I Love Teaching Intro to Religion!

I am procrastinating grading so . . .

 

From some college student reflections:

 

"At first I was not happy about the requirement to go to outside events, but now that I have been to a lecture and a mass, I feel that I have gone outside my little bubble and witnessed others' beliefs and thoughts."

 

"Learning about the history of the Bible is surprisingly interesting."

 

"Religion has not been a huge factor in my life in the past several years, but now I think I might go back to temple."

 

"I had never really thought about the possibility of multiple interpretations of a Biblical text."

 

"To be honest, I was not looking forward to this course at all . . . but now I am excited to take my next course next semester."

 

 

Yes . . . there was at least one very unhappy student ~ I'm afraid I was a bit sarcastic one day and my meaning got lost, but I was very glad that she raised her concerns so that I could address them.  (At least I hope I did.)

 

I have been a bit preoccupied with my old church-new church stuff this term, and sometimes I feel more behind and confused than my students do.  We cover way too much in this survey course -- from Ignatian spirituality to Tillich to Freud to Frankl to Biblical criticism and exegesis to interfaith dialogue to Islam to justice.    The instructors have a lot of leeway, as long as we cover some basic ideas foundational to discussing religion, address the Bible and interfaith dialogue, and deal with a religion assigned by the department -- that's where Islam came in this semester. 

 

I started with Ignatian spirituality -- something almost no other instructors do, but hey: we're in a Jesuit university and I think it's always a good idea to understand your heritage.  Whether they are Jewish or Christian (no Muslim students this term), Ignatius has become a part of their heritage by virtue of their presence at the school.  And I'm ending with a discussion of justice across traditions because soon it will be cold and dark and stressful all the time, and I think that's something they can sink their teeth into even when they've about reached the end of the semester.

 

The most fun?  Reading their reflections on their "outside experiences" ~ a Catholic-atheist debate, an apparently dynamite lecture on the theology of sports (I have a number of athletes in class), Jewish and Methodist students at mass, a Catholic student at my home Presby church, a martial arts class, an Otis Moss, Jr. sermon ~ I think they're having a good semester.

 

Not a Silent Retreat!

 

 

We met six years ago as would-be spiritual directors on the first night of our training program, which began with a week-end retreat.  We finished up two years later at another retreat, and with four other members of our class formed a peer supervision group ~ which means that we meet every month or so for conversation around our experiences as spiritual directors.  Some time ago, three of us realized that we would all be turning sixty this year, and this week-end we managed to pull off a mini-retreat as a way of being intentional about the "final third" of our lives.

The three of us: Two Catholics and one Protestant, two employed in church positions and one doing major volunteer work related to spiritual direction, two married and one single, six children, work experience including missionary in El Salvador, teacher, lawyer, pastor, psychiatric nurse, and diocesan staff for pastoral ministry ~ and spiritual direction, of course.

We spent a very small amount of time each of us on her own; mostly we talked.  And talked and talked and talked.  A few hours Friday night and nonstop from breakfast through lunch today.  (We never left the dining room ~ midmorning, one of the staff members at the retreat house stopped in to ask if we knew that lunch wouldn't be served until 12:15!) 

We used Paula Huston's book A Season of Mystery: Twelve Spiritual Practices for Embracing a Happier Second Half of Life, which provided a great springboard for conversation.  I think we all agreed that it was particularly relevant to the third third of life; we found the topics pertinent and helpful and challenging.  I would highly recommend the book to any group of people seeking to look reflectively and unflinchingly at these final decades and to approach them as a time in which to live prayerfully and authentically.

We didn't think to take a picture!  But here's where we went.


 

Mentoring

This morning, as I prepare to preach on Galatians and Paul's three-year sojourn into Arabia, the sojourn marking the period between call and action, I find myself considering those who have mentored me in ministry.  That would be almost everyone, of course, but a few in my pre-seminary years stand out:

The non-mentor mentor, the associate pastor who, back when I was in my mid-thirties and beginning to ponder a call to ministry, was (with one long walk excepted) too busy and flustered to find time to listen and perhaps offer some pre-kindergarten suggestions for discernment. Reminder to self: If another person even hints at the intimations of a call in her life: make. the. time.

Her opposite on the spectrum, the associate pastor of my home church, whose primary gift may well be the nurturance of gifts in others.  She was the first person to invite me into the pulpit, and she spent hours and hours with me over the years planning our adult education program, technically because I chaired the committee but, in reality, because she wanted to share with me her wealth of church leadership knowledge.

The most ironic of mentors where I was concerned, the Jesuit priest in his seventies who spent two years helping me discern and plot my official embarkation on my call, and then more years after that helping me to stick with it after Josh died.  Hours and hours and hours of listening, with the occasional penetrating question tossed my way, and then email after email, helping me to envision a way through the thicket of grief which defined the last two years of seminary for me.

 

There have been others, of course, in seminary and beyond, but today I'm thinking about those early desert-of-Arabia years, those Be still and listen yourself years. 

 

What about you?  Who has listened to you, and who has helped you learn to listen to God?

Spa Week at Wernersville . . . Not!

So here's what I did on retreat:

I walked 3-4 miles every day.  Unfortunately, the retreat center sits atop a hill, so every walk, no matter the route, proceeds down and then returns up.   

I sat in the Adirondack chairs in the sun as much as possible.

I cut out pictures and made collages, and colored in lots of Celtic patterns ~ a methodically and rhythmically prayerful way of spending time.  (I have been so very, very sick of words of late, and so I took a huge bag of art supplies with me.)

I went to daily mass. Since I was there during a "nonofficial" retreat time, there were only a few people at the liturgy each morning. Once I looked around and thought, Hmm, six Jesuits and me.  Interesting crowd.  (And then a few staff members showed up.)

I got to meet George Aschenbrenner, S.J.  "You're the guy who taught us all to pray the examen!" I exclaimed, when I stopped him in the hallway to introduce myself.  "Well, the Holy Spirit had something to do with that," he responded.  I told him that I am a Presbyterian pastor and an Ignatian spiritual director.  "There seem to be more and more of those," he reflected.

I met with my spiritual director every day, and pondered and wondered and prayed with the observations he made.  Those are the times when it becomes most apparent that a silent retreat is not for the faint-of-heart, or for those dreaming of a relaxing spa day.  (In the summertime, I often sit in the Adirondack chairs in the afternoon sun and paint my toenails, but even then: tough stuff going on.)

I did follow the Boston Marathon case to some extent.  More than I should have ( iPhones represent a terrible temptation), but far, far less than I would have had I been home.

I was struck, as our small group gathered for mass the day after the marathon, by the awesome faithfulness of quiet Christian witness: a few people who considered that the most important thing they could do in the face of mind-bending violence and horror would be to spend half an hour celebrating a liturgy.

More on the week-end retreat-within-a-retreat later.


 

Just Ahead

Tomorrow morning:

The Monthly Pancake Breakfast at my church.  A lot of people from the surrounding area come.   It will be busy and crowded and noisy.

Tomorrow evening:

The Tenth Anniversary Celebration of the Ignatian Spirituality Institute, where I did my spiritual direction training.  In a moment of weakness some months ago, I agreed to host the speech-ifying part.  Since someone from each of the ten classes will be saying something, I'm going to talk about Ignatian repetition in prayer.  I also have one joke, because I was instructed to be funny.  Jokes are not my thing; usually I cannot remember them for more than about a second.  But this one made me laugh.  Let's hope I can remember it for another twenty-four hours.

Sunday:

A complete and total day off.  With some laundry and packing.  Because . . .

Monday morning:

A drive to Pittsburgh for the seminary Taize' service and visits and lunch with professors and

Monday afternoon:

Keep driving until I reach Wernersville for dinner, a meeting with the lovely man who's been my director there for now the fourth time, and

Silence begins.

In my head, I am already there!



Image: Wernersville Jesuit Center, October 2010

Pope SJ

Among those ironic twists of fate or unpredictable wanderings of the Holy Spirit, depending upon how you look at it, it's been one of the great privileges of my life during the last decade to have been influenced by and become friends with some Jesuits.  They have been extravagantly generous with their brilliance, their knowledge, their pastoral presence, and their encouragement. There is no question whatever that I would not be a pastor today, nor would I have survived (in the most literal sense of the word) my son's death without their Spiritual Exercises and their personal support, attentiveness, concern, and help during what I surely hope will turn out to have been the darkest period of my life.

 

The Jesuits with whom I correspond generally simply sign their names at the ends of their emails and notes, but one of them always signs his as "Bill SJ."  And I am always touched by that signature at the bottom of a page, as it bespeaks such a commitment to and identification with the 450-year-old Society of Jesus.

 

And so I feel an unexpected connection to this new pope.  I haven't paid much attention to what's been going on in Rome; most of my very brief updates have come from, ironically again, members of my first Presbyterian church, who are on a long-planned journey to Rome during this of all weeks.  But the news of a Jesuit pope -- yes, to that I'm attentive.

 

I'm still wondering whether the Francis refers to Assisi or Xavier -- one of my friends responded to that question on FB with the words "both/and."   !  (See my previous completely unrelated post.)  I don't have the impression that the newscasters have a clue, but they've heard more about the former saint than the latter.

 

At any rate, we are perhaps about to get a lesson on the complexities of faith and the hopelessness of labels with respect thereto.  The poor in Argentina?  The right-wing dictatorship?  Gay marriage?  The celibate priesthood?  The words are flying on the news.  And, finally, someone on CNN has just uttered the name "Francis Xavier."

 

I have hopes for this pope, and I had not expected that.  (The unexpected ~ a  sign of the Spirit laboring, yes?)  From what I know of the men formed by the Spiritual Exercises, we have every reason to expect a profound depth of intellect and an expansive pastoral capacity.  So, yes ~ high hopes.

 

Jesuit Stuff

You would think that I would have been influenced primarily by feminist women, wouldn't you?  And, to a large extent, I have been. 

But in my spiritual life, and in this inexorable pull toward ministry . . .  well, read this.

I "failed spiritual direction" a couple of times; the relationships just didn't click.

Eventually I bumped into the person who would make it stick -- a then-75-year-old Jesuit.  My current director is a Jesuit my own age.  Once a year on retreat and occasionally via email I hang out with another Jesuit, a psychologist in his early 70s.

How could I have spent so much time with men trained so extensively and  diversely and not grown into a passion for ministry in some form?  I'd hazard a guess that anyone who finds friendship with people like the Jesuits is drawn intensely into whatever his or her life's calling might be.

In a (small) way, I came to ministry with something similar: lots of disparate experiences, as a wife and mother; a lawyer -- corporate, nonprofit, and family; a teacher -- middle school through college.  What I didn't have was the intense formational approach to all of those from which Jesuits benefit for the 11 or so years from entrance into the Society to final vows. 

I like to think that a bit of it has rubbed off.

I'm grateful that I was immersed in it when my son died while I was in seminary,

But I gotta tell you, God works in extremely mysterious ways.  What were the chances of my having ever even encountered these guys from a  distance?  I would venture approximately .0000000001%.

Guess that's all it takes.

Ignatius and Religious Experience

Here is my big personal take-away, something that has never occurred to me before, from the Friday evening portion of the week-end's program on Ignatius and his incarnational theology:

Ignatius was able to discover what he did about religious experience precisely because he had an inadequate education.

Irony of ironies.  Especially if you know about or have any connection with the Society of Jesus, which runs schools and universities all over the world, and which requires a formal education of its members that is the envy of anyone who wishes she had been directed into three years of philosophy studies before she touched theology.

Let's step back a bit.  Ignatius was a minor 16th century Spanish nobleman, a youngest child, and was therefore provided with only the rudimentary education needed to sustain a military career.  He was a soldier who drank and caroused (career choices which instill great affection for him in college students, when they discover through his biography that lifelong perfection is not a prerequisite for idealistic service to God), and then through an arrogant misjudgment in battle encountered a cannonball that altered the course of his life.  

It was while he lay in bed recovering from his injuries and in the months of pilgrimage following that he had the experiences in prayer and began to develop the practices that became the Spiritual Exercises. 

Our presenter pointed out that it is through higher education that we are given the framework that enables us to analyze and understand and discuss the world ~ but Ignatius did not have that particular advantage.  And so he fell back on his own experience of God.  

That experience created some bewildering difficulties for him, and he did eventually pursue the course of education that made it possible for him to be ordained a priest and, eventually, to become one of the most gifted of organizational administrators.

But his experience also enabled him first to encounter God deeply and affectively, with his feelings more than with his mind, and to pass on to succeeding generations his confidence in our capacity to meet God in our experiences, and to learn to evaluate them, and to proceed accordingly.

I was struck for a number of reasons by the assertion that it was his lack of education that enabled him to develop an experiential approach that can so profoundly change lives.

For one, I have been the beneficiary of excellent formal education in many guises, but it was the experience of the Exercises that changed my life.

For another, my seminary education was extremely lopsided, with a heavy bent toward the academic, and I will be forever grateful that it was balanced by my simultaneous immersion in Ignatian spirituality.  Many of my classmates found their own balance in other ways, especially through travel and mission, or through worship and service in congregations focused on experimentation, but for me, it was Ignatius who opened other doors.

And for a third, while I have an intense bent toward the intellectual and academic myself, and made good use of that approach to contend with Josh's death during my last two years of seminary, when the formal theology all splattered outward, as Aquinas described it, as "so much straw," and God seemed truly and eternally gone, my feelings were both legitimized and challenged through the gifts of Ignatius.

I'm so glad that he wasn't an eldest son destined for university from the outset!

Walt Farrell, S.J.

Two or three weeks ago, I learned via email that Father Walt Farrell, S.J. had moved to hospice care, and tonight I've learned, via the blog of Joe Koczera, S.J., that he died last night.  Father Farrell was my director during the retreat that wasn't, the retreat that I was making when Josh died.

I had met Walt once or twice before; he had come to Cleveland to make presentations to those of us working on our certificates in spiritual direction.  When I learned that he was to be my director for my week in Michigan, I was elated: seventy-plus years of Jesuit experience and wisdom at my disposal! You can read more about what that entailed in the biography at Joe's place.  My story is about my two personal experiences with Walt.

My first retreat day that year was an intense one.  I had spent the summer doing my CPE (clinical pastoral education, i.e. chaplaincy education) at The Cleveland Clinic, and when I went to meet with Walt for the second time, he wondered aloud why every movement in my prayer brought me back to that experience.

"Because I have been completely traumatized by my summer," I said in surprise, beginning to see my days in the MICU differently than had been possible when I was in the midst of them.  All that illness; all those deaths.  Walt told me to take it easy for the next twenty-four hours.  Get some rest.  Don't feel that you have to focus on prayer.  Enjoy the grounds.

If only.  

I got the message about Josh late that afternoon.  I went back to the main building and told someone that it was urgent that they find Father Farrell immediately. After I told him what had happened, I said in a vague sort of way that I needed a computer, and he graciously turned his office over to me so that I could begin the terrible, terrible process of notifying people while I waited for friends to make the long drive to get me.  I spent a long hour or two on the computer and phone, engaged in one complicated interaction after another, and then Walt and I stood in the hallway for another hour and talked about an astonishing array of topics and people. Shock produces some of the world's most bizarre conversations.

My friends came, I went home, and I think that I wrote him a thank-you email at some point, and that he responded. I didn't expect to encounter him again; I knew that I would never be able to return to the Manresa retreat house.

Two Christmases later I ran into Walt at a mass at the Carmelite monastery in Cleveland.  I was back in seminary; I was, in fact, doing my field education in a big downtown church, which meant that I had acquired some responsibilities in public leadership.  But I was still hiding out at the Carmelites' on a regular basis.  

It took him a minute to place me ~ "You were with me when my son died," I said ~ and then he said, "Of course."  And then, without missing a beat, "How's seminary?"

When I wrote to him a couple of weeks ago, I recalled that conversation and how wonderfully affirming it was for me.  Serving in the church, I must have looked pretty functional on the outside, but  it was still a struggle to get up ~ every single morning.  And there wasn't an hour that passed that I didn't wonder whether I had lost my mind, in the most literal sense of the phrase, to imagine that I would ever be either a pastor or a spiritual director.  Every day I expected someone else to see reason, and to tell me that no one was going to be interested in a minister whose child had died of suicide.

But the 93-year-old Father Walt Farrell didn't ask me whether I had gone back, or speak in a pitying tone of voice, or otherwise imply anything other than an expectation that I would have found my way back.  He simply asked how school was going.

Such a little thing, but it meant a great deal to me.

I see from his biography that, as I knew, he was a man of wide-ranging experience and great accomplishment.  But I do believe that it's in the smallest of encounters that you can really take the measure of a person.  I have no major Walt Farrell speeches on which to report, no honors or recognitions to recall.  Only a couple of days of encounter that helped to shape my own story ~ which is what, in the end, makes a great director of the Spiritual Exercises.

(I've stolen Joe's photograph. I think it's a beautiful one, so I hope he doesn't mind.)

Meeting Ignatius in Rome

Yesterday Becky Eldridge, one of the writers at dotMagis, asked: What would you say if St. Ignatius came to visit? I can't claim to have ever imagined that scenario before, but I have often wondered about the encounter we might have had in the 16th century.  I've always, ever since I was a little girl reading Laura Ingalls Wilder, imagined myself spending time with the people who have populated my imagination, so it's not surprising that I would have done the same with someone whose life work has had such a profound effect in mine.  

I wish I were a fiction writer but, sadly, I never get beyond four or five pages.  But here's what I think such a story would look like:

Let's make my father in the 1530s the same kind of man that he was in the 1950s: a small business owner (since we're talking 16th century England, we'll make him a textile merchant) with little interest in religion or, especially, in pomp and ceremony, but a passion for educating his children, girls and boys alike.

In a world in which some observance of Christian faith was expected, he might well have been drawn to the Anglican church emerging from Henry VIII's 1529 dissolution of his relationship with the Pope.  He would have understood Sir Thomas More and Cardinal John  Fisher to have been men of integrity and would have been dismayed by their executions in 1534, but he would have thrown in his lot with the Anglicans.  He might have liked the Book of Common Prayer, first published in 1549.  I doubt that he would have been much impressed by what he learned through his European business travels of John Calvin's theology of predestination, but he would have been attracted to the Reformers' ideals of less in the way of church hierarchy, their commitment to simplicity in worship, and their emphasis on preaching in lieu of ritual.

As for myself, I imagine a young woman much like Thomas More's daughter Margaret:  literate, educated, and aware of and interested in business and politics.  Since in my real life my mother died during my childhood, I would write the story of my 16th century self along the same lines, and see my fictional self by 1550 as a companion and assistant to my father, traveling with him on occasion and more knowledgeable about other European cultures and customs than many of my peers. I would have been comfortable among Jews and Catholics as well as Protestants, due to my exposure through my father's  work to worlds beyond my own.

Forward to 1553: Henry's daughter Mary ascends to the throne and, as a follower of her mother's Catholic faith, immediately turns the tables in England and institutes a determined persecution of the Protestants, which will continue until her death five years later, when Elizabeth, Henry's Protestant daughter, becomes queen.  At this point, my story takes a dramatic turn.  I imagine my father whisking us out of England for an extended business sojourn on the continent in order to elude Mary's henchmen, and I imagine that at some point in 1553 or the next year we find ourselves in Rome.

And I further imagine myself always intrigued, just as I am in my real life today, by different expressions of religious faith, by art, and by music, and wandering in and out of various churches in Rome, sometimes lingering for mass ~ and one day happening to attend a mass at which an intensely serious and yet radiant priest presides.   I would have asked around and learned that this priest was named Father Ignatius, and I would have been intrigued by the sense of God that his very person seemed to convey, and would have asked to meet with him.

And then what? Ignatius was very discriminating in discerning to whom to give the Exercises, wanting to be sure that someone was "ready," so I doubt that he would have extended that opportunity to me.  But I am a reasonably persistent person, so I imagine that we would have met for several conversations, and then continued to correspond until his death.  That scenario might sound a bit presumptuous, but in my real life, I made the Exercises with someone whose reputation would have completely intimidated me, had I known about it at the beginning, so I think that it would be fair to say that my 16th century self would have blundered ahead in the same way with Ignatius himself.  (I once asked my spiritual director, some years after the fact, why he had agreed to guide me through the Exercises, and he said, "Because you asked."  Desire, even the smallest tidbit of incipient desire, gets you a long way in Ignatian spirituality! But probably Ignatius himself would not have been quite so accommodating.)  And Jesuits, just as Ignatius was, are great correspondents, so I have that example upon which to rely in imagining a correspondence taking shape.

In real life, Ignatius died in 1556 and Mary, Queen of England, in 1558.  My father and I would have returned to Elizabeth's Protestant England and our family's drift toward a Puritan expression of faith would have commenced shortly thereafter.  Perhaps my fictional self would have had a descendant on the Mayflower, just as my real self had an ancestor aboard.  I like to think, however, that my fictional self, like my real self, would have experienced a deep and fruitful awakening of faith in conversation with the founder of the Society of Jesus.

Image: According to wikipedia, this is how a young woman of mid-16th century England might have looked!

Chapel of St. Ignatius - Seattle University

A church is not a building, or a sacramental space.  A church, or the church, is community being formed and shaped by Jesus Christ for transformation and witness.

Such were some of my thoughts this past week of vacation ~ when I finally got around to thinking about anything at all.

Nevertheless, I am passionately interested in sacred architecture.  And I wondered why I like this version so very much.  We all know that, to my way of thinking, Chartres Cathedral is the pinnacle of  church design and artistry.  But out here, here in north-central Ohio where I pastor, there are a number of nondenominational and semi-megachurches that might best be described, from an outdoor vantage point anyway, as verging on barn-like in design.  And so I have been required to give some thought to  a certain form of church architecture which I can most charitably describe as entirely without promise.

So why do I like this little hodge-podge of a chapel so much?  It possesses its own barn-like elements, along with a flavor of Zen and an intentionality toward the light and dark of spiritual consolation and desolation, none of which entirely converge. Although all things that rise must, according to Flannery O'Connor.

I suppose the pleasure I took in our visit there goes back to the matter of community.  I took one look at the IHS window and knew immediately that I was at home in a community shaped by Jesus Christ, a community whose 450-plus year old spiritual tradition has played a big part in the shaping of me.  I am apparently intrigued by and willing to accept almost any creative expression emerging threfrom,  because I feel the embrace of God when I stand in a space of its making.  It's the community and its prayer which endow the building with meaning, rather than the other way around.

(And yes, Ignatius of Antioch was a different Ignatius.  In case you were wondering.)

Invisible Children

  

The Dads, and the view from which Karen writes.

Karen Gerstenberger and I did not fall into one another's arms in tears. We spent a couple of hours together wandering her hometown and the beautiful beach on which she lives, chatting as any two women and their husbands might.  Well, almost any two women and their husbands. I suppose that we were on such easy terms because we both know intimately the deep sorrow that forms the backdrop of our lives, and have no need to explain ourselves to one another.

At one point, we talked about how grateful we are to have been able to give our children wonderful lives for the very short time that they were with us. I mentioned that a friend once criticized me for the time and money we invested in family travel when the kids were small.  "They won't remember it," she said.  My criteria had more to do with the joy of exploration and family cohesion in the then-present than with memory.  It would be beyond my capacity for words to express my gratitude for those trip and times together, now that I am left with some memories that are mine alone.  

Karen nodded and spoke fiercely when she said that she has told her husband, "She had the BEST childhood!  No regrets on that count."

A few minutes later, she noted how alike our families had been in our closeness.  "It's difficult to keep that alive when one of the members has become invisible," she added.

"I hadn't thought of them that way," I responded.  "But I suppose that that's what they are. Invisible."

A couple of years ago, while I was on retreat at Wernersville, I told BSSJ, my spiritual director, about a dream I had had in which the rest of us encountered Josh at a construction site on a Cleveland street corner.  He pushed back his hardhat, which revealed how very sunburned his fair skin was, jangled the work belt of tools that hung on his hips, and said he needed to get going.  Josh was always fascinated by architecture and building construction; the dream was so real that I spent several minutes after I woke up trying to get back to sleep, and to him.

B smiled and said, "Perhaps he's at work on some of those many mansions."

And I have to admit that, in that gentle response, he offered me the smallest sliver of hope concerning the continued life and activities of my invisible child.

Go back another year.  I was over at the Jesuit residence in Cleveland, talking to HGSG, spiritual director emeritus, and as I was leaving I asked if he would pray with me.  Among his words in response was a prayer for Josh, and a prayer that "Josh pray for his mother."  Now that would be a Catholic prayer.  Protestants tend to be leery of intercessory prayer by or for The Invisible Ones. Perhaps to a Catholic such words would be unremarkable, but  I thought, and still think, that it was one of the most beautiful prayers I have ever heard.  A quiet expression of confident hope that my invisible child lives to pray for and with me.

I suppose that many of my conversations have, in fact, veered out of the realm of ordinary. On the beach, at a retreat house, in a Jesuit sunroom: the Invisible Children are almost tangible.

Intrepid Gerstenberger Beach Kitty

Life Unexpected

Trying out an iPhone post:

Yesterday morning The Quiet Husband and I and Karen West and her husband walked a quiet beach encrusted with barnacles and concealing clams that squirt upward through the sand when you step on their territory, an experience we would not have had but for friendships created across cyberspace between parents who have children who, as Karen put it, have become invisible.

In the late afternoon, we visited the gracefully contemporary chapel at Seattle University where, as happens more often than you might think, the Presbyterian pastor found herself explaining The Spiritual Exercises to some other folks. (Hey, they asked.) None of that would have been within the scope of my imagination seven or eight years ago.

This afternoon we'll celebrate Father's Day with The Lovely Daughter's friends from Bellingham, thanks to her years at Willamette University, which were a direct consequence of Hurricane Katrina.

And in a couple of days, Gregarious Son is boarding a French naval surveillance ship in the Indian Ocean to observe an anti-piracy exercise.

I'm not sure which of all these events would have been the least predictable a decade ago.

Holy Week - Teilhard de Chardin

Five years ago, Josh and I spent much of Holy Week taking a little trip to celebrate his graduation from the University of Chicago a couple of weeks earlier.  We spent Monday at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.  Here's one of my blog posts describing that day:

 Space Window, Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul (Washington National Cathedral)

"Is the Christ of the Gospels, imagined and loved within the dimensions of a Mediterranean world, capable of still embracing and still forming the centre of our prodigiously expanded universe?"

~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.

Shifting Spirituality: God Our Mother

The maternal dimension of my life has been something of a disaster.  Mother, son, breast.  And lest you think I am veering toward the melodramatic, let me remind you:  Instant death in a car crash.  Suicide.  And now the carving up of my body, three times so far.

I haven't focused much on the feminine aspect of spirituality.  For one thing, I've never been surprised or perturbed by references to God as mother.  (All those years in girls' boarding schools, perhaps?) It's God as father that causes me some consternation.  I heard few references to God as father in my church home, but it was a consistent phrase in seminary, and is even moreso in the community in which I minister. Yesterday I was repeatedly distracted for the first hour of a presentation by the speaker's references to the Holy Spirit as "he."  But I try to let it go.  I recall my first spiritual director stating  one day in regard to another topic that he didn't want to say anything that would make it difficult to anyone to pray, and that seems a reasonable stance to me.  Of course, it requires me to overlook the endless invocations to "Father God" that make it difficult for me to pray.

For a second thing, my spiritual directors have all been men.  Jesuit priests.  Yes, I've needed father figures in my life, but they're also all brilliant and well-educated.  YEARS of education that I wish I had.   Give me a keen mind and a wide-ranging knowledge of literature, history, philosophy, psychology, and spirituality, and my religious little self is hooked.  I used to be a little bit circumspect in what I said because they are, after all, guys, but breast cancer has demolished what reserve I had.  Probably to their dismay. 

Interestingly, as Catholic guys, they may have more to offer in terms of feminine spirituality than even most women in my own branch of the church.  Catholics, after all, have Mary.  And all those saints.  And, I might add, it was a Jesuit who wrote to me when I was approved for ordination to say that he was praying  that the Holy Spirit would guide me to exactly the call she had in mind for me.

At any rate, these days I find myself experiencing what may be a major shift in my spiritual orientation.  The last couple of weeks have been hell, with my experience of aesthetic devastation now followed by the most unwelcome reality of whole-body pain, which I have a sinking suspicion has to do with a third surgical assault in a six-month period.  As a consequence, I find myself wondering much more about the feminine in the divine, or about the divine in feminine contexts.

I guess we'll see where she leads me.

Image: Julian of Norwich, who wrote about God Our Mother in the 14th century.

Girl Stuff and God Stuff

The title of this post is designed to warn away anyone who might be troubled by explicit breast cancer commentary -- although, in truth, I will not be very explicit.

Last night and this morning, several references have popped up online to Teilhard de Chardin's "Trust in the slow work of God . . ." prayer.  Longtime readers may recall that I used to pray with that one frequently when I was trying to discern whether to leave my settled life behind and go to seminary.  I've often referred to it as "The Grand Canyon Prayer" and, in fact, I typed it on the back of a little card that I made with a photograph of the Grand Canyon that I'd taken from an airplane on the other side.  I found humor in the realization that when I referred to "trusting in the slow work of God," I meant something like "give it three or four minutes," while Teilhard de Chardin, as a paleontologist, was most likely thinking more in terms of the time it took for the Grand Canyon to form. 

Add to the above:  yesterday's reflections on trying to see and understand the priorities of Jesus Christ.

Add to that: the Ignatian concept of "God in all things."

And then . . .  I am six days post surgery and I HATE the results.  I hate the way I look and feel. In reality, no one would know, once I am up and about, but I now loathe my body.  

Last night I explained to some of the women at church the procedures I have undergone and the pain they have caused.   They were curious and sympathetic, but their surprised reaction reminded me that in some ways, the realities of breast cancer are fairly unknown.  We talk to one another and to our families and to our doctors, but in the light of day we put on our clothes and go about our lives.  When I am preaching a sermon or celebrating communion or visiting someone in the hospital, I am not all about breast cancer.  Not on the surface. And I am sure that the same is true of a woman who is teaching a class, or arguing a case, or typing in her cubicle, or driving her kids to soccer practice.

So, I wonder, What am I supposed to do with this?

I have struggled so to give attention to the fact that I've had breast cancer.  Most of my challenges are about the death of my son; it's difficult, in light of that reality, to focus on anything else being wrong in my life.  I've worked hard not to let grief overtake everything else, and I have been greatly blessed by work that I love and the joy of sharing in the spiritual journeys of others.  But I really haven't had it in me to be much focused on breast cancer. That sounds strange, I know, when you think about the time and energy it's stolen.  But the reality is that I am much more engaged with other concerns.

Until now: Here I am.  Very much focused on an outcome that appalls me.  It's the middle of Lent.  I have a congregation filled with people who have major challenges of their own.  I have to preach three sermons this week.

And I have been dragged into an arena of self-obsession by an intractable problem that is going to require months more of attentiveness and no doubt more surgery and  physical discomfort to resolve.  All while I am called to pay attention to other people and other things.

The very slow work of God in all things, indeed.

(I keep posting these images of women looking out windows because I keep hoping that one of them will see something.)

Serendipity Kinds of Things (The Spiritual Exercises)

Yesterday a friend wrote about something unexpectedly wonderful.

And on the Ignatian Spirituality blog, someone posted about how there's always something good.

Well, no.  There isn't.  Sometimes things are unremittingly bad.

But unexpectedly wonderful things do happen.

There were three kinds of responses to my email hacking problem (plus the helpful ones about what to do), which sent evil links to everyone on my contact list.  A lot of the emails bounced back, thanks to spam and virus programs.  Most people figured out what was going on and deleted without comment.  And some people emailed to me ask me whether I'd been hacked.

One in the latter group was my very first Jesuit Jesuit spiritual director.  I sent back an explanation and then, realizing that we hadn't communicated in a couple of months, sent a short email filling him in on my life and asking about his.  He responded with a draft of an article on which he's working in which he talks, among other things, about the revitalization of the Spiritual Exercises in the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1960s he was a young Jesuit gaining much from that rethinking of the Exercises; forty-five years later he was passing the renewed tradition on to me.

(And in a humorous aside, one of my own directees commented, after finishing the Exercises, that she had told her friends that she had been sort of surprised by my approach and wondered how it could be called spiritual direction, although at the end she could see that it was effective.  "Oh, that's because I first learned how to do this from H!" I laughed.)

At any rate, I wrote back with a response to the article and how what he writes about has affected me, and he responded with a comment not-for-blogging, about how profoundly God has been active in my life, especially though these past few years. 

And I thought, Now that was a gift of my email having been hacked.

So yes, wonderful things do happen, even in the context of internet chaos and frustration.

The Daily Examen (Book Reviews)

Since the Ignatian Prayer Adventure for Lent (see previous post) begins tomorrow, this is an appropriate time to mention a couple of books that do a wonderful job of presenting a crucial spiritual practice that many people refer to, as the first title indicates, as life-changing: the examination of consciousness.  

I have to admit to being lax and erratic in this prayer practice myself, which is why I was grateful when my friend Wayne brought the Jim Manney book back to my attention a few weeks ago.  It's on my Kindle, I'd already read it . . . but for some reason the timing for renewal was just right.  And now Law and Gospel has returned from retreat with a review of the second book.  So, OK: you have my attention.

Most often referred to in the past as the examen of conscience, implying that at its heart is a look at matters of conscience, i.e., sin,  the examen has been re-thought and re-imagined in the past several years as the examen of consciousness, meaning:  It's a way by which we become conscious of how God has been present in our days, of when and where we have been close to God, been moving toward God, been aware of God, and when and where not.  In Ignatian terms, it's a way of becoming aware of God in all things.

The practice itself is simple, although different folks tend to emphasize different aspects.  Essentially, it incorporates a prayer to move into God's light, an expression of gratitude, a look at the events of the day, and a plea for help with what's coming tomorrow.  There is good reason to do it at the end of the day, but any time that works will do.  And while the formal examen itself might take no more than ten minutes, a daily practice is likely to result in a growth in examen-type awareness throughout the day.

Jim Manney's book has more of an instructional bent; the Linn book is more experiential and anecdotal.  They compliment one another well, and both are short, meaning that they are quick reads and easy to refer back to.

The Linns point out that "the criteria for hearing the voice of God, as Ignatius did, is not holiness, but rather the willingness to become aware."  If you've wondered about a more contemplative approach to prayer, about how to pray in a way that involves more in the way of looking and listening than speaking and imploring, the examen is a good place to start.

(And if you'd prefer an article over a book as a starting point, "Rummaging Backward Through Your Day" is another excellent introduction to this little but powerful practice.)

Writer (That's Me) Needs Help!

Some of you have been following my blogs for a long while, some for less ~ and I think that more than a few of you know something about writing for publication.

I'm ready to start seeking some broader outlets for my written work, and wonder whether any of you have some ideas:  agents, editors, publications?  Can you introduce me to anyone?

Here's what I have going on:

My major project involves transforming what was my Desert Year blog ~ and related posts in my other blogs ~ into a book.  As I blogged away during the first couple of years after Josh's death, my topics were varied and I wrote indiscriminately:  the suicide of a child, the grief of parental loss, the absence of God, pastoral care for bereaved parents, attempts to re-group, seminary and ordination in the wake of unfathomable loss.  

I think that I've finally got some focus and direction, a framework for revision of those many pieces of writing ~ but I would be really happy to find someone interested in publishing it!  Perhaps Lauren Winner has just done it better (!), but we all have our stories to tell.  My current version contains so much of  (1) Ignatian spirituality and (2) persistence in ministry despite catastrophe that I think a small religious publisher, Jesuit or Presbyterian (yes, my life is always one in which unusual combinations materialize), would be a likely destination for my work.  Any ideas?

I'm also starting to formulate some articles/essays/small books/whatever in my head on the interface between various Catholic and Protestant spiritualities.  That interface is where I live ~ an Ignatian-trained spiritual director/Presbyterian minister, a pastor of a federated Methodist-Presbyterian church, a Protestant who makes retreats with Jesuits. I know a little about Benedictine, Carmelite, and Ursuline spirituality and nothing much about the Domincans or Franciscans; I know something about Wesleyan and Reformed spiritualities but a lot more about that of Ignatius.  I'm working on broadening my exposure and knowledge, and I would love opportunities to make it all more accessible to others.

So, you published writers out there: Can you help?