IGNATIAN SPIRITUAL EXERCISES TRAINING (ISET)
2023-BLOCK ONE – SESSION 7
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS – PART 2
Russell: [00:00:00] So welcome everybody, once again to the screen, whatever time [00:01:00] of the day or night it is, wherever you find yourself. It’s good to be with you all once again.
Annemarie: So, we’re going to invite Doreen to lead us in prayer this evening. We’re going to just ask you Russell to co-host her.
Doreen: Welcome friends. If you like, you can turn off your videos now and let’s together, even more fully become aware of the presence of God together. Relax into your chair, perhaps empty your hands.
I want you to just let your face droop, shrug up your shoulders and just let them drop a [00:02:00] few times. Relax your legs, plant your feet, just take a few breaths. Breathe in deeply and let the air out and again.
Gracious father, we bring you our thoughts here and now. We bring you the thoughts that seem focused and we bring you the ones that are scattered [00:03:00] like guppies in a fishbowl darting here and there. God, we bring you the thoughts that seem productive to us and the ones that don’t. And we ask you to hold our thoughts for us, gracious Father. And Holy Spirit, Comforter, Guide, we bring you, our emotions. We bring you those that seem like they just pop up in rage at times. And we bring you the emotions that bring us warm comfort.
We bring you those that are fleeting those that we wish would stay [00:04:00] and those we wish would go, so Holy Spirit, wind of heaven, we bring you our emotions to hold and precious Jesus, Incarnate one, we bring you our bodies now.
We bring you our scattered senses—what we’re hearing, the images that flip through our minds that we have just seen, what we feel on our skin, we bring you, precious Jesus, our energy, and our [00:05:00] fatigue, and our aches and pains, you, brother, friend, you Lord and King, you felt them all and so we bring them now to you. Rest in you.
Listen now to the Word of God from [00:06:00] 2nd Corinthians 3 and 4, The Message—The Israelites here are on a journey. It’s a journey of discovery. They’re not just discovering a promised land; they’re discovering who God is, and who they are. This is what the Apostle Paul writes. Listen and notice what strikes you here.
Whenever they turn to face God as Moses did, God removes the veil, and there they are, face to face. They suddenly recognize that God is a living personal presence, not a piece of chiseled stone. And when God is personally present, a living spirit, that [00:07:00] old constricting legislation is recognized as obsolete.
We’re free of it. All of us. Nothing between us and God. Our face is shining with the brightness of his face. And so, we are transfigured. Much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like Him.
Since God has so generously let us in on what He is doing, we’re not about to throw up our hands and walk off the job just because we run into occasional hard times. We refuse to wear masks and play games. We don’t maneuver and manipulate behind the scenes. And we don’t twist God’s word [00:08:00] to suit ourselves.
Rather, we keep everything we do and say out in the open the whole truth on display so that those who want to concede and judge for themselves in the presence of God. If you only look at us, You might well miss the brightness. We carry this precious message around in unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives.
That’s to prevent anyone from confusing God’s incomparable power with us. As it is, there’s not much chance of that.
Far more than is here than meets the eye. [00:09:00] The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can’t see now will last forever.
I invite you now to keep your eyes closed and continue meditating where God has brought you already, or if you prefer [00:10:00] open your eyes and go deeper with just this one verse.
[Silence] [00:11:00] [00:12:00] [00:13:00]
We’ll end this time with a writing by Teilhard de Chardin:
Patient Trust
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time. .[00:14:00]
And so, I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.
[00:15:00] Trust in the slow work of God. Amen.
Annemarie: Amen. Thank you, Doreen. So, welcome everyone. This evening we’re going to do part two. Last week we had part one with Brenda, looking at those annotations. And we’re going to be doing part two, which is going to be a couple of the annotations and some of the additions. So once again, I hope that you’ve got your copy of the exercises to hand because we’re going to be using it extensively.
If you don’t have your copy of the exercises, please grab it now. I did also email you for those who don’t have Fleming’s version, an email copy of the [00:16:00] additions. So hopefully you’ve got that with you.
So, we’re going to start where Brenda left off last time. We’re going to start with the 14th edition annotation.
We’re going to be looking at numbers fourteen (14) to sixteen (16) first. And those are very important ones because they have to do particularly, not exclusively, but very much with the time of the election—that key point in the exercises where a significant decision may be made by the person who is engaging in the retreat.
So, it’s kind of the key point in some senses very often for the exercises; certainly, a critical point because when a big decision is going to be made, obviously that’s going to have an impact, a huge impact on the person’s life going forward. So, Ignatius is very careful to try and give us some [00:17:00] help around that particular moment in the exercises.
These that I’m talking about from fourteen (14) to sixteen (16), when you get to the time of the election, you want to really be just making sure you reread them, that you’re aware of them as you guide the person. But of course, these are important right the way through.
I’ve given a little sentence you’ll see next to each one of them, which is a kind of a crib note—”How do you sum up this particular annotation in just a sentence?” And I’m hoping that you’ll at least learn the crib notes so that you’ve got them in your mind and when you are directing, you’ve got that sentence to just jog your memory. And then you’d think, yeah, that’s one I need to go back to at this point.
So, we’re going to look at that with the 14th annotation. I’ve put there a kind of summing [00:18:00] up of that one as uses caution and careful discernment in times of consolation and fervor, especially because to run ahead of grace, says Ashenbrenner, is not generosity, but foolishness. Okay, so I’m going to ask if someone could read us that 14th annotation, someone who’s got their book in front of them if you wouldn’t mind.
Great, Olga.
Olga: When we are uplifted by consolation or fervor so that we desire to make great plans or to pronounce some sort of vow, the director needs to provide some caution. The director should respect our idealism, but at the same time, for our own good progress, the director must be able to weigh the graces of God along with the natural endowments of personality, character, and intelligence, all gifts, all God’s gifts to us. [00:19:00]
Annemarie: Okay. So, what’s really important here is that Ignatius is aware that in the context of the retreat, we can have a situation in which the retreatant is really stirred by grace. There’s a deep sense of fervor, of consolation, and sometimes that can lead to the person being tempted to make a decision that is not what God wants for them, a kind of precipitous, over quick decision. And It’s very, very important, particularly when a permanent decision is going to be made. So, when he’s talking about a vow, the reason he goes on about vows is partly because he’s living in a context in a culture where this whole thing of vows is very central, but it applies to any major long-term decision, particularly ones that have some kind of permanency about them.
The director needs [00:20:00] to act as a kind of a “slower downer,”—if there were such a thing, if one could say that grammatically—to just help the person to slow down a little bit and to really listen to what God is saying and not to just rush into something that may not be right for them.
Michael Ivens talks about this being particularly important when there are three different things going on—when there is strong emotion involved. When there’s a lot of spiritual consolation, obviously there’s strong emotion, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it can throw one a little bit off balance or center; where there is an unstable personality or someone who’s a little bit ungrounded; and when there’s a choice that you can see the person is making that you think is unlikely to succeed. So that’s another kind of aspect. If you can see that they are thinking about some grand plan, which sounds very [00:21:00] unlikely to be possible. The example of somebody saying, “Well, I’d like to go and be a missionary in China and I’m going to sell my house and I’m going to move and I’m going to apply to go there,” but they’ve never actually learned Mandarin and they don’t have any contacts in China. Well, it doesn’t matter how consoled they might feel in that moment, you as the director need to help them to slow down because it’s very possible that may not be what the Holy Spirit is inviting that person to.
At the same time Ivens says, we also need to recognize that deep spiritual consolation, that sense of profound grace can enable in people some very powerful capacities that they might not otherwise have. So, you don’t want to just write off something as being beyond what is possible, but you want to help the person to really stay with it and discern it very, very carefully.
So, the director is to act [00:22:00] as a kind of a ballast—to give that person the weightiness of that calm, strong space of just caution, a kind of an anchor point. And this annotation is linked to the rules for discernment in the second week. When we come to look at those rules we’ll see that—that people can be deceived by apparent consolation.
So, the bad spirit can give consolation to the person as a way of trying to draw them away from God, as a way of trying to get them to make a decision that ultimately is not going to be for the greater glory of God and for their deepest fulfillment and growth in their life with Christ.
You might also remember that the eighth rule in the rules for the discernment of spirits more appropriate for the second week, also talks about a kind of consolation in the afterglow, so that [00:23:00] sometimes there can be an experience of great consolation and grace, and the person makes a decision shortly after that, which they see as coming out of that consolation, but which is actually not directly involved with that consolation, but it’s an add on. It’s an after effect. It’s something that happens in the afterglow. So, you want him to be quite careful around that as well. So, there we have number fourteen (14).
Okay. So, number fifteen (15), the 15th annotation. So, here is my little summary of the 15th annotation. God is the true director, and we want to allow the creator to deal directly with the creature. Okay—so, a director always is to provide a kind of balance for the person. I want someone to read that one for [00:24:00] me—number 15—is there someone there that will read that for us?
Maria: I could read it.
Annemarie: That’d be great, Maria. Thank you.
Maria: A director always provides the balance for us, both in our times of exhilaration and of discouragement. The director is not the one who urges a particular decision, for example, to enter religious life, to marry this or that person, or to take a vow of poverty. The director facilitates the movement of God’s grace within us so that the light and love of God inflame all possible decisions and resolutions about life situations. God is not only our Creator, but also the director of our retreat, and the human director never should provide a hindrance to such an intimate communication.
Annemarie: Thank you, Maria. I also want to just [00:25:00] read you some of the literal version of that one, because I think it’s got some language there that also helps us to understand it. And the piece of the literal version is this—”so that the one giving the exercises should not turn or incline to one side or another but standing in the center like a balance should lead the creator to act immediately or directly with the creature and the creature with its creator and Lord.” So, it’s very old-fashioned sort of language. But it’s a, got a lovely kind of feel to it, the creator and the creature God—the creator, and we are God’s creature. And there is something very fundamental about this annotation.
It is one that is critically important at the time of the election, because you don’t want to push or nudge or influence the person towards [00:26:00] one option rather than to the other. You want to leave them free to be moved by God’s grace, not by what you think. And you can think back to, one can imagine the time that Ignatius was working in where he was getting these Jesuits to take people through the exercises. And they were a growing community. And you can imagine the temptation that might’ve been there for some of those early directors who wanted people to become Jesuits and so perhaps when they were listening to the person talk about their spiritual experience and their prayer experience, they might emphasize any movement that seemed to be leaning towards them wanting to become a Jesuit. So, he was very strong on being very careful to stay as that anchor point, as that place of balance, so that the person could be left free to really be moved by God.[00:27:00]
This really arises out of Ignatius’s experiences. If you think back to what we reflected on with Russell earlier in the block, we looked at what happened to him, particularly at his time in Loyola, where he had that experience in his convalescence, but even more so in Manresa, where he had those illuminations, those very profound spiritual experiences and what he discovered in that was that God worked very directly with him. When he was really open to God’s grace, open to listening, God taught him as a schoolmaster teaches a child, that there was something about that intimacy and that immediacy, which was so critically important in Ignatius’s own journey, and he wants that for the one making the exercises. He wants the director to trust that [00:28:00] God is at work and God is the one who is directing, and not to get in the way, not to put one’s own agenda into this mix at all, but to trust that God is the one who is going to lead this person in the way that God knows this person needs to be lead.
Michael Ivens puts it this way—he says, “essentially, the role of the director is to accompany the exercitant towards a relationship between God and the creature into which another person must not intrude.” Now, this particular annotation was challenged and criticized a lot by those who weren’t too sure about Ignatius.
You remember, we heard that Ignatius was put into jail a number of times. He was imprisoned by the inquisitors in the time when they were really trying to make sure that all that was being taught theologically was correct. [00:29:00] And this, for them, snapped of what they called Illuminism—the idea that one could have direct access to God. People weren’t too happy about that—
some of the religious authorities. They wanted to be the ones through the church and through rules and through all that kind of stuff to mediate that and so they got quite anxious around this kind of idea that Ignatius had that God can deal directly and intimately with the person.
So that’s number fifteen (15). Very important. I hope you’re going to remember all of them, but if you only remember two, please remember number five (5). Can anyone tell me what number five (5) was about? Last week, last time, number five (5)?
Melanie: Being open and generous towards God.
Annemarie: Yes. Thank you, Melanie. Yes. Okay. To be open and generous, to come with that stance and this one, to let the creator deal [00:30:00] directly with the creature. They are the most critical in terms of the stance in relation to the exercises.
And then we get to the 16th annotation. So, I’ve summed it up there as seek and pray for indifference, for freedom from inordinate attachments. Freedom is that big word that we keep coming back to because the exercises are all about freedom—freedom to be moved in the way that God desires to move us.
Can someone read us the 16th annotation, please?
Elizabeth: I can read it, Annemarie.
Annemarie: Thanks Elizabeth.
Elizabeth: If we feel a disorder in our attachment to a person, to a job or position, to a certain dwelling place, a certain city, country, and so on, we should take it to the Lord and listen insistently, I’m sorry (clears throat) and pray insistently to be given the grace [00:31:00] to free ourselves from such disorder. What we want above all is the ability to respond freely to God and all other loves for people, places, and things are held in proper perspective by the light and strength of God’s grace.
Annemarie: Wonderful. Thanks, Elizabeth. It’s interesting. Number sixteen (16) in the contemporary version, which Elizabeth has read for us is much shorter and much less complex than it is in the more literal version. There are a couple of elements in the more modern version that maybe don’t come through quite as strongly. So, I’m going to just read a piece of the old version to you as well. It says, “If it happens that the soul is attached or inclined to a thing inordinately, that one should move himself, putting forth all his strength to come to the contrary of what he is wrongly drawn to; thus, if he inclines [00:32:00] to seeking and possessing an office or benefits, not for the honor and glory of God our Lord, nor the spiritual well-being of souls, but for his own temporal advantage and interests, he ought to excite his feelings to the contrary, being instant in prayers and other spiritual exercises, and asking God our Lord for the opposite. Namely, not to want such an office or benefits or any other thing, unless the divine majesty putting his desires in order, change his first inclination for him so that the motive for desiring or having one thing or another be only for the service, honor, and glory of the divine majesty.”
That’s quite a mouthful and it’s actually saying something pretty simple. It’s saying, if the retreatant finds themselves inordinately attached to a particular option that they are trying to discern between two options, for example, they ought to pray to want the opposite of what they naturally want—so as to [00:33:00] kind of bring things back into alignment or balance.
So, if I’m praying about—I’m making up a thing now whether to immigrate to [and this is making it up, it’s not a true thing] New Zealand or to stay in South Africa and I really, really want to stay in South Africa, then I must ask to want to go to New Zealand. So, it’s kind of an interesting thing called agere contra, to lean against my natural inclination, ask the opposite, not because I want to be taken to the opposite, but to bring it into a place where I want both equally or I’m open to equally so that God can lead me the way that God wants me to go. So, it’s quite an interesting kind of strategy that Ignatius offers us there.
[00:34:00] It really brings us to this idea of Ignatian indifference—indifference not meaning I don’t care, but indifference meaning my love for God is such that everything else falls into a kind of proper perspective.
Everything else is less important than that core thing, which is my love for God. So, when indifference is lacking and the person is clinging to a particular option, they should pray to want its opposite. So, it’s really about allowing our motives and our desires to be purified and ourselves to be brought to that place of indifference from which we are in a good position to enter into that discerning process in the election.
Okay, and we’re on to the last annotation we’re going to be dealing with, which is number seventeen (17). So, my little summary there, be open with the director about consolations and desolations, [00:35:00] that they may help us to discern God’s action and God’s invitation. Okay, could someone read us the full version, please? Number 17. Maria, did you offer again to read that? You’re welcome.
Maria: We are aware that the retreat director, even if a priest, is not necessarily our confessor. It is not essential for the director to know our past sins or even our present state of sin. At the same time, however, the attempt to speak out our temptations and fears, the consolations, and lights given to us by God and the various movements that happen within us provides most important data for the direction of our retreat.
For as we speak out what is happening to [00:36:00] us, the director can listen, mirror back to us, enlighten, and adapt the progress of the retreat according to the way we are being stirred by God to make our response. Without this openness between ourselves and our director, the retreat itself will not be able to be adapted and focused so as to facilitate the growth possible for us.
Annemarie: Thank you, Maria. So, we have there two key points. The first one is the importance of being open with the director. So again, he’s trying to really help us to understand the importance of that relationship between director and directee, and that openness is particularly critical with regard to the interior movements that are going on in the person.
The consolations, the desolations, the absence of consolation and [00:37:00] desolation; those are the things that the director is to help the person to interpret or to understand better. The interior movements that occur in the retreatant, during the retreat, which is a very intense time, need to be traced back to their source. Are they coming from the good spirit or are they coming from the bad spirit? What is their origin? And in order to know and to help the person to discern the leading of God in the retreat, the director needs the person to share honestly and openly what’s been going on in the prayer and what their interior responses and reactions have been towards that. So, that is critical.
There’s also a distinction made between the role of the confessor and the giver of the exercises, and that’s quite critical in that context, because in the context of Ignatius’s time, [00:38:00] most of the people who would have been making the exercises would have probably been coming from a Roman Catholic background. The only concept, really, of talking about the life of faith with one other person would be in the experience of the sacraments of reconciliation or confession. And so, people might be wondering, well, you know— what is the difference between the openness I have in confession and the openness I would have with the director? And he just tries to just clarify that a little bit, that in the context of the exercises, it’s not so much the person’s sins that the director would be interested in, as these movements of consolation and desolation, whereas someone going to confession, the confessor is not so much interested in that, they’re more interested in the conscious failings of that person to follow God.
So, he’s just trying to make a little distinction there. But it’s really not that important. What’s most important is [00:39:00] this thing about openness—openness in terms of interior movements.
Now when we looked at the ways of making the exercises, Adri-Marie spoke with us about the 18th, the 19th and the 20th annotations. So we’ve already done those, so we’re not going to do those again, but you can see where they come. They come just after the ones we’ve done now. So, all of those annotations are really about helping us with those little notes, those anotaciones to understand the wisdom, the guidance, the advice that Ignatius has for anyone who is embarking on this journey and for us who are embarking on accompanying the person on the journey.
So, then we come to something else before we get to The Additions. We come to something called The Presupposition. It’s a nice fancy word, so you can sound very fancy when you [00:40:00] talk in Ignatian circles about The Presupposition, which is actually a really simple thing, but if you go to paragraph 22 in your little book, you will find it.
It comes just after number 21, which is the heading that tells us what the spiritual exercises are, and Trevor talked us through that earlier in this block, when he spoke about the purpose of the spiritual exercises—that’s paragraph 21—that long title of the exercises, and then paragraph 22 is The Presupposition. My little summary is put a generous interpretation on what the other says. There needs to be mutual respect and rapport between director and directee. So, can someone read that for us? Paragraph 22.
Melanie: I can read it. This is Melanie.
Annemarie: Okay. Thanks, Melanie.
Melanie: [00:41:00] For a good relationship to develop between the retreatant and the director, and for the greater progress of the retreat, a mutual respect is very necessary. This may be especially true in areas of scriptural and theological presentation. Every good Christian adopts a more positive acceptance of someone’s statement rather than a rejection of it out of hand. And so, a favorable interpretation by the director or by the retreatant should always be given to the other’s statement and confusions should be cleared up with Christian understanding. So too, if actual error seems to be held, an attempt at a better interpretation should be made so that a more correct understanding may develop.
Annemarie: Thanks, Melanie. Remember that Ignatius is writing these exercises at the time of the Reformation where there is a lot of conflict going on between Christians who have different [00:42:00] theological perspectives and theological understandings and frames of reference, and his sense around spiritual conversation and particularly in the context of the exercises is that there needs to be a foundational attitude of openness and generosity, not just as we saw in annotation five (5), in terms of how the retreatant approaches the retreat, but there also needs to be openness and generosity between the giver of the exercises and the one making the exercises.
There needs to be a trust, a sense that both of them are trying to understand what the other is saying. And if the other shares something that jars, not immediately closing down or disagreeing, but allowing there to be space to gently try to understand—What is the other person saying? What is the director really asking of me [00:43:00] here?
Or in the case of the director listening to the retreatant, let me not just jump to what I think the retreatant is saying, but to generously and with curiosity and openness and respect, listen to try and sense what it is that’s going on for them. And that’s very, very important that there’s that kind of openness and generosity between the director and the directee. So be quicker to put a generous interpretation on what the other is saying than a negative one. Okay.
So now we’re going to move on to something a little bit different. We’re going to move on to something called The Additions. It’s a bit of an odd name, I have to say. I’m not sure that it particularly helps me, but I guess Additions because they are extra things that Ignatius is suggesting that might help the retreatant to make the exercises better. So, they are helps for making the exercise well. [00:44:00]
So, these are found in your text. At the end of the first week, you get the first batch of them, okay? From paragraph 73 to paragraph 90 is the first batch of The Additions. And then there are some modifications to the editions that come in the second week, the third week, and the fourth week. So, there’s a kind of an initial batch given and then he says, but yeah, we need to tweak this when we get to the second week and some of them have to be changed a little bit. When we get to the third week, some of them have to be changed a little bit and you’ll understand why, hopefully in a moment or two.
Ignatius has this very strong understanding of the person as being a whole person—that we are influenced by everything. We’re influenced by our thoughts, our imagination, our [00:45:00] will, our emotions, but we’re also influenced by our environment, by the impact of the environment on our thoughts, on our feelings, on our bodies, and that everything comes into the process of the exercises journey. So, we also want to make sure that the environment and the processes that we use support this opening to God.
So, he offers some suggestions that we might use, but we need to listen to these suggestions with a number of things in mind, with a number of filters. The first one is Ignatius makes most of these suggestions in the context of the 30-day enclosed retreat. They mostly have to be a little bit adapted, some of them anyway, in the context of the retreat in daily life.
He also is doing it in his own era, and we have to maybe think about what works in our context and in our time. So, we’re back to that principle of fidelity to [00:46:00] the text and at the same time, we’re holding alongside that the creativity and the application to our own situation and to this particular retreatant who is sitting in front of me right now. So, what I might offer to one retreatant, I might offer differently, completely differently to another one.
There was an elderly monk who Trevor knows well, that gave Trevor the exercises, I think, if I’m not mistaken who was from Community of the Resurrection, Father Andrew Norton, and he was very strong on this. He used to talk about it as the Principle of Harmony, that everything should work together to support the mood or the atmosphere of a given week of the exercises and to help us in asking for those graces. So, it’s kind of a little bit of extra fire, a little bit of extra umph that we get from these Additions.
[00:47:00] Just to take a step back for a moment, the purpose of The Additions is to mobilize the whole person in the search for the divine will. So, they’re designed to help the person to make the exercises better and to find what they desire, to become free from inordinate attachments.
They also help the person to integrate into the exercises the time outside of formal prayer. So, there are certain key prayer periods, but there are some additions that are also designed to be about the time between the periods of prayer. Those times also need to be suffused with a sense of where we are in the exercises process.
So, each of these additions is a kind of distillation of the knowledge that Ignatius himself gained through his own experiences at Manresa and in his journey.
You’ll remember he went in for some very intense penances at [00:48:00] that time. He was trying to help with fasting and with various kinds of penances to focus himself around the search for God. He sees these things as learnings that are important that he’s kind of put into these additions and he sees the additions as so important, that he expects the person every day to take note of whether they’ve actually been faithful to the additions or not. So, it’s one of the things he asks the retreatant to do a particular examen around, and we’ll talk more about particular examen in due course. But it’s something he wants the director to check in with the person about. He wants the person themselves to be checking in at the end of the day. Have I been faithful to these various things?
Okay, so Ignatius has put these, this first lot of additions at the end of the first week, but they are to be given to the person as they are helpful, and [00:49:00] most of these you would start giving as early as the disposition day, some of these—certainly numbers one (1) to five (5)—which are about helping the person to pray and to enter into prayer.
The first and second editions—you will find this in paragraph 73 if you want to turn to that part of your text. The first edition or edition one (1)—”As I go to bed, I briefly recall the content about which my prayer will center on the following day, and I ask God’s blessings on my efforts this coming day.”
And number two (2) is on waking. So, there’s one on going to sleep and one when you wake up in the morning. “When I wake up, I should not let my thoughts roam at random. But once again, I should recall the direction of this whole day’s prayer and ask for God’s continual help. Insofar as I’m able, I will find it helpful to keep myself in this recollected state all the while I dress.”
I must say that second one, [00:50:00] it makes me smile a little bit as I’m thinking of a directee who has two small children, both toddlers, and told me it was absolutely impossible to keep themselves recollected in the state, in the mood of her retreat while the kids were screaming and wanting things and she was trying to get dressed, but insofar as it is possible.
So, before you go to bed at night, just remember what’s happening and what it is you’re going to be praying about the next day. When you wake up, immediately, maybe before you even get out of bed, encourage the person to remember what it is that I’m going to be praying about today. The importance of this is to stay with the mood of the retreat and to almost oil the wheels to get myself into the right frame of mind as I’m entering into the space.
Then we get number three (3)—looking at God, looking at me is my summary of it. I’m going to send you an article by Rob Marsh about it called Looking at God, Looking at [00:51:00] Me which goes into this in some depth. It’s very, very important. “A step or two before the place where I have to concentrate or meditate, I will put myself standing for the space of an Our Father, my intellect raised on high, considering how God our Lord is looking at me, and I will make an act of reverence and humility.”
So, it’s coming into that space and being aware that God is already there, and God is gazing on me, looking at me, and to become aware of the relationality of the space—that I’m stepping into this connectedness with God and that that is how I come into it. It is what we sometimes call the act of the presence of God and people do this in different ways.
He uses the little word there, et cetera. And we’ve pointed this out a number of times before. It may be that not that I think of how God is looking at me, but might be, what is the tone of voice as Jesus welcomes me into the [00:52:00] space. What is the feeling that I have? That can depend on the person’s dominant representational pathway.
Okay. You’ll read more about this as you go through. I’m going through it quite quickly because I’m aware that we have limited time.
The fourth edition is about bodily posture. Okay. So, this edition talks about the fact that we need to pay attention to how we’re sitting or lying or standing or walking as we pray, and if you find a posture that is working for you, stay with it. Don’t change it. If it’s working for you to lie prostrate, stay with it. If it’s working for you to kneel or to sit or whatever it is, you shouldn’t change it as long as it’s helpful because very often people midway through the prayer get tempted—you know, every 10 minutes or so—oh, I’m not sure about this sitting thing.
I’m going to try standing or I’m going to try walking. And it actually doesn’t allow the space to settle into a [00:53:00] particular posture as you’re praying. I think Ignatius has this very holistic perspective. He recognizes we’re incarnational beings. He recognizes the importance of posture.
The fifth edition is about review of prayer and we’re all familiar with review of prayer. Here Ignatius is saying it’s important to help the person you are accompanying to make a review of prayer, not just to write down what were the insights of the last hour or what happened in the last hour, but more importantly, what were the movements of consolation and desolation? What was going on inside of me in terms of inner movements? and to also have a sense of, yeah, was I attentive in my prayer time? It’s often helpful to get people to move somewhere else, to do that review of prayer in a different place rather than to let the prayer meld into the review of prayer.
The review is also done in reference to the [00:54:00] grace that was sought. So, remember at the beginning of the prayer, it’s very important to ask for the grace. You must get the person to ask the grace. So, at the end of the prayer, did I receive the grace? Get the person to just reflect on that and how was that colloquy?
The review is also important because it helps the person to prepare for the next time of prayer and identify possible material for repetition, for going in deeper. So that’s another key thing. It’s also a good time to encourage the person to journal—to write down some of these insights so that when they come to see you for their session, they have got a written record of what’s been going on.
So hopefully you’ve read all of these. I did ask you to read them before we started because there’s just such a lot of material, but I encourage you to go back and read the whole one again as well.
Then we have Editions six (6) to nine (9) and six (6) to nine (9) are all about helps for sustaining the [00:55:00] climate of the exercises throughout the day. Now this batch from six (6) to nine (9), because they are at the end of the first week, and they’re designed to be used during the first week, are all appropriate for the first week of the exercises—when we’re praying on the sin of the world, we’re praying on our own sin and our own brokenness—and these are the ones that are going to get modified down the line. Those earlier ones that we’ve spoken about prayer, those stay consistent the whole way through. But these ones change the rest.
Okay, the sixths. I’ve summed it up as stay where you are in the exercise’s dynamic and don’t try to escape it. Okay. That’s the thing about don’t jump ahead. So, “in regard to myself during the first week, it’s important that I keep my attention on the matter at hand,” says this edition, “and not subtly seek for ways to escape and relieve the awfulness of sin, which may be building up [00:56:00] within me. I do not dwell on things which could give me joy and pleasure, whether friends, occupations, music, food, or anything else. I keep my attention focused on the serious side of life.”
So, it’s basically saying keep the mood of the retreat dynamic. Okay. Try and keep in that frame of reference. It’s a solemn time. It’s a serious time. It’s time to be focused on those kinds of things and that’s very important in the 19th annotation as well. It’s also about not jumping ahead. Someone might, to use an extreme example, say, “I’m actually enjoying thinking about and reading a great book on the resurrection at the moment. Okay. No, we’re not at the resurrection. We’re in the first week. Stay with the material of the first week and don’t be tempted to go and do other things that allow me to escape that.
The seventh is about attending to the physical environment. “During the exercises of the first [00:57:00] week, I may find it conducive to a deeper entrance into the mystery of sin and evil by setting my prayer periods in places which are dark and deprived of light, keeping my room dark, taking advantage of the dimness of a chapel or church. In general, I restrict my movements during this week, avoiding the pleasantness of sun and the beauties of nature, the better to focus on the darkness and loathsome-ness of sun.
So, while you might encourage someone in the Principle and Foundation or in the time of the fourth week to spend time in nature and to enjoy the beauties of creation, when the person is in the first week, you want them rather to be keeping the physical environment in sync with the material of the first week.
I know that one person I once took through the 30-day retreat really took that very seriously. They kept their curtains closed the whole time they were praying in the first week and they found it very significant, very helpful. [00:58:00] Attending to the physical environment may be really important. Obviously, you can’t do that if you’re living at home and you say to your husband, I’m so sorry, but we’re keeping the curtains closed for the entire next few weeks because I’m making the exercises. That’s not going to work. So, you might have to be creative and think of another way of doing something that might be similar.
The eighth, not seeking occasions for laughter or frivolity. “I do not try to find occasion to laugh, knowing how often laughter can be an attempt to escape from the uneasiness of a situation.” Ignatius is really not wanting us to escape from the depth of this experience, the graces of this experience. Don’t go and watch a comedy at the movie theater or whatever in the middle of the first week, because it jars with the movement of what you’re doing. Obviously, you don’t want to be walking around serious and never able to smile at someone if you’re doing it in everyday life, because that’s not [00:59:00] natural. Maybe you will laugh. Someone’s going to tell a joke. You can’t say I’m not going to laugh because I’m in the first week, but it’s not going out of your way to look for things like parties or movies or whatever that would jar.
The ninth, not seeking distractions. It’s the same kind of thing. It also talks about keeping a certain modesty of the eyes. It’s very much coming out of that era looking down, not trying not to be disturbed or distracted or have your focus taken away, but you can get the gist of this. The gist is saying, once we enter into this time of retreat, every part of our life, not just the designated period of prayer needs to try and follow the same mood, the same feeling that we want to maintain an internal attitude of readiness so that when we come to prayer, it’s easier for us to step into the prayer. We’ve not been on a completely different tangent. [01:00:00] We’ve had that on the back burner simmering the whole time. It’s been there with us.
Okay, so the last one, the 10th, I’m not going to go into much at all. It’s a very long one.
You can see it goes many paragraphs because we’ll look at it when we get to the first week. It’s all about penance and appropriate penance. And so, to sum it up, basically Ignatius is inviting the person in the first week to deny themselves something or to do something that kind of concretizes a sense of desire for that repentance and that grace of sorrow and that can be a helpful thing to do in the light of that. We’re going to have to look at how that would work in a modern context.
So, I’m also not going to go into the adjustments to the additions too much, but you will see when you look at the second week, the third week and the fourth week, [01:01:00] obviously, some of these are not going to apply.
This thing in the first week about, darkness and keeping your environment in line with the first week. Well, when you get to the second week or to the fourth week, you might want to fling those windows open, put flowers in on your table, play happy music. You are wanting to shift things again in a way that’s in line with the mood of the retreat and we’ll come to each of these modifications when we get to that part of the exercises.
Okay, I’m going to just say one more thing and then we’re going to stop. So, you need to think creatively about adapting the additions. In the residential retreat context, you might do something like not serve cakes and desserts during the first and the third weeks of the exercises but serve plenty of them in the fourth week. Maybe even have a picnic outside in the fourth week and put the tables outside in the retreat center. You think about what kind of music you’re going to play.
When you’re doing the retreat [01:02:00] in daily life, you think about what sort of reading material the person is using outside of the exercises, what kind of TV programs they might be watching whether it’s appropriate in the first week to go and visit some sites of injustice, whether you want to get an enclosed space for the person in the third week, perhaps in the third week, they carry a cross with them in their pocket, a holding cross just to remind them. So, you really need to be creative and to just see what is going to be helpful.
I am going to stop right there although there’s plenty more that one could say, we’ve run out of time, but I think that gives you a kind of a sense of what I hope additions are about. I’m going to ask Adri-Marie if she’ll put the questions for reflection into the chat for us and we’re going to pause in a moment, give you time for a little break until 20 past the hour and then we will come back into our small [01:03:00] groups. Adri will put those up in the chat so if you don’t have them on your sheet, or you don’t have your sheet in front of you, you can look at those. So, thank you and we’ll see you at 20 past the hour.
[Break]
Annemarie: So welcome back, and I hope that we can have a good brainstorm and chat around these Annotations and Additions now that we’ve done a good chunk of them. So, I’m wondering what was surfacing in your groups and what you might like to share with the bigger group [01:04:00] this evening. Learnings, questions, wonderings—bright ideas—we could all use some good ideas for the Additions and the Annotations. Maddie, it’s fine and then I’ll come to Rhonda.
Maddie: Okay.
Annemarie: Sorry, I couldn’t see you there.
Maddie: One thing that I am wondering about is the 70 through to 77, the before you go to bed, when you get up in the morning, the doorway—it just, to me, it felt a lot and it felt very overwhelming. I did what was right for me. So, I love the doorway, but it just felt overwhelming and I’m just so aware of people being so used to, “Well, you have to do this, this, this,” right in what we’re taught in church.
[01:05:00] So I just feel some tension in paying attention to who I’m meeting with. And if this is actually keeping him in that space of the rules versus following what the Spirit is inviting you into.
Annemarie: I think that’s a really important observation, Maggie. You also don’t want to be offering these things all in one go. We’ve got a whole period of the introductory days, the disposition days, where you’re really slowly going to invite the person more and more into an Ignatian way of praying. And so, I think it’s something about almost wanting to lay some of that groundwork, even before you get to the Principle and Foundation or to the exercises proper.
So, I wouldn’t offer them all in one go. I wouldn’t say this is number one, number two, number three, [01:06:00] just very gently over time. So it might be that the first time that I meet with someone I might not talk about any of them. Over the next two weeks. I might start to introduce the idea of something about the grace, which is a part of the prayer, which doesn’t involve any of the Annotations and Additions per se.
And as we move on, you know, this whole thing of looking at God, looking at me might be another two or three weeks of introducing that. So, I think you have to really slowly and incrementally offer it and offer it in a way that Is about saying to people this is something that might really help you to stay in the flow Try it out. See how it goes. It might feel a little bit tricky at first, almost like learning to drive a car where you’re trying to remember the different sequence to get into, but over time it becomes much [01:07:00] more natural.
But I also think it’s about starting where the person is, and I’m not sure what church context people that are coming to you are in but, understanding and asking them how do you normally pray? What’s the way that you find helpful to enter into prayer and to allow them to do what’s helpful for them, but maybe to start making additional suggestions as it fits.
So, you don’t want it to be a kind of list of things that are “to do’s” that have to be ticked off, but rather a kind of evolving way of, yeah, things that over time Ignatius and people who’ve made the exercises have found often are quite helpful and you can kind of introduce it that way, saying, you know, as we’re entering into these exercises—kind of Trevor’s thing of having Ignatius in the room with one and saying, you know, Ignatius says it can often be really helpful to do [01:08:00] this thing of thinking about what you’re going to be praying about the night before and maybe you could give it a go and see how that is for you.
So, I don’t know if that’s helpful, but that would be my kind of way of approaching it. Does that resonate for you at all?
Maddy: Yeah, it does. I think what for me is different is that when I did the 19th annotation, my director just started me in O’Brien’s book, and we just started at week one and what I’m hearing from you is something entirely different.
Like, hey, you just have introduction sessions for a while for the retreatant to understand what we’re doing, I think and so I have to step off of what I’m used to.
Annemarie: Yes.
Maddy: And so, in that sense it’s helpful and I’m learning.
Annemarie: Do you prefer to be called Maddy or Maddy Christine, is that your whole name?
Maddy: MaddyChristine is my whole name, but it doesn’t matter. [01:09:00]
Annemarie: Okay. Okay. It’s very beautiful. What I’m just thinking is it’s very different because what we’re trying to do here is to kind of help you to be able to take different people into the journey in a way that is tailored to that person and it goes with it very, very slowly. So, in a way, no set program, no matter how good it is, and I think there’s some really good ones out there, and O’Brien would be one of the really helpful resources can do that.
It really has to be the director and the directee in that engagement with one another. As the director listens to the person that helps them to enter in the way Ignatius was hoping. So yeah, you want to move really slowly and we’re going to come to a whole section on the disposition days, the introductory days, and how to lead people in that in I think two sessions time. So, we’ll unpack that quite a bit more then. That’s a really helpful [01:10:00] question. Thank you, Maddy.
So, then we had Rhonda, I think, who wanted to say something.
Russell: Anne Marie!
Annemarie: Sorry. Yes, Russell.
Russell: I just want to throw something else into the pot, which I think is important and that’s also the question of culture. If one’s working in a kind of almost monocultural way it could be different. But if you’re working across cultures, I think the awareness, Maddy, of what you’ve brought is also important so because for example, here in Southern Africa, generally people in Zimbabwe, for example, would never kneel in the space of when they’re respecting someone, and we even have that liturgically, they do different things in Zimbabwe to what they do in South Africa. For example, to be seated is to be in a respectful position, to be kneeling in front of someone is not. So, I think as well, culturally, it’s quite important to just be aware of those things as well. So, what you highlight there, I think, [01:11:00] also has other implications, which we need to think about. And hence, I think of going slowly finding out how would it be for you if you had to kneel?
Kneeling for me is something I won’t do because that you do when you’re in trouble, or when you’re being diminished by someone, so therefore that’s not going to be helpful to someone in that cultural context. So just to be aware of that.
Annemarie: Thanks, Russell. Anyone else on the team want to chip in on this one? Trevor?
Trevor: I’ve just found that that maxim very helpful, use whatever helps and avoid whatever hinders and that the Additions, as you were saying, Anne Marie, are there to really make the exercises go better. And I think sometimes just talking with the person doing the exercises around “use whatever helps, avoid whatever hinders.” I think that also engenders an atmosphere of freedom that they don’t have [01:12:00] to use everything. And I think if they know that they can discern what is helpful and what is not helpful, I think that increases the atmosphere of freedom in the giving and the doing and takes it away from rules and obligations.
Annemarie: Thanks, Trevor. Adri-Marie, anything you want to add?
Adri-Marie: What just came to mind for me is how we are really translators, so it helps sometimes if the exercitant knows, oh, all right, that Ignatius just has this imagination of being the last—this scripture or our connection with God—being the last thought and the first thought, and just the beauty of this, of sleeping with the text and making it so invitational that exactly what Trevor said, there’s such a freedom to do [01:13:00] what’s helpful or not and then also making it attractive so it doesn’t seem—or maybe explaining a little bit of the why it doesn’t seem like this checklist. So that’s just what I wanted to add.
Annemarie: Thanks, Adri-Marie. Okay, Rhonda, you wanted to say something.
Rhonda: Well, I love that idea of making it attractive and at times explaining the why, because it comes across as a lot of rules and so I have a reaction to that personally, so I’m going to sit with that a little bit. But, in today’s session, I was talking to my small group about how I kind of automatically discounted some of my younger mom friends or people I know that could potentially down the road be interested in the exercises, and that it’s not up to me to say, “oh, you don’t have the capacity or, you’ve got two small kids.” I can’t imagine dressing, and [01:14:00] having that thought in front of what I learned that morning with my little kids back in the day, but what I guess my question is then as you do these introductory sessions is that after they’ve decided this is what we’re going to do and you’re just trying to figure out how to adapt it because Tracy was saying there’s all kinds of other adaptations that are really helpful to people that are yearning to grow in intimacy. So, I think that’s an awareness—one not to shut somebody off because of their life circumstances unless, you know the Lord’s leading that way. But secondly, that there’s maybe more of a myriad of things that we could try that would give them the freedom to do the exercises the way the Lord’s calling them into.
Annemarie: Thank you, Rhonda. Yeah. When we talked about various ways of making the exercises, you remember we had the [01:15:00] 20th annotation, the enclosed ones, the ones in daily life, the 19th, and we had the 18th and the 18th also had a multiplicity of ways of engaging the exercises that won’t be the full exercises, but give the person some experience, some taste of that dynamic and at some points in a person’s life, that may be as much as they’ve got capacity and energy and time for. But I do think, you know sometimes that introductory time is a process of discerning, What way are we going to be approaching these exercises? How’s it going to be most helpful for the person right now?
But again, we’re going to have a whole session on, when is the timing right for these exercises, because it could be that someone has a deep desire to make the full exercises. And for one such person, it may be that, you know, they make a version of it that is what they can manage given the constraints of their life at that time.[01:16:00] and someone else who might. discern with them that they’d like to wait a year or two until the kids have started school when they’ve really got the time to plunge into the full experience. So, I think it’s no one size fits all. It’s a bit of a discerning process.
I do want to say that Ignatius doesn’t see the additions at all as rules. So, if I’ve given that impression, I really want to emphasize that’s not what it’s about; rather to maybe try and see if we can replace that word rules with helps. These are helps for getting into the process more easily and they are suggestions. They’re not things that have to be done by each person.
There are things that Ignatius through his own experience found helpful and in his experience of accompanying others found helpful. And he’s saying, if you offer this to someone as a possibility or a suggestion, [01:17:00] they may find it helpful too. So, it’s got a very different kind of feel to rules.
I wonder if anyone else in the team wants to respond to anything Rhonda’s raised there. Is that okay, Rhonda?
Rhonda: Yeah, that’s great. Thank you so much.
Annemarie: Okay. Thank you. Anyone else? Did any of you experience any of these additions in the exercises when you made them?
Maybe not necessarily the ones around prayer, which I’m sure a lot of you experienced, but maybe some of the getting into the mood of a different week of the exercises. I wonder whether any of your directors had any suggestions that you found helpful.
Josie: Annemarie, this is Josie. We talked about the fact that you’re not always going to be doing the [01:18:00] exercises following the liturgical year, and that just made me think of the conflict of—and it’ll probably be our experience starting in the end of May—of being in the Christmas season and possibly having to shut the curtains for a week or something. How do you hold those spaces when life is in a different season? My preference—both times that I have done the exercises I have been following the liturgical season so, just you’re on that.
Annemarie: Josie, when you say following the liturgical season, explain to me what you mean.
Josie: I did the 19th annotation, and my spiritual director started me in October and so when we were started week two, really right around Christmas, reading gospels, and then right in Lent starting week three and then that was coordinating with resurrection scriptures for after Easter.
Annemarie: I think that [01:19:00] it’s really helpful when that is able to happen, but it’s quite tricky to get that right. I think it’s partly . . . what’s the word?—grace and just good luck if you can sync, because even if you start in October, you might be spending with your person four or five months in the disposition days. So, you might be nowhere near the readings of the second week to do with the nativity at around Christmas time. So, when you’re trying to really follow the pace of the person that you’re with, that pace may not sync with those liturgical seasons. I think that’s one important kind of thing to be aware of. But yeah, it’s a very big tension.
So as far as possible, you want to try and avoid that clash. Generally, we suggest you start the exercises after Easter, so that at least [01:20:00] Easter is not in the picture in terms of that clash, because Christmas is an easier one to manage the clash with than Easter is. When someone is in that situation where you’ve had to start the exercises at a time that is clashing to some extent with the liturgical season—and you would really try to avoid that—I wouldn’t want to start making the exercises with someone in the midst of Holy Week or something like that. You wouldn’t do that.
But where there is a clash that you can’t avoid, you invite the person to prioritize the retreat space—the retreat dynamic—and maybe to try not to enter too much into the liturgical season. Obviously, that’s harder when someone is a pastor of a church, and they are having to pray the scriptures to preach around that.
So, you want to be particularly careful about where you start the 19th annotation to try and avoid that but it’s one of those things you talk about in supervision [01:21:00] and think through together and try and work out how best do I manage that dynamic with the person that I have. But we have lots of pastors here and givers of the exercises. So, I’m wondering what Russell and Trevor are thinking about this one, and Adri-Marie.
Trevor: I think over the years I have found that it is tricky. Let’s just start there. I also want to be trusting of the process, that God has been in the beginning and God is with this person and in the liturgical season. So, there’s a sense in which, while I do not want there to be the massive clash, as you were [01:22:00] saying around Easter, I’m happy to navigate the rapids around the other parts of it and to be creative around it.
And I just think of the 15th annotation that somehow that God is dealing with this person within the givens of their life and the liturgical journey. I don’t have to manage it too much and I can really be trusting of the process and of the genius of the exercises, no matter what. But I would be concerned around Easter as a very big clash, particularly like starting or et cetera, but I’m happy to start at any other time and then navigate.[01:23:00]
Russell: You’re on mute, Annemarie.
Annemarie: Thanks, Russell. Anyone else want to chip in there?
Adri-Marie: I think what I might add, Anne Marie—and we are going to speak about this properly in two weeks’ time regarding the disposition days—but we really would want the person to have a good understanding of what they’re saying yes to and really repeat that a few times and discern that a few times just so that we can say, all right, the exercises is going to be the main horse pulling the cart of their lives for about a year if you’re doing it in daily life, just because for them to even start preparing this and thinking, all right, I lead groups in length so perhaps [01:24:00] next year I say no to that.
So, it gets really practical in those things. Whenever you start, part of the disposition is also thinking practically about the roles the person plays and then committing for that to be the main thing that they are doing for the year.
I just supervised somebody who had somebody who stopped at the end of week one because the person just didn’t want to let go of their Lenten journey. They felt that was something that’s so important in their life and then what ended up is it was just revealed that the person didn’t really understand it right in the beginning that this is going to be the main journey. So, you can’t go wrong just to go again and again in the beginning in terms of discernment, but we’ll talk about it in the disposition days.
Annemarie: Thanks, Adri-Marie.
Russell: I think one of the things that—and I heard this [01:25:00] recently again—I had an email just the other day—people sometimes talk about the spiritual exercises like it’s a program that has a beginning and a program that sort of comes to an end.
So, I think what Adri-Marie is saying is very important—that we help people to understand that this is not a program that we work through, and you do this, and you do that and that there’s a process that’s unfolding or a journey and that journey may take us places. It’s not going to start on the 5th of March and it’s going to end on the 30th of September because this person was basically asking me that how—If I did this program, when would we start? And when would we end?
So, we also have to help people to understand that, because I think that’s quite important as well to do that.
Annemarie: Yeah, because there’s one person that may be a nine-month journey. Some people that could be 15 months or 16 months and it’s the same retreat [01:26:00] process and dynamic, but each person comes to it with different life circumstances, different stuff that they’re dealing with so there’s no one size fits all.
Russell: And just to back up a little bit, Annemarie, I was just looking as well through the Fleming text—just to go back to what you were saying about the word rules—I noticed all over, it talks about helps for prayer, helps—and I just think it’s important to stress that, that there is a flexibility and we’re going to talk about that the whole way through, but the word helps or guidelines might be much much—in fact, a quick look through Fleming, the only place I find the word rules was for the rules for discernment, which we’ll also get to but, helps or guidelines.
Annemarie: Thanks, Russell.[01:27:00]
Monica: Annemarie, may I ask a further question? Is that okay?
Annemarie: Sure, but Shirley and then I’ll come to you, Monica. Shirley?
Shirley: In talking with people about taking this journey with me, everyone that I’ve talked to have said, Yes, I’m ready. Let’s go. When do we start? And I have questions around, do they really understand? And so, my main question is, are you going to give us something that we can give to other people to say this is what they’re about? Even just the statement that you made earlier that the person needs to have a good understanding of what they’re saying yes to. I hadn’t really considered that question.
So, can you give us helps on discerning who or does this come at a future date?
Annemarie: Yeah, it does come at a [01:28:00] future date. So, this whole thing that we are moving into, and I can see that a lot of the questions that are arising in the group today are very much around this thing of how do I take someone into this journey? In fact, all of the sessions that are coming up now, the next couple of sessions really all together focus on different aspects of discovering whether the person is ready, discerning that with them, deciding on whether this is the right time and the right journey for them, all of that stuff.
So, we’re not going to give you a checklist of the ten (10) things that you’ve got to tick the boxes for, but we are going to really help you think around that in some depth. So don’t worry about that too much at the moment. At the moment, what we’re really trying to do is to give you all the sense that there are these tips, these helps [01:29:00] that are important to be aware of throughout the exercises. The ”how we do this practically” we’re coming to, so I promise we’re not going to leave you to figure this out on your own.
Okay. Was it Monica? Did I see Monica?
Monica: Yeah. I’m wondering if, as a director, do you just offer these additions as suggestions and helps and you make it attractive to them when they need it? Or is there a time where you say, Oh, why don’t you read through these additions and see what’s helpful for you? Is there ever a time that you do actually give the text and then they discern themselves what’s helpful for them?
Annemarie: Well, I don’t think there’s ever hard and fast rules about this—we’re back to no rules. But my preference generally is [01:30:00] for it to be organic. As I’m leading someone through the exercises, I will explain to them, Ignatius really wants us to make sure that your environment as much as possible helps you to enter into the mood and the grace of this week. What do you think might be helpful for you to do? That might allow you to stay in the mood of this asking for the grace of deepened sorrow. And then I would talk with the person around that, and we would together think about what might be helpful and then I’d go away and try it and come back and say, well, that wasn’t very helpful.
And you can say let’s think together about maybe there’s something different that would be useful. So, my inclination is normally not to give someone the text to go and read and figure it out for themselves, because I think that it’s coming out of a very different context.
You’re getting the inside story and the background and the importance of adapting and all of that. They won’t have done a course [01:31:00] about this. All they’re seeing is the stuff in the book. So, I’d be less inclined to do that. I’m not saying there would never ever, ever, ever be a circumstance in which I might do that. There might be. I might come across a directee for whom I think that might be really helpful, but I haven’t yet, and I’ve made quite a lot of people through the journey.
So, it’s possible, but I’d say that, generally speaking. it’s usually better I would say to mediate that, to do the work of co-discerning with the person from your understanding of what Ignatius is getting at, what in their particular life situation might be most helpful in terms of that. Yeah.
Russell: I think as well that sometimes this is also quite—different personalities would handle this in different ways as well, so if someone was really worried about, I’ve got to make sure I do this right, and you gave them that to [01:32:00] read and they were sitting worrying about ticking off everything or what they should do, that can in itself become an unhelpful distraction.
So, I often think that giving people the text is unhelpful. And from my own experience, I found it unhelpful when we were just given this and told to go away and read it and decide what you’re going to do type; which ones do you do? It was very confusing for me. The second time around I did the exercises, of course, I had a little bit more insight and knowledge and so forth.
So also, the personality of the person comes into play. You know, a One on the Enneagram—he’s very worried about making sure that everything’s done perfectly. So, I think we just have to think around those things as well.
And hence, I just want to underscore what Annemarie said about rather going with the flow more organically than saying, right, let’s see today which ones I’m going to do type of thing now.
Trevor: My [01:33:00] sense is that very often at the beginning of the journey of giving the exercises, there is a little bit more conversation than there is perhaps when one is actually giving the exercises themselves—week one, week two, week three, week four, but that somehow in this early stage, the tone of our being together is quite conversational as we talk through these things, and perhaps the director finds herself/himself maybe talking just a little bit more than usual but also learning about the directee as well in terms of what they have found helpful and hindering over the years.
Annemarie: Thanks, Trevor. We’re going to have to pause it there because we’ve just got a two or three minutes before the end of our time. But [01:34:00] just please don’t worry too much about the how to’s of getting the person into it. We’re going to be going through that step by step, quite slowly in the next couple of weeks so we’re getting there. I promise. We’re going to hand over to Trevor just to help us to bring our time to a close. Thanks, Trevor.
Trevor: Maybe we can just be quiet together. We can keep our videos on.
Draw your attention to the annotation 15 of allowing the creator to deal directly with the creature and maybe for us to take just a few moments of how that has been happening for ourselves over the past hour or [01:35:00] so, and maybe to ask ourselves where during our time together today, we have perhaps been enlivened in our own hearts and minds maybe to be aware of a moment today when, as we’ve been together, when we felt drawn with greater energy towards faith and hope and love. Just a time when perhaps a light went on for us, a moment of awareness, a clarity of insight, or perhaps a sense of a gift being given to us on our time [01:36:00] together.
I just want us to be quiet for a minute or so as we just allow that to become clearer in our awareness and for us to say thank you to God for God’s action in our life today now.
And so, we ask Lord God that you would renew our [01:37:00] faith in your ever-present activity in our lives— that in every experience and every encounter and every event of our lives, you are present and active, relating to us. Help us to become a little more aware of that in our lives.
And so, we thank you for today and we thank you for Ignatius and we thank you for the genius of the exercises and particularly today for the way he helps us to relate to you in the name of Christ our Lord. Amen.[01:38:00]
Annemarie: We’ll see you all next week. Have a blessed week and we’ll send you some reading.