell to the Spotlight team of the Boston Globe. We owe them a debt of gratitude, because although it is painful, and shameful, this corruption has to be rooted out. In the Church, as in school, safeguarding of children and vulnerable adults is the responsibility of everyone.

Tomb Day. I painted this while I was doing the Spiritual Exercises by the thirty day retreat, on the day after praying with the crucifixion and death of Jesus, and before moving into the fourth week.

Religion and politics

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In front of Pilate. Detail from a door at the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Passion Facade.
Reading of this post to make life easier for my dyslexic friends and anyone else who also likes to listen.
Religion and Politics 1

There has been much talk in the UK press about what does and does not belong in politics, about who has and has not the right to speak out, and in what context. There were some articles in The Guardian newspaper questioning Her Majesty’s lack of involvement in the political arena and bizarrely, where lawyers challenged the right of judges making a judgment of unlawful behaviour with respect to proroguing parliament:

Government lawyers had told the court, which sits in Westminster directly opposite parliament, that the justices should not enter into such a politically sensitive area, which was legally “forbidden territory” and constitutionally “an ill-defined minefield that the courts are not properly equipped to deal with”.

The Guardian, September 24 2019
Sign in West Pottergate, Norwich. It has since been removed.
Religion and Politics 2: Of course, I meant to say 2 thousand and 19. Silly me.

In The Tablet (14 September 2019) the president of the Catholic Theological Association of Great Britain, Dr. Ashley Beck, is quoted as saying:

If we push the language of God out of this or that crisis or moral issue, we’re pushing God out,

Article in The Tablet, 14 September 2019, by Margaret Hebblethwaite, p31

and on the same page, in the same issue, Archbishop Eamon Martin is quoted as saying that bringing faith into politics is:

…not an optional extra for a committed Christian.

Article in The Tablet, 14 September 2019, p31

I started an argument once on an online group where the comment from the Bishops of the Church of England about how they were praying for the country and how Brexit had caused division and acrimony in Britain, was greeted with derision. Comments such as:

Well, that’ll fix it then.

and

They should keep their religion out of politics.

to me, showed a lack of very basic understanding of the nature of living in faith. The words from the bishops had come from their prayer together, and from their noticing the division and rise of aggression and violence in our society, the increase in racist attacks, of intolerance. They were speaking out, and calling out the deterioration of moral values and behaviour. Here is the prayer they made:

A prayer for the UK.

A Prayer for the UK

In this time of turmoil…

We pray for the Prime Minister and Party Leaders as they negotiate the political future of our nation:
Father, give them your wisdom and vision.

We pray, and calling for all in Parliament as they represent their communities:
Jesus, give them your humility and strength.

We pray for the media as they interpret events for the nation:
Holy Spirit, give them your truth and compassion.

We pray for ourselves, your Church, as we show your love to our neighbours:
Would we speak hope, embody courage and model unity in diversity.

Almighty God, we place our trust in you:
For yours is the kingdom the power and the glory, now and forever, Amen

Church of England, Prayer for Brexit
Sagrada Familia, Barcelona, Passion Facade. The word in gold on the door in the background: Veritat? meaning Truth?
Religion and Politics 3

Time and time again, I have heard this point of view, that religious faith should be kept out of politics: it dismisses it to merely a private matter. And there is a hypocrisy to this viewpoint. I object just as vehemently to having atheism thrust down my throat as the atheist does to any crude attempt to convert them, and I also have as much right to live my life, think my thoughts and express my opinion as the atheist does. The issue here is about respect: and the growing lack of respect in Britain is what prompted the Church of England response.

I should also comment that my political opinion on Brexit was the same as those in the online group: I took issue with their derision of the Church speaking out and their ad hominem attacks, rather than noticing the legitimate concern of the Church about the vitriolic discourse now rife in British society. The online group both missed my point and vindicated the point the Church of England was making.

The meaning of the word “political” as given by the Oxford dictionary is:


1. relating to the government or public affairs of a country.


relating to the ideas or strategies of a particular party or group in politics.

interested in or active in politics.


motivated by a person’s beliefs or actions concerning politics.

2. derogatory done or acting in the interests of status or power within an organization rather than as a matter of principle.

I am thinking that by this point, it is obvious that my opinion is that when we are called to be prophets, when we speak out, we are being political. It is inevitable: and to think it reasonable that a person of faith ought not to express their opinion publicly is to not understand what faith is. Worse than that, it is a double standard, because the atheist also speaks from a position of faith.

Scripture sets a precedent for the people of God being politically active. The Book of Amos has social justice as one of its major themes, where social justice is described as:

… a concept of fair and just relations between the individual and society. This is measured by the explicit and tacit terms for the distribution of wealth, opportunities for personal activity, and social privileges.

Remember that Jesus was crucified for sedition! One does not come in front of the governor of the region for judgement, or cause social unrest without being political. So, we are in good company here.

Why would they want to stop us from speaking out, from expressing our opinions when we are speaking from the ground of our being in God?

St. Ignatius has some things to say about how the enemy, the one opposed to God, goes about his business. The first is that he behaves as a spoiled child, simpering, batting his eyes, stamping his feet, throwing a tantrum and going in the huff when he does not get his way. (Okay, Ignatius actually said like a woman, and given his time, I’m going to let him off the hook on that one, and simply update what he describes to our day and age). The second is as a false lover, who flatters and whispers lies in secret and solicits something unwholesome, telling us it is just between us, our little secret and that we should not tell anyone else about it. The third is as a general, circling the castle to find the weak spot from where to launch an attack; stabbing at our soft underbelly and filling us full of doubt and self recrimination. When we are speaking out, standing up for our principles as guided by our faith, how many of these strategies do we notice in the people who stand in opposition to us?

Ignatius also makes suggestions as to how we deal with each of these scenarios. In the first, he suggests a show of strength, to be unwavering. Of course, any parent who has gone through the toddler years, knows that you have to stand your ground and weather the storm, even as your furious child is attracting all the disapproving, and sympathetic stares of others in the supermarket, or whatever public place they have decided to show you up in. Maximum power, minimum reason. In terms of weakness, one of mine is that I try to be reasonable and base my opinions and arguments on evidence. I know, you would think that this is a strength and in the academic world it is, but in the world of populist politics and online discourse, which fuels the lynch mob mentality, the voice of reason cannot always be heard above the noise, and sometimes may give the space for those who act from an unreasonable standpoint, who show no such scruples, to step in and abuse. Ignatius suggest shoring up the weak walls in our castle, and that may mean continuing in faith, in the course that we know to be right, to stand strong, as in the first case of dealing with the spoiled child. In the second scenario, the secret whispering, Ignatius encourages us to tell, to disclose what is going on in us with someone well versed in discernment of spirits: a spiritual director, or a close friend with such skills. When the turmoil of the dark recesses of our mind are put on the table and God’s light shone on them, they lose their power to potentially uproot us. Our doubts and fears expressed, cannot withstand the process of discernment when examined in the light with the help of another. And through this process we find the courage to face them. Notice that the company of those also engaged in this process of living reflectively in God is important in strengthening and encouraging us. Ignatius suggests discernment, prayer and penance to help strengthen us when we find ourselves beset with that which would pull us away from God. As for the latter, I have a lot to say about penance, but I will save it for another day, at the appropriate time.

At the end of the day, Ignatius describes three steps for those standing with Christ:

…the first, poverty as opposed to riches; the second insults or contempt as opposed to the honour of this world; the third, humility as opposed to pride. From these three steps, let them lead men to other virtues.

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

and in The Contemplatio, he makes the first point:

…love ought to manifest itself in deeds rather than in words.

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, trans Louis J. Puhl S.J.
Sagrada Familia, Barcelona, Passion Facade. Detail of Pilate washing his hands of the crucifixion of Jesus.
Religion and Politics 4

If we were to accept popular direction to keep our religious beliefs out of politics, are we not simply acting like Pilate, and washing our hands of what happens in our society? In unapologetic defense of my own position, I am a Psalm 40 person:

See, I will not hold my tongue,

As well you know.

Psalm 40: 9b. The New Jerusalem Bible, Readers Version.

What’s in a name?

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Detail from the door at the Passion Facade of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.
What’s in a name? part 1. Recording of this post to make life a little easier for my dyslexic friends. Reads up to T S Eliot reading his poem, play this and then the reading of the next part and the song at the end. Enjoy, and please forgive any reading inconsistencies.

Recently, when a friend told me the name of a baby girl that he had learned from her parents, I responded with:

What a beautiful name!

He agreed and had been moved by it. I am fussy about my own name and by what I am called. I use both of my first names, and it does not contain a hyphen. It is not so unusual where I am from, but where I am living now everyone consistently tries to shorten it. It started when I went to university and my mum gave me some very good advice at the age of eighteen: she told me that if I wanted to be called by both names, I had to insist on it, otherwise I would end up always being called by only my first name, as had happened to her. So, I insist upon it.

As a teacher, whenever I meet a new class and I’m doing the register for the first time, I ask the students if they want to be called by their formal name , or do they have a shorter version of it they prefer: Joe instead of Joseph, for example. Quite a few of them tell me they do not really mind, and it always surprises me. I think it matters. Others do insist that I pronounce their names properly – quite rightly, and good on them.

So, what is in a name? Why is it so important? I read fantasy books during the holidays – these are my “trashy” novels that I like to relax with, escapism if you like. There are a couple of premises that run in the fantasy genre. The first is that the real name of someone or something is more than what it is called, it is what it is. It is the difference between a simile and a metaphor: not he is like a lion, but he is a lion. The sword in Christopher Paolini’s book Brisingr is not so much called fire, as it is fire.

The word brisingr is an ancient Old Norse word meaning “fire”, which Paolini found while reading through a dictionary of word origins.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org › wiki › Brisingr

In this genre, to know the true name of something or someone, gives you power over it or them. Eragon spends time learning the language of the elves, from which the true names in the natural world originate, so that he can improve his magic: In “The Gentleman Bastards” series, Locke Lamora never gives his true name to anyone, lest the Magicians learn it and use it against him, as they do with his friend Sam. In The Name of the Wind, the prologue of which is one of the most beautiful, poignant and haunting pieces of prose I have ever read in my life, Kvothe is able to call and control the wind at will, simply because he knows its name.

And this concept does not just belong to the fantasy genre. In Jesus A Pilgrimage, in relation to the healing of the demoniac, James Martin raises the point that it was a belief in the time of Jesus. He says:

In the ancient Near East, names held great significance and power.

Jesus A Pilgrimage. James Martin S.J.

When people are renamed in scripture; Abram as Abraham, Simon as Peter, it signifies a divinely ordered change of identity, a new life and mission.

Moreover, knowing a person’s name was believed to give someone power over that person…Thus, when Jesus asks the demon’s name, he poses a direct threat. “What is your name?” means “Let me have power over you.”

Jesus A Pilgrimage. James Martin S.J.

And the demon answers Jesus:

My name is Legion; for we are many.

Jesus A Pilgrimage. James Martin S.J.

The name is what it is, more than what it is called, it is the essence of being.

When we ask ourselves the big question:

Who am I?

what we are really asking is:

What is my name?

and even more than that, it is:

What is my name, the one that He gives me?

Who am I to Him?

To know who we are in God, to see ourselves as He sees us and to live accordingly is to make an election, it is to discover our personal vocation, the deepest desire of our soul, the state in life that draws us more deeply into Him. It is not what we do, it is who we are. It is to be free. And it takes God time and prayer: contemplation of God and of how God looks at me; of how God sees me.

I asked Him once:

Who am I to you?

and He gave me an answer. During my formation as a spiritual director “Discovering your Personal Vocation” by Herbert Alphonso S.J. was required reading. He closed the book with the poem:

The Naming Of Cats by T. S. Eliot
The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey–
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter–
But all of them sensible everyday names.
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that’s particular,
A name that’s peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum-
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there’s still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover–
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

T. S. Eliot‘s poetry book Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.
What’s in a name? part 2

And it dawned on me that there is another Name, an adjective, and I’ve heard myself called it all my life, but dismissed even the thought of it as arrogance on my part. It is how He sees me, who I am to Him, and it is a name that is deeply affirming and leaves me in no doubt about being loved. So here, I invite you, if you have not already done so, to ask Him in prayer:

Who am I to you?

And I leave you with my response to hearing Him call my Name.

Every road I try to find…

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Glenfinnan Viaduct

One of my touchstone memories, and maybe even my earliest memory of God, is as a young child, sitting on a hill looking out over Loch Morar, after the rain, when that fragrance is in the air, and being moved to awe right down to my wellie boots. I remember saying to Him, maybe even whispering:

You made all this?

The song by Runrig, and the title of this post was brought to mind by the gospel reading last week (Luke 14:25-33) , and the sermon, where a connection with the rich young man, who went away sad, was drawn (Mark 10:17-22). This song haunted me for some time after I returned home from The Exercises: it echoed some of my imaginative contemplations, as well as my early experience. It evoked a yearning in me, which I sometimes associate with homesickness, and more than that, to be in the highlands of my home country, with the mountains, forests, lochs and rain.

  • Eilean Donan, Loch Duich
  • Loch Lomond
  • Urquhart Castle, Loch Ness

Every river I try to cross
Every hill I try to climb
Every ocean I try to swim
Every road I try to find
All the ways of my life
I’d rather be with you
There’s no way
Without you

Runrig, Every River

I guess it was the contrast between considering the cost of discipleship, knowing what it will cost and making a decision about whether you can go ahead with it, or choose an alternative course of action – to sue for peace, or not start building the tower – and the sense that I have at the moment, and actually most often, that I cannot see the road ahead of me, or path, only the next step, the next paving stone, or shovel of gravel, being laid down, even as my foot is in mid air and is about to come down on it.

But of course, there is more to it than that – it is not such an obvious conflict. The point was made about considering what is getting in the way, our inordinate attachments: with the rich young man, his great wealth, for example. Our desire for security, for making our plans and ensuring we can we follow through may be, ironically, what is getting in the way of our total surrender and trust in God.

St. Ignatius talks about three kinds of humility in the Exercises, and the rich young man exhibits the first:

…as far as possible I so subject myself as to obey the law of God our Lord in all things…

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

Of the third kind Ignatius says:

I desire to be accounted as worthless and a fool for Christ, rather than to be esteemed as wise and prudent in this world.

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

and I am reminded of McCaig’s Folly, the unfinished tower, in Oban in Scotland.

28 “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? 29 For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, 30 saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’

(Luke 14:28-30)

I’m not local to Oban, but so far as I understand it, John Stuart McCaig is not considered a fool today, in spite of the name of his unfinished tower. He understood the importance of work to the human spirit when he commissioned his tower.

James Martin S.J., when referring to an imaginative contemplation on the story of the rich young man speaks about noticing afresh the phrase:

And Jesus Loved him.

Jesus A Pilgimage, James Martin S.J.

Considering how He looks at me at the beginning of prayer is suggested by the third addition of The Spiritual Exercises, and although it is something we can struggle with, it is powerful and moves us. We are never told what happens to the rich young man, but I like to imagine that he did move from this point in his journey from the first kind of humility, to the third kind, as a result of his interaction with Jesus.

The connection between this gospel passage, the rich young man and the deepening movement from the first to the third kind of humility culminates in the Suscipe Prayer at the end of The Exercises:


Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty,
my memory, my understanding,
and my entire will,
All I have and call my own.

You have given all to me.
To you, Lord, I return it.

Everything is yours; do with it what you will.
Give me only your love and your grace,
that is enough for me.

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

The poignant irony seems to me to be then, that the cost of being a disciple is to be prepared to not count the cost: total surrender to God is to embrace that there is no way without Him, no matter what river, hill, ocean or road we are trying to find. This is the essence of the gospel and the Suscipe Prayer which is a once and for all and an everyday surrender. Being at the end of the exercises suggests a journey towards this great surrender of ourselves to God, and like the rich young man, the one building the tower, or the king about to go to war, we are all at different points on the journey which is uniquely ours. I end with another, musical, poignant irony in a place reminiscent of McCaig’s folly to some extent in appearance, but not in history.

Il Divo, Hallelujah. Live at the Colosseum.

Starts this week!

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The same programme as at Sheringham and Cromer earlier in the year. All are welcome to attend who can get there. The booklet is given below if you want to print it for yourself.

Image on flyer: Stained Glass of St. Ignatius at Loyola Castle (thejesuitpost.org)

A conversation between friends.

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I went to the meditation event run by the Norwich Christian Meditation Centre and it has given me much food for thought. The first, and maybe most obvious thing to explore is that Fr. Korko, being a Jesuit, has integrated aspects of The Spiritual Exercises with other aspects of his Indian culture. St. Ignatius tells us that:

The Spiritual Exercises must be adapted to the condition of the one who is to engage in them, that is, to his age, education and talent.

Annotation 18; The Spiritual Exercises trans: Loius J. Puhl, S.J

Fr. Korko used the specific term “Spiritual Exercises” near the beginning of the day and from his Jesuit background, and from his teaching on the day itself, we can infer that he means:

By the term “Spiritual Exercises” is meant every method of examination of conscience, of meditation, of contemplation, of vocal and mental prayer, and of other spiritual activities…so we call Spiritual Exercises every way of preparing and disposing the soul to rid itself of all inordinate attachments…

Annotation 1; The Spiritual Exercises trans: Loius J. Puhl, S.J

His interweaving of the Exercises and his Indian culture was seamless, and presented as a conversation between East and West, and between West and East, a true representation of God in All Things.

For example, there was an image of Christ the Guru, not this particular one, but the video illustrates the principle I am trying to elucidate.

It reminded me of a time I visited the Westminster Interfaith project and I met the founder/director, Brother Daniel Faivre SG, one of the most inspiring people I have ever had the privilege to meet in my life. Like Fr. Korko, his mystic character, as described by Wayne Teasdale in The Mystic Heart, was evident.

Summarised from The Mystic Heart by Wayne Teasdale

And I remembered visiting the mosque, and the Sikh and Hindu temples that day, seeing how highly regarded Br. Daniel was by the other faith leaders, and how our group was welcomed into each by the communities there as guests and friends. This conversation moved me and has stayed with me all these years: as has another comment about the day from one of our group:

Yes, but all of those deities would have to go.

It saddened me. Here “Deep is calling to deep” as the psalmist sings, and the blue note was not heard by all who were there. It is the insistence that I am right, and you are wrong, and you need to come over to my way of doing things.

It’s let him live in freedom. If he lives like me.

Jim Croce. Which way are you goin’?

It seems to me that God is far more generous than this – we only have to look at how Jesus behaves towards Samaritans, the Syro-Phoenician woman, the Roman centurian. Openness, listening, seeing, profound peace – these are some of the fruits of the spiritual journey.

Summarised from The Mystic Heart by Wayne Teasdale

A few years ago, I was on retreat at St Beunos in North Wales and I was wandering in the herb garden. There was a bed there that had seven different varieties of lavender: all clearly recognisable by their scent, even though each was subtly different. I had a conversation with God about it, as one friend speaks to another:

“Why have you made so many things that are very similar but are variations on a theme?” I asked Him.

“When you draw and paint mandalas, why do you do so many that are similar, but with slight variations?” He asked me.

I thought about it for a moment before answering. “Well, I have all of these ideas in my head, and I can’t decide which one I like best, so I do them all.”

“Exactly.” He said. “That is how it is for me. I have all these fantastic ideas and I can’t decide which is best, so I make them all.”

It seems to me then to be very disingenuous for one variety to turn round to the others and say:

Yes, but you’re not true lavender, are you?

When I was a teenager and in my early twenties I spent some years attending a twelve step fellowship, and I wrestled with the third step:

Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

Alcoholics Anonymous, Step 3 of the Twelve Steps.

There is a whole journey in this step alone, but here, I’m specifically referring to the last part: God, as we understood Him. When I listen to people in my capacity as a spiritual director I realise that everyone understands God differently, according to their own unique experience of being in relationship with Him; and I am listening for the One I know in what they are saying. When I hear of Him, my love for Him deepens, as does my love for the person telling me about Him: I get to view my beloved through the eyes of another. And I do recognise Him in the story of the other when I think: “Yes, that is just like Him.”

That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet;

Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare.

You might have experienced such a thing by meeting someone who is a friend of a friend. It’s natural then to swap some stories of the mutual friend, and this only enhances love for both your friend, and the friend of your friend.

I don’t consider it my place to deny or criticise another persons experience of God, wherever they are coming from; I do consider that I have a role, as a spiritual director, to listen and to help someone to discern for themselves what is of God, and what is not of God, just as others do the same for me. And here, as further food for thought, I offer Natalie Merchant’s song of the poem by John Godfrey Saxe, and a mind map of the guidelines for inter-religious understanding discussed in The Mystic Heart by Wayne Teasdale. This inter-mystical bridge is good ground from which open-hearted, respectful and loving conversations can take place with others that have a different perspective from our own. The Ignatian way is that God is found in all things, and we can ask for the grace to find Him in all things, including in conversations with others of different cultures, denominations and faiths, and even of no professed faith, as one friend speaks to another. Imagine a world where we all spoke to one another as friends.

The Blind Men and the Elephant. Poem by John Godfrey Saxe, song by Natalie Merchant.
Summarised from The Mystic Heart by Wayne Teasdale