IGNATIAN SPIRITUAL EXERCISES TRAINING (ISET)
2023-BLOCK ONE – SESSION 12
HOW TO GIVE THE PRINCIPLE AND FOUNDATION
Annemarie: [00:00:00] Okay, so good to be with you for the very last of block one of our sessions. Next week and the week after, there is the break between the two blocks. We will have a little bit of a pause in time for you to finish writing your assignments if you haven’t already. So, I’m going to hand over to Brenda, who’s going to lead us in prayer this evening. Thanks, Brenda.
Brenda: Thanks, Annemarie. So welcome, and let’s just take some time to be still. For some of us, it’s the end of a long day. For others, the beginning and so we just take a moment to be still to perhaps concentrate on the light and all that that means—[00:01:00] to breathe deeply and to allow ourselves to settle into being loved.
We take time to be present to ourselves, noticing how we feel as we enter this time of prayer and learning.[00:02:00]
We allow ourselves to be present to God, who is always giving God’s full attention to us.
God is reaching out to us. God is embracing us. God is inviting our response.[00:03:00]
So, we’re conscious of what it is that we ask of God tonight. Not something outside for God to manipulate circumstances or make something happen, but what is the inward grace that we ask of God tonight?
Tonight, we have before us one of the more traditional Fleming’s translation. It’s a 1996, but not one of the poetry at this point—PNF (Principle and Foundation PNF).[00:04:00]
God freely created us that we might know love and serve him in this life and be happy with him forever. God’s purpose in creating us is to draw forth from us a response of love and service here on earth so that we may attain our goal of everlasting happiness with him in heaven.
All things in this world are gifts of God created for us. to be the means by which we can come to know him better, love him more surely, and serve him more faithfully.
As a result, we ought to appreciate and use these gifts of God. But insofar [00:05:00] as any created things hinder our progress towards our goal, we ought to let them go.
In everyday life, then, we should keep ourselves indifferent or undecided in the face of all creative gifts. When we have an option and we do not have the clarity of what would be a better choice, we ought not to be led on by our natural likes and dislikes, even in matters such as health and or sickness, wealth or poverty, between living in the East or in the West, becoming an accountant or a lawyer.
Rather our only desire and our one choice should be that option, which better leads to the goal for which God created us.[00:06:00]
Perhaps as I leave those words in front of us, you want to take some time to remember what it felt like when you were first introduced to the Principle and Foundation. The first time you read it, what stood out for you? As you prayed it, when you made your own journey through the exercises, what was God’s gift to you?
Take some time to remember how the Principle and Foundation has been part of your journey.[00:07:00] [00:08:00]
Perhaps as you see the words in front of you, you may want to call to mind what shifts may have happened for you as you heard the talk last week, as you’ve reflected on the Principle and Foundation, as you’ve read different translations. I wonder what God’s invitation is for you now as you read these words.[00:09:00] [00:10:00]
As we consider God’s invitation that we hear in these words, perhaps we want to consider our response.
What is it that we say to God, offer to God, ask of God, tonight, right where we are now?[00:11:00] [00:12:00]
Listen again.
God freely created us that we might know, love, and serve him in this life and be happy with him forever. God’s purpose in creating us is to draw forth from us a response of love and service here on earth. so that we may attain our goal of everlasting happiness with him in heaven.
All things in this world are gifts of God, created for us to be the means by which we can come to know him better, love him more surely, and serve him more faithfully.
As a result, we ought to appreciate and use these gifts of God, But insofar as any created things hinder our progress towards our goal, we ought to let them go. [00:13:00]
In everyday life, then, we should keep ourselves indifferent or undecided in the face of all created gifts, when we have an option, and when we do not have the clarity of what would be a better choice. We ought not to be led on by our natural likes and dislikes, even in matters such as health and or sickness, wealth or poverty, between living in the East or in the West, between being and becoming an accountant or a lawyer.
Rather, our only desire and our one choice should be that option, which better leads us to the goal for which God created us.
As you are ready, turn your screens back on and come back into the group.[00:14:00]
Annemarie: Thank you, Brenda. So, we are going to look a little bit now. I see most of you look a little frozen on my screen. Can you all see me? Okay. Yes? Okay. I’m hoping everyone is able to see. We’re going to be talking about how to give the Principle and Foundation tonight.
Last week, you’ll remember that Trevor helped us to look at that big picture of the Principle and Foundation and so I just want to connect us back to that for a moment. I want to invite you to put into the chat box that thing that has stayed with you most strongly about the Principle and Foundation from last week. So, I just want you to [00:15:00] take a moment to think about that and then just to put a few things into the chat box, just to remind ourselves of where we’re at—it may also have been something you read in that article by Tetlow—a word, a phrase, an image,
Okay, great—
created for freedom,
God has not stopped knitting us together, especially struck by God’s continual creation of me.
Yeah, that ongoing moment by moment creation. [00:16:00]
Liz says the PNF is not a theory, but encouragement.
Trying to make this thing so I can see it.
One of the two bookends of the exercises.
Invitation to consider.
It’s the concise exercises.
That’s interesting.
To live and become co-creators with God.
Love’s response in freedom.
Everything is given as gift for freedom and love, says Denise.
Principle and foundation, not a theory, but encouragement for a relationship with Jesus.
The end of what Liz was saying there. Okay.
We have balance.
I guess that’s something around indifference, holding things in balance, that sense of freedom.
Ongoing creation. Thanks Heather.
Anything else anyone wants to mention? Ah, Doreen.
God is [00:17:00] recreating at this moment out of disorder and chaos so I can participate more fully in what God is doing in the world.
Immediacy with Christ.
Annemarie: There’s a very strong kind of immediacy in this whole thing of one’s experience—this encounter with God.
Trevor: We’ve missed our imitation to consider.
Annemarie: Thank you.
A conversation.
Annemarie: Yes, Melanie. Yeah, the way we give it is very conversational, very much a dialogue. Okay, Anything else?
Okay. So, we’re going to pick up on some of this and look at well what do we do in terms of actually giving this material, practically speaking to the person who’s coming to make the exercises. As Trevor [00:18:00] said last time, it’s an absolutely pivotal moment and it’s something that we don’t want to rush.
We really want to give this the space that it needs and to do it well, because the Principle and Foundation done well is going to really provide a place from which we can really start to make the exercises at depth. So how should the director approach the giving of the Principle and Foundation? So, I’m going to make a couple of points around that.
The first thing is, it’s really important that you stay connected with your own experience of the Principle and Foundation. The Principle and Foundation and the sharing of it demands of us as directors a much more active engagement, in some ways. We want to help the retreatant to catch a sense of the wonder of this, and to get a sense of our [00:19:00] enthusiasm and our excitement and energy around it.
The words on the page can seem a bit dry or philosophical if we don’t help the retreatants to get in touch with the energy around these words and what it really means if they want to stay with it and they want to unpack it. So, it’s very important to keep renewing our own sense of the Principle and Foundation.
I was looking back at my own experience of making the 30-day retreat now, almost 30 years ago, and I went back and reread the Principle and Foundation that I wrote then out of my experience of praying it. I can remember what it was like for me then, and it moves me to read it, but I’m in a different place 30 years later. And so, it’s about continuing to go back and revisit the Principle and Foundation ourselves, so that when we’re [00:20:00] sharing it, we’re sharing it from a place of staying connected with it—living in it. That’s really important.
We’re not wanting obviously to impose our own experience of the Principle and Foundation on our retreats and every single person is going to have their own way of engaging, but we want to be alive with it so that we can convey something of that energy to the person who is making the exercises.
The second thing we want you to remember is that this is what is called a consideration. Trevor mentioned that word last week already for us. It’s not a meditation. We don’t sit down and do any formal kind of prayer steps around it. It’s not a contemplation in the way that we do imaginative contemplation. It’s a rumination, a prayerful thinking about or pondering of the material. David Fleming puts it really well, I think. He [00:21:00] says, “This consideration is to be read over by the retreatant a few times each day during the first few days or weeks of daily life of the retreat.” And he adds that “the prayer of the retreatant at this time may well be guided by scriptural texts that are going to enlighten, reinforce and unpack the themes and the notions that are contained in the Principle and Foundation text.”
It’s something that is to be lived with and lived into so the person is going about their every day, kind of constantly with the words to the Principle and Foundation rolling around in their mind, thinking about the implications, wondering about it, considering their own life in the light of those words. It’s really an ongoing engagement with it, a pondering or [00:22:00] reflecting on it. So, consideration.
The third thing that needs to be remembered while giving it is that there should be conversation. Melanie used that word when we put the words in the chat. You will remember that in the exercises when we looked at the annotations, we spoke about the fact that generally the director is to say as little as is needed to help the retreatant to connect with the material and not to embellish or elaborate or talk too much because you want the person to have their own experience of it.
The one exception of this is when it comes to the Principle and Foundation. Remember that Ignatius, when he writes about the Principle and Foundation uses the word, platica, which is a Spanish word, I believe. I’m sure there are people there that will know much better than me—people on this call, that it means to chat over or to talk [00:23:00] about rather than the word that he uses in the other places in the exercises when he uses another word which is dar, which means to give. It’s a much more abrupt, short thing. You give the material just as much as is needed. But platika is about unpacking, unfolding, talking over, discussing all of those kind of nuances.
So, this is the only time that Ignatius does not want us to be brief and succinct and to give the text without too much comment. He wants us to help the retreatant to unpack the text and to explore it and to live into the questions that surface as they live with these words. The guide can be more engaged in the conversation and can teach more than they would later in the exercises. There’s something about this animated conversation that needs to happen. [00:24:00]
So, the last thing I want to say is there’s something about creative and spacious adaptation that needs to happen. Allowing the person to engage the Principle and Foundation in a way that allows them to personally appropriate it; that allows them to make it their own. So, you don’t want to rush it. You want to allow it to really settle deeply, but you don’t expect all the graces of the PNF to necessarily have been received before you move on. That, in a way, is a bit of a recap of some of what we did last time, and just talking about it in the light of giving it.
Now let’s look at when to give the Principle and Foundation text, and this is not an absolutely straightforward question. This is important to think about. If we look at the actual text, as Trevor showed you last time, the Principle [00:25:00] and Foundation is placed as the very first exercise under the heading of the first week of the exercises, but most contemporary directors, in fact, think of it more as coming toward the end part of the preparation days or the disposition days. So, it’s kind of the last part of that preparation and disposition days, but the whole of the preparation and the disposition days, and when I say preparational disposition, either word means the same thing. Okay, so I might say disposition or preparation, it’s exactly the same thing.
Ignatius didn’t have any disposition days or introductory days in his text of the exercises, which you may remember from what Adri-Marie did with us. But he was doing that when he was having deep spiritual conversations with those he would take through the exercises. So, he would often have the practice of meeting with people over quite a period of time and talking with them. [00:26:00] What he was doing in that time essentially was talking with them about the themes that we are engaging with in the text of the Principle and Foundation, so that when he gave them that text, it was really just a touching back on or a kind of a summary of things that they had been talking about for a long time.
But, in our context, people come to us a bit differently. You might have somebody who wants to make, say, the 30-day retreat, who arrives at a retreat center, or you might have someone who comes to you and says, I want to make the exercises in daily life. You’re not going to start by giving them the first exercise in the text of the exercises, which is the text of the Principle and Foundation.
You’re going to start by using a whole lot of introductory material that touches on different elements of these themes, and once that’s kind of caught and taken, [00:27:00] you get towards the very end of that where you’re going to start the meditations on sin; then you offer the text of the Principle and Foundation for them to go away and ponder. They’ve already been grappling with some of the building blocks of those ideas in conversation with you for some weeks or some months.
I’m just currently working with someone who came into the exercises saying she wanted to make the exercises and looked as though she would be ready. We’re now in month six and a half of preparation days, unpacking these themes that are going to lead into the Principle and Foundation. I don’t think we’re going to start properly for another two or three months—I don’t think I’m going to give her the text of the P& E. So, it can take quite a substantial amount of time sometimes to get there.
Personally, I would take [00:28:00] the retreatant into a formal consideration of the text of the Principle and Foundation once they’ve been praying these preparation days for some time, and they seem to have a good foundational experience of the love of God, they’ve started to get a sense of creation as ongoing, and God as involved in my life in a very intimate kind of way.
It might be helpful in thinking about this to distinguish between two questions. The first question, at what point do we begin to work on the themes contained in the Principle and Foundation? Really, that’s right from the beginning you start to work on some of those themes; particularly the theme of God’s love and the theme of God’s creating of me. Later, you’ll start to look at things like indifference—only right at the end of that disposition daytime.
The second question is, at what point do we give the person the [00:29:00] actual text? That is right at the end, towards the very last part of the preparation days. So, I would probably take two or three weeks in the 19th annotation retreat to stay with the actual material of the Principle and Foundation text and to continue to unpack it. But I’m already going to have had a long time—several weeks, if not months, of connecting with some of the themes via the preparation days. Does that make sense? Kind of? Anyone lost? No? All right. Okay.
So, what translation should we use? That’s the next thing that we want to try and think a little bit about. What translation are you going to use?
There are many different translations of the Principle and [00:30:00] Foundation, and which one will be most helpful for the person is going to depend on that particular person, their theological background, their personality—all kinds of things.
So, it’s quite important to look at a couple of different options in terms of translations and maybe to offer your retreatants at least two of them—not too many. You don’t want to offer them, five or six and overwhelm them, but I would choose maybe two and perhaps one that’s closer to the literal version and perhaps one that’s a little bit more poetic or a little bit softer. You might like to have the balance, but it depends on the person that you’re dealing with and what’s going to connect for them.
You want to think about the language that is being used. If you use a very literal translation, particularly a translation like Fuele; for example, some of that language in the PNF text can be quite alienating [00:31:00] so you need to think about that. For example, the use of exclusive language man, man, man—all the way through can be quite jarring for some people.
You need to just kind of need to look at, is my retreating going to connect with this text? So, read it in advance; think about which one you want to use. I would often use something like Iven’s and Fleming’s contemporary translation that Brenda did with us today. And then I might do something like the Bergen and Schwan one that Anne did with us last week as the opening prayer and which I sent you in between the sessions. So, something like that.
The other thing that is important about language and translation is that Ignatius wrote this text in the 16th century in a time that had a very different worldview or cosmology to the one that we have today. We’re starting to understand that we are radically interconnected, that the idea of hierarchy is [00:32:00] not helpful to us. The way that it’s expressed in some of the older translations kind of gives the sense that we are put in a position where we can use creation for our own ends. And that’s not what Ignatius is getting at, but the way that it’s put can have that resonance of being exploitative rather than our more ecologically aware understanding that human beings are created to tend and to care for the other things on the earth, not to use them. The word use can be quite an unhelpful word to use.
There’s a lovely poetic rendering of the Principle and Foundation other than that of the Bergen and Schwann one and I want to just read it to you because I think it’s quite beautiful. It says,
Love made me, love sustains me, love leads me forth.
For this I sing praise, bow low, and put my life at the disposal of love.
Every tree, every [00:33:00] single star in the sky points back toward the beloved.
May nothing pull me away from love. No small wish of mine next to the immensity of the Beloved.
With the Beloved may I shine.
That’s a woman called Christine Rogers, and I’ll send it to you. It’s quite far from the original text, but it’s a nice one to use maybe as a counterpoint to one of the more traditional translations just as another way of helping people to get into it.
So, there are various approaches to giving the Principle and Foundation. I’m just going to look at a few just as examples for us today.
There’s no one right way. There’s only the way that’s going to help your particular retreatant. You have to listen to them and discern how are you going to help them to engage with the themes of the Principle and Foundation. Teklow is very strong on both the [00:34:00] Principle and Foundation, and in fact, I think the exercises of the first week as well, but particularly strong on his work in the Principle and Foundation. So, if you can get hold of Choosing Christ in the World, you might really like to go through some of his materials and I’ll talk about why, and I’ll send you for those who can’t get hold of it, a couple of the things that he’s particularly created for use in helping people to get into this thing of pondering the text of the Principle and Foundation.
He structures the time of the preparation days leading into the Principle and Foundation around six key themes that emerge in the Principle and Foundation. For example, in the second week, he offers a whole bunch of materials and texts on the theme of praying over how I am loved by God. There’s Psalm 139; there’s Isaiah [00:35:00] 43—your kind of typical texts that really help a person to pray around how they are loved by God.
He also creates two pieces to reflect on that he wrote himself; one that’s called Prayer on my Dossier. Dossier is a very old-fashioned word, and I’m not sure that it’s one that we relate to very much these days but it’s almost a prayer on my life circumstances—my history.
How is it that I was born to these parents at this time in history, at this particular moment? It’s a wonderful reflection that helps to create a sense of almost stepping back from one’s life and looking at, wow, this is who I am. How is it that I was born in South Africa in the midst of apartheid in 1971 to these particular parents? And how has that shaped me and affected me? And how is it still part of my story and what’s happened since? So, it’s a really interesting kind of way [00:36:00] of reflecting.
He also has another prayer of consideration called The Lilies of the Field, which does something similar. It’s kind of a fantasy prayer exercise getting the person to really think their way into the fact that the lily grows up, planted in a particular place at a particular moment and there it is and there’s something quite wonderful about it.
Those are just some examples of what he does in that second week. So, you can see that he’s laying the groundwork for the person looking at the text of the exercises. He’s putting some of those ideas in place so that when they come to it, it’s like pieces of a puzzle that all kind of start to come together and really make sense.
The third week of the Preparation Days that Tetlow does has this theme—I am constantly being created by God. Ring a bell? Okay. What Trevor was talking about, I am constantly being created by God, momently created to use Tetlow’s phrase. Even now, as [00:37:00] you’re sitting here listening to me talk about this, God is creating each one of you and me in this process. There is something miraculous and wonderful that is going on in this very moment. He puts that as his theme, and then again, he chooses scriptures which help to unpack that aspect. For example, Isaiah 45, verses 7 to 13, which is about the potter and the clay. God molds the clay and then God maybe remolds and shifts and changes. So, it’s scriptures like that. Hosea 11, one to four about how God has carried me and then asking the retreating to think about how God is still carrying me in this moment.
And then he’s also written another reflection that picks up on the strand of the principle and foundation called The Way Things Are and I’ll send that to you. We don’t have time to unfortunately unpack all of them as I speak, but I’ll send them to you. [00:38:00]
Other themes, God’s project Hidden Deep in Things—that’s week four. Okay. That’s another theme of the PNF. So as part of the preparation days is giving the person this theme to work with and unpack. You’ve got a whole lot of texts that allow you to do that.
Week five—he starts to offer the actual material of the Principle and Foundation and to look at the whole idea of indifference or freedom. It’s kind of a step by step—building theme by theme.
Now, it might be that if you were using something like Tetlow, and you picked up that theme, I‘m constantly being created by God, which he uses in the third week of preparation, you might want to use that as the theme for two or three chronological weeks with that person and pick up on other texts that have the same idea, or do some repetition.
So, that image that Adri-Marie [00:39:00] gave of the accordion that you can stretch these out because some people may really get it in a few days or a week and other people, it might take a little while for that to really settle within them. So don’t get kind of locked into, this is the aspect of the Principle and Foundation he’s picking up and I have to finish it with this person in one chronological week or one prayer unit. No, just use it as a help to your giving of the exercises.
In order to help you with that, Tetlow very kindly and very generously has gone and looked for another 24 scripture passages as additional suggestions for helping these themes be unpacked. So, there’s no shortage of material and you don’t even have to worry about finding it. It’s all there for you, okay? It’s really, really helpful.
Now let’s look at Veltry, okay? So, Veltry takes a little bit of a similar approach. What he doesn’t have that Tetlow has is he hasn’t [00:40:00] written any of his own consideration reflections on these different aspects. He hasn’t done that. That’s the thing that Tetlow does that’s particularly valuable. But from the start of the preparation days, Veltry weaves again some themes critical to the PNF.
For example, in prayer unit two, the theme is Our creaturely dependence on God who creates me and is continually creating. Same thing. Okay. Picking up a theme, picking up a thread and the grace because he brings in this thing of asking for a grace very strongly is to ask for amazement at my existence and at how God relates to me personally. Okay. So, you’ve got a theme and a grace each time with Veltry.
Another example—in prayer unit four—he’s got five prayer units for this. The theme that he puts is God leads me into deeper freedom. [00:41:00] Okay. You know that that’s a theme of the PNF. God leads me into deeper freedom and the grace that he asks the person to pray for is a deep awareness of how God has to free me so that I can respond to God’s call in my life. So, it’s picking up and preparing the groundwork to unpack the last bit of the PNF.
Then when he gets to the text itself, he does something very helpful. He divides the text into three sections. So now I’m talking about the actual text that Brenda took us through tonight, for example. That would be one translation of it. So, he gives that to the retreatant, and he says, This week, until I see you next time, I want you to focus on part one, the first bit of that text, focusing on what it means to be created and what does it mean to you to be created. I want you to think about that. I want you to talk to God about that. I want you to look back over your life and see [00:42:00] examples of how you experienced yourself as being created.
And then the next time the person comes back, you might move them onto looking at part two. From my own experience, what “creatures (in inverted commas) or things” have been helpful in my journey with God in helping me to praise reverence and serve God. Which things have gotten in the way or been a hindrance? So, you start to help them unpack that piece of it.
And then there’s a part three, which explores the idea of indifference and freedom. And for each of those parts, he’s also giving supportive texts. That’s another way of coming at this. And then he takes a whole week of inviting the person to write their own Principle and Foundation and we’ll come to that, but a little bit more just now. But he encourages that. That’s something that Tetlow doesn’t suggest, but that Veltri is very strong on. [00:43:00] In terms of writing one’s own PNF, he offers various scriptures to help one do that, to support the person in writing their own PNF, which could be helpful to them.
Although both Tetlow and Veltri, just to remind you, take six and five weeks respectively to take the person through this whole process, preparation days and PNF, remember, as Adri-Marie said, the response to the psalm is, “it takes the time it takes.” Okay, it takes the time it takes. So, don’t rush; you can use that material for a lot longer.
Now, let’s look at what Kathy does, and Kathy can jump in if she likes and tell me I’ve gotten it all wrong and add a bit there. Just very briefly to think about, if you go to material on the website that Kathi has put together for us, she’s drawn very helpfully from a number of these ways of doing things and she’s added in some [00:44:00] additional helpful prompts.
So, I’m going to share with you a few of my favorites of Kathi’s piece. For example, God designed us for divine conception, for union with God, for friendship with God. How did God feel at my conception? Ask God. Be still, listen, receive, stay, hold. Can you imagine inviting the person to have that conversation? How did God feel at my conception? Wow. How did God feel at my birth? That’s another way of helping some people to really get in touch with it.
Later, she incorporates an image of Trevor’s. Creation isn’t just past tense. God continues to create us in the present moment. God knit me together in my mother’s womb, and he hasn’t stopped knitting. I remember that Trevor shared that line, and that’s Trevor’s [00:45:00] image. It’s so powerful, and we heard it in the chat earlier. Okay, so how is God continuing to create me now in my present situation, or how is God still knitting me?
Kathi puts a sentence there at the end of one of her pieces as well about, is there a life-giving image emerging of how God sees me, my part in creation, how I see myself or want to grow into seeing myself. So, is there an image emerging? Sometimes for people having an image is really, really helpful. Okay.
Kathi, is there anything you want to add? Okay! So, if you look at Kathi’s material, she’s got a number of translations of the PNF there for you on those handouts. She’s also got two or three weeks of reflection questions that are helping the person to unpack the material of the Principle and Foundation drawn from different places. Go and look at [00:46:00] that. There are also some pictures that go with it that can be helpful images.
Okay, writing or creating one’s own Principle and Foundation. We touched on that last time a little bit. It is really helpful, and I would never leave this out. I don’t think I’ve ever left this out because I’ve never found it to be unhelpful and sometimes it is extremely helpful. For the person making the exercises, once they’ve prayed through and unpacked all these bits to consolidate it in writing their own principle and foundation. The way that the insights of how they relate to God and to creation and to the gifts of God’s creation and to wanting to become free and to have God at the center of their life. How would they express that in their own words, in their own context, out of their own life circumstances where they happen to be?
I remember at the time that I [00:47:00] was doing the exercises the first time, well, actually the second time, but the time that I was writing my own PNF, at the age of 27, I was trying to work out, did God want me to get married? Or was I going to be single? Or was I going to be a nun? Or what was going to happen? And I remember the incredible sense in writing my own, of God saying to me, All of these are potential paths. Don’t be so anxious about it. Just hold them all lightly. All of these, any of these could unfold in the way that will be most life giving and bring me closest to God.
So, depending on where the person is, they’re going to pick up on different elements that are going to be important at that moment in their life. And if they make the exercises 20 years down the road, they might write their Principle and Foundation slightly differently. There will be something of the same feel, but there may be something different.
It may not be that they write it; it may be that they [00:48:00] draw it. It may be that they do it in some other creative way as a poem, as a collage, as a mosaic, as whatever it is that is going to help them to hold the essence of this experience in a way that is helpful and fruitful. And I think that it’s one of my favorite moments in the giving the exercises is when people come back to share their own Principle and Foundation, because you can really see what is landed, what is settled within them, what is probably going to grow as they journey in the exercises.
It’s almost as though it’s like a seed that often contains stuff that is going to be unfolded as you move into the exercises and particularly into the election and the material on that. So, it’s really helpful to make clear notes about what that is so that down the line, you can reconnect the person with it.[00:49:00]
A couple of other suggestions around giving the exercises or recaps of things. If you haven’t already engaged the person in doing their own faith history, I would think it’s a really important thing to weave into these days as part of the disposition days leading into the Principle and Foundation; inviting them to consider how God has been creating them and journeying with them all the way along their life journey and how is God still creating them even in this moment.
So, it’s not just a historical exercise, but it’s an exercise that leads right up to my moment-by-moment experience to this moment. Allow there to be questions and just conversation. Okay. Some of the questions that you could ask, how would you describe your world and how it influences you? And I’ll send these to you. How do you imagine God? What [00:50:00] is your relationship to God’s creation and to other people? What are the dominant influences on your sense of God, humans, heaven, earth? What are your deepest desires? Desires are very important in this context to help people get in touch with—what is it that is your deepest longing desire? And that’s going to connect into to the latter part of the exercises as well.
William Barry has a paragraph that I like to use as a conversation focus in talking about the material of the PNF and it comes from his book, Letting God Come Close. And it says this,
Ignatius came to believe that the perfect community, the Trinity, which is motivated purely by love, creates a universe in which persons made in the image and likeness of God are continually drawing the cause of divine love into the inner life of the Trinity.
In the depths of our heart, we are [00:51:00] being drawn by desire for union with God and with all other persons.
So that sometimes is a way of picking up on some of those strands that people can connect with quite strongly.
Just to say very briefly as well, there are some other things that might be just helpful and I’m going to just pick up one or two—to be aware of when leading women into the Principle and Foundation. That’s one that I spoke of earlier—that part of the original text that’s often been translated, man is to use the other things on the face of the earth as much as they help him on towards his end. That can elicit that painful sense of being exploited, of being used, even though that’s not how it’s meant. So just to take care.
The idea of making myself indifferent to all created things—be really careful that that’s not [00:52:00] misinterpreted by both men and women, but often women are more vulnerable to that.
Many women have been socialized not to pay attention to their own desires, their own needs; and that’s something that we have to help them to attend to. If they misinterpret this thing—this word indifferent, that can just exacerbate what’s already a problematic stance. It’s not about, not caring about created things, but it’s about that sense of freedom. So, to be very careful that people understand what indifference is about.
I’m going to just read you a little snippet here. One woman that I connected with said,
I hide from myself by not listening to what I want and need, but by clinging to my dependencies on others. I fear that I’m not enough and there’s anxiety that my not enough-ness will be discovered.
There’s a kind of a sense of [00:53:00] often difficulties and image of self. which are connected to difficulties and image of God surface quite strongly and can be seen quite vividly in this part to give space. To attend to that a little bit. Another woman I worked with said,
I can see that I arrived at the age of legal adulthood with only the barest acquaintance with my inner being. I knew myself as someone who existed to please, to serve, and to accommodate myself to others.
So, there’s a lot of stuff there that some people can bring into the exercises, which may be highlighted or spotlighted in this moment, and just to be careful and to pay attention to that. It’s important to allow there to be space for the person’s voice, for their desires to emerge, for a sense of their own self to emerge, and some of that is part of the healing dimension.
We spoke a bit about healing last time that can [00:54:00] be part of this section, in particular, of the journey of the Principle and Foundation if it’s given well. That image of God as a loving creator that calls me into full humanity and identity, and he wants to collaborate with me, can be a very empowering and healing way of connecting with God, for many people for the very first time, and particularly for many women for the first time.
Lastly, and we’re going to end in just a few minutes, Tetlow is really, really good—the other place where I find him excellent on some indications for when the person is ready to move from the Principle and Foundation into the meditations on sin. So just to name a few of those. When we have a sense that there is a deep foundational experience of the love of God, that the person’s caught something of that. And remember, we spoke about that when Russell did the section on image [00:55:00] of God and on the foundational experience of the love of God. You’re looking for that before you move someone into the exercises on sin. The person should have some sense of God as creator and themselves as dependent on God in a healthy way—a sense of gratitude for life or self or God’s presence, the ability to feel all and enthusiasm and shame and sorrow, beginning to express and articulate some of those feelings, the beginnings of a sense of active indifference or the desire to be free, to want God more than anything else.
That might not be completely in place, probably won’t be, probably never will be for the rest of our lives. We’re constantly journeying with that, but that somehow there’s a desire for that, the beginnings of a desire for that.
Most fundamentally, [00:56:00] Tetlow says, “there needs to be a felt sense and a deep conviction that I’m created by God and that I am loved by God.”—created by God, loved by God. If you don’t remember any of the others, remember those. Does this person have a sense of being created by God and loved by God? If they do, and you can really have a feeling that it’s not just head knowledge, but it’s settled into their being, then they probably are ready to move into the first week.
And you should also have a sense that they will be able to grasp the paradox that without sin, we would never know the mercy of God—the paradox that without sin, we would never know the mercy of God. That’s a slightly more complex one. So, if you can’t sense that, that’s not as critical, but it’s another indicator that the person may be ready to move on.
Remember we talked about the dynamic of [00:57:00] the exercises way back when? There’s also a sense that when the person is really engaging and receiving the graces, the receiving of the grace itself is going to naturally and organically start nudging them into the next part of the exercises.
So, if they have really gotten a sense of how loved they are by God, it’s automatically going to be the beginning of a sense of gosh, and we really haven’t responded to that love. I really haven’t responded to that love in the way that I would have hoped to. So, you start to see in and of itself, the person is going to begin to talk about things like that, which kind of indicates to you, Ah, This person is ready to move into the first week.
I think that’s more or less what I want to say at the moment. [00:58:00]
Okay. What I would like to invite you to do now is to share, and I hope you did the preparation for today so that you are coming with something to share. I am inviting you to share your own Principle and Foundation—the one you wrote if your director asked you to write it if you are willing to share that, if you feel comfortable to share that in your group, or to talk about what that part of the exercises was like for you personally. So, either to share it if you’ve got it in your journal and you’re happy to share it, or just to talk more generally about what the Principle and Foundation was like for you.
And is there anything, having heard the input this evening, that you feel you would like to give more attention to as you lead your person in the Principle and Foundation?
So, having reflected on your own experience, having reflected on some of this input, is there something that you want to hold on [00:59:00] to in the light of all of that? And then we are going to come back here at 15 minutes past the hour and have some time to go away into the groups. So, thank you very much.
Have a nice cup of tea or something, and we will see you soon.
Annemarie: Before I forget, I have been pondering this question of Heather’s about typing out the annotations and some of them are so jolly long that they’re going to take a lot of your words away from you. If you want to just note which one it is, that’s also fine. Some of them go on for quite some paragraphs.
Okay, so just coming back to the Principle and Foundation, I’m wondering what it was like to share your experiences of the Principle and [01:00:00] Foundation, wondering how that conversation has left you, what it’s brought up for you. So yeah, let’s hear. Liz, you’re muted.
Liz: One of our members mentioned that it really is summed up with the word radiate the presence of God, that all of the Principle and Foundation is just to keep focused on God and radiate, which is another word for glorify.
Annemarie: Thanks for that, Liz. Okay. Radiating the presence of God. I think there’s something very strong about that in the Principle and Foundation. So, thank you for that. Monica.
Monica: Hi. I think I continually wonder about the Principle of indifference, and that’s kind of what [01:01:00] was brought up for me as I was reflecting on the PNF in my own experience. It was really focused on indifference, and I guess, maybe particularly what you were saying about women, and that we are not used to paying attention to our own desires and needs or that can be an experience of women. And I know that also Ignatius does honor our deep desires and our deep longings and that it’s important to listen to those. And then I do get confused about then his Principle of Indifference, especially that translation that Brenda read. That was the translation I was using in my PNF, and it talked about letting go of our natural desires, our natural likes and dislikes. I’m just thinking of in giving these exercises, I don’t know if I’d be able to explain [01:02:00] well that Principle of Indifference, like that we do still honor our deepest desires and longings.
We listen to those. We pay attention to those. We think that’s how God speaks to us. And yet, I think I’m also confused. I go back and forth in my own life about this.
Annemarie: I think that’s a really great question to hold and maybe we can spend some time on that because I think it’s quite central to this whole thing of the Principle and Foundation and how we give it, and it isn’t something that I touched on very much in that talk. So, I’m gonna have a bash and then I’m going to ask my colleagues to chip in as well and to see what they might have to say around this. But I think that what we don’t want is to give people the impression that our desires are bad or not okay.
So as you’re saying, Ignatius is very strong on us being in touch with our deepest desires because [01:03:00] we believe the whole Ignatian understanding is that God implants those desires within us, that God gives us our deepest desires, and that in a way we want to sift the desires that we have to have a sense of what is it that is at the deepest level at our core desires. Those are the things that God is creating us through and in are in fact, our deepest desires. So that ongoing creation of us is very much connected to our deepest desires.
So, the word indifference, I think is often an extremely unhelpful word because in our modern understanding of English, it’s too often got connotations of not caring or being detached from, being disinvested from, and that’s not at all what we’re saying here in terms of indifference.
Ignatius is not wanting us to get rid of our [01:04:00] desires, and maybe that’s a really important moment to look at that translation and go, Oh, that piece is not maybe very helpful the way that it’s been expressed there in that translation. Maybe that’s not going to be helpful to my exercitant. Maybe I’m going to choose a different translation or one that kind of counterbalances that so that it takes the gifts of that translation but doesn’t get the downside of it.
Indifference—I think a far better word to use is freedom. We want to be open, and we want to be free. We don’t want to be so locked into any particular thing that it becomes our one focus, that it displaces God at the center. We want to have God right at the center and everything else in our life that we love, and there are so many things that we love that are so legitimate—our families, our children, our [01:05:00] work.
You know what? The work that I do in Ignatian spirituality is something that I’m deeply invested in. It’s something that I’ve given my life to. It’s a deep desire to share the spirituality, but it’s about not letting whatever those things are become THE thing and God kind of gets nudged off to the side and this becomes the criterion by which we make our choices. It’s got to be so that God stays at the center and the desires that I have are almost in a circle around that core desire which is God. If my desire for God is at the center, then everything else falls into kind of right relationship into the right kind of perspective and it’s about saying God I want what you want. Very often what God wants for us is exactly what God has given us the desire for.
So, it’s not that God’s desires are on the one side and my [01:06:00] desires are on the other side, and they are—you know, there’s a chasm between the two and I have to work to want what God wants and not what I want but it’s about, once I’ve really sifted through my desires and come to what’s at the core of that, that’s going to be in harmony with that central focus on God. So, it’s a much more complex thing. It’s not about loving the things that I love less, but it’s about not loving them more than I love God is the way I would put it.
God is not asking me to not be passionate about sharing Ignatian spirituality, but God is asking me for that not to be more important than my relationship with God. That it’s got to be something that, that supports my relationship with God, that helps me in my relationship with God, not something that takes the place of or becomes more important than.
So, I’m [01:07:00] going to just see if Trevor, do you have something that you can help us with there? Because I know you’ve given a lot of thought to this.
Trevor: Well, it’s a massive question. I’ve just got a few threads going around in my own heart and mind. I think that it may be just important for us to go back to the Principle and Foundation itself to see that last line, in fact, does have the theme of desire present in it. You know, that my one and only desire would be to do that which is most conducive.
So maybe first of all, just to keep in my own mind that the P and F and desire are not at odds with each other. Desire has a place within the Principle and Foundation itself. So that would be just the one thread and then I’m going to most probably say what Annemarie has said in one or two [01:08:00] different words.
I think there is a sense in which once I identify my desires, that there is a tricky balance that desires can become attachments and sabotage freedom. So, for me, it’s holding this key, and I love the word freedom in place of indifference. You know, can I come to a place of freedom, and to what extent. are my desires sabotaging the freedom that God wants for me as a human being. I think the one thing I’ve learned about myself over the past two or three years, that my deepest loves in life can become attachments, and I needed to just have an awareness of that so that my loves or my desires are not wrong in [01:09:00] themselves, but there’s a way in which they can tip over into an attachment that in fact robs me of freedom.
And then I think the third thread for myself, which I find helpful is the image of open hands. Can I live with open hands? Can I hold my desires with open hands? And I say that and just to be a little autobiographical, just to earthen in flesh and blood, is that I think one of my deepest vocational desires, I kind of ran into a wall with, and in fact it was a frustrated vocational desire that took me into doing the exercises. So that has colored my relationship with desire quite [01:10:00] deeply.
Learning to name my desires, to own them, to acknowledge them, to sift through them and also to hold them with open hands has been helpful for me. Very often when I’m with an exercitant and doing the spiritual exercises, I often look around this whole thing of indifference with this image of open hands and I feel that I can both honor desire and the place of desire in my life and be in touch with God’s desiring through my desiring, yet also hold them with open hands. I offer that. That’s the best, I think.
Annemarie: Thanks Trevor. Brenda, do you want toad anything?
Brenda: Thanks Annemarie. I was just [01:11:00] pondering as we were asking the question—something around what and how. I think the desires often have to do with what we long for in our lives, what our lives are to be about. what is most important, how we long for God. And if you look at those things that Ignatius names in the play for freedom or indifference, it’s really about how we’re going to realize those desires.
So, for me, there’s something around being able to say to God, this is what I long for. and I trust you enough to trust however that will be worked out. What will that look like? How will I live that? How will I experience the realization of that deep desire for being with you? I trust you enough for the how. I think there’s something very practical in the freedom. It’s not just about which desires are going to be fulfilled, but [01:12:00] how they will be realized in our lives is actually up to God. What and how?
Annemarie: Thanks, Brenda. Monica, how’s that landing for you? Is that helpful? Where are you now with it?
Monica: Yeah, that’s helpful. That’s good for me to ponder all those things. I do think that understanding the definition of indifference as freedom or as open hands is much more helpful to keep that in the forefront of it. Yeah. Thank you.
Annemarie: Thank you. Thanks for that question. Becky, are you going to talk to this, or have you got a different thing to bring?
Becky: I have a different thing to bring.
Annemarie: Okay. So just pause for a sec here. I’ll come back to you. Is there anyone else who wants to pick up on this aspect around indifference before I come back to Becky. Anyone else who wants to share anything.[01:13:00] Okay. Doreen, did you want to say something there?
Doreen: I just find it really helpful for me to picture Jesus in Gethsemane as the epitome of indifference filled with passion, filled with desires that are expressed in his body sweating blood yet coming to that place to say, I don’t care for anything else in comparison, I’m indifferent to all things in comparison to your will Father.
Annemarie: Thank you, Doreen. I think that’s a really powerful biblical image to hold of Jesus in that moment and I love the word in comparison. I think that’s also really helpful just to remember what is more is that I want what God wants. That’s the deepest desire. Yeah. Thanks, Doreen.
Angela, did you want to talk about this or yeah?
Angela: I [01:14:00] just was going to notice that I had taken a bunch of notes as I was preparing to write my paper. I went through, and I took two words—freedom and desire, and I did the find option where all throughout my notes, those words would pop up and throughout my notes, like every time I turned around the word desire popped up as I was like looking through the dynamics of the exercises and it was everywhere and so I was really moved by how pervasive desire is through the dynamic of the exercises. I do like the way that Monica brought that up but it was stirring in me then this remembrance of “desire” is all over the place in the exercises and is such a big piece of it that to have the right feeling about and I think for me, the freedom of [01:15:00] desire, not from desire was critical when I was going through it to realize that little nuance of words really helped me.
Annemarie: That’s really great, Angela. Thank you for that. You’re right. That sense of desire is the dynamo that leads a person through the exercises. It’s the thing that elicits the desires to ask for the grace, and the receiving of the grace elicits a new desire. So that is all the way through that. Thank you for pointing that out for us again. It’s integral. it’s the thing that holds the whole together in a sense. Melanie on this, are you talking on this? Okay!
Melanie: Yeah. The one thing that I noticed is when we have attachments like Trevor named them, when we choose those or are hanging on to them, there’s usually fear involved. I think as human [01:16:00] beings, we are either driven by fear of loss or fear of something. And I noticed that even in Gethsemane to Doreen’s point, when we are motivated by love—God’s love for us and then our responding out of love, the love over fear question, I think, puts our desires in a proper place. I think Christ in Gethsemane decided to choose love over fear. And so, for me, there’s just something about that—the love and the fear with desires and freedom in Christ. It makes sense.
Annemarie: Yep, it does make sense. Thanks, Melanie. So, the kind of sense that the fear piece often goes with when it tips over into an attachment, there’s often some fear in that mix and love is the antidote in a sense that realigns everything somehow. Yeah. Thanks for that, Melanie.
Okay, that’s been a [01:17:00] very important conversation to hold this thing of indifference and desire. Becky, you wanted to say something about something else.
Becky: I do. It is a little resource that I was put on to by Lacy Borgo and I use this when I’m introducing the PNF. it is this beautiful children’s book. It’s just gorgeous by Desmond Tutu and gives a children’s kind of understanding of what God’s dream for creation is. It’s absolutely fantastic. I read it with all my retreatants just to kind of give a big overall picture of it. You can get it for six bucks off of Amazon if you’re in the United States, but it’s just [01:18:00] God’s Dream by Desmond Tutu. So. I just wanted to share that because I love it.
Annemarie: Fabulous. Thank you, Becky. Thank you so much for sharing that. It sounds amazing. Why don’t you put it in the chat for us? I know it’s a simple title, but someone might want to just write that down.
I wonder if any of the mentors have any wisdom that they’d like to share about their experience of giving the Principle and Foundation and what you have found helpful. Thanks for that, Becky. Becky’s given us a gem. If there are any other gems sitting there that someone would like to share, please do.[01:19:00]
Trevor: Maybe in terms of resources, I think Larry Warner does quite a lovely week by week through the central themes as well, with quite a lot of different possibilities. It could be well worth looking at as well as one constructs that doing the themes of the PNF before doing the PNF. He selects some of the key words, and I think it is really, really helpful.
Annemarie: Thanks so much for that, Trevor. Maddy Christine.
MaddyChristine: Can you speak a little bit more about the PNF in terms of—during my 18th [01:20:00] annotation, I did it in a triad, and most people and I think it was everybody felt a lot of resistance to even getting a more contemporary translation to the words, “I’m created to now serve God” and I was the one who felt it the least but it was very interesting to watch their ugh—they had a hard time getting past that language because they grew up in a church where they were taught to serve and you have to work for God. It was really hard watching them trying to get past it. I don’t know if they ever did really.
Annemarie: So just help me to understand because I maybe have grown up in a different context and I’m maybe not fully getting what the resistance is about. Just help me a little bit more.
MaddyChristine: They, and I had a little bit of it as well. The Principle and Foundation really felt like it was [01:21:00] about needing to come to a place to serve God. So it wasn’t, we want to serve God because we have experienced the grace, which I could move to very quickly, but the other two in my group could not, so they couldn’t get away from, “hey, that, that was my upbringing. I’m trying to get away from that. And here, now I’m right back there.”
Annemarie: Okay, so MaddyChristine, if you were going to give the Principle and Foundation now to the two people who were in your triad or someone coming from that similar experience, how would you go about that in a way that wouldn’t trigger that?
MaddyChristine: I don’t know if I can help it from not triggering. I was thinking earlier today to go very slow and to pause. So, if that’s what they’re sensing, to keep pausing until they’re untriggered. [01:22:00] I’m not sure what I do in that pausing, right? It’s a lot of walking with them and question asking. But I think that’s where the challenge is for me. If I have someone that they’re so being triggered and they’re so used to having to move on, how do I help them go slow and pause? And how can I be present in that space?
Annemarie: One of the things that I think—and I’m going to pass this on to others to also share some thoughts is that when you’re working one on one, you can tailor things much more easily and you can go at much slower pace. You can go at the pace of the person that you’re journeying with. It’s a lot more complex when you’re in a group space, so maybe that’s just one thing to just keep a note of, but I think that what Ignatius really wants is for people to get the [01:23:00] themes of the exercises; that God loves me personally, that God is interested in my life, that God is creating me, that God has longings for my life.
So, if you think the actual words are going to provide a major obstacle to someone, I wouldn’t be too worried about sticking to the actual words too much, if you really think they’re going to get in the way. And I certainly wouldn’t start there.
I think I would really be having conversations around why do you think God created you? What is your sense of what that’s about? And to kind of start with questions that are about exploring that and that can happen in those preparation days for a long period of time. I think if a particular phrasing is going to push people in a way that is not what Ignatius is talking about or what Ignatius is trying to help them to understand, then that language is getting in the way. You might want to think about, is [01:24:00] there a way of going slowly and helping them to reinterpret that language in a different way? Or is that language just so unhelpful that I may have to avoid it altogether.
So, in that case, I might use something like the Bergen and Schwann translation which comes at it a bit differently. I’m created from love, for love, of love. It doesn’t come with that, “I’m created to praise reverence and serve God piece. So, look for other translations that are less likely to evoke that kind of reaction because that’s not the primary thing of what Ignatius is wanting people to get here.
It’s not about we’re created to serve this God, and I think it’s also connecting with image of God stuff. What does that mean around the person’s image of God? It’s not a kind of groveling space. It’s a space of partnership and collaboration and walking with God in a way that is life giving and is creative and part of your sharing of [01:25:00] your journey, because remember this can be quite conversational, can maybe help to show things from a slightly different perspective.
So, asking questions, having conversation, asking what they think about the translation that you’ve shared and starting with a translation that is accessible, that is more helpful, perhaps. Trevor, what do you have maybe to say around that? I’m sure there is wisdom from all of your perspective there.
Trevor: I hinted at it last week. I found Gerald Hughes really, really helpful around this praise, reverence, and serve. When I used that illustration of the meal, that someone makes a meal for me, the expectation is not for me to kind of praise and with lots of language, but my response is one of [01:26:00] the receiving of the meal and the enjoying of the meal, and that is the tone that Gerald Hughes puts to that first sentence.
I really do recommend, MaddyChristine, his God of Surprises. He almost devotes about five or six pages to that first line that really redeems it for people who’ve had a catechism where they’ve been told they have to praise, love, and serve God and it’s that sense of autege, and the way that he works with that first line really frees it from that place—that God hasn’t got this big ego demanding that we praise God—that it’s got a different flavor to it around this enjoyment of life, the [01:27:00] receiving of that everything has been given to me for the sake of the deep need of my friendship with God. Let me just say that. I hope that’s helpful.
Annemarie: Thanks, Trevor. Brenda, do you want to add anything?
Brenda: Annemarie, I was going to mention image of God, because sometimes we just need to be reminded who is the God that I am loving, and we slip back into old images of God, especially when we triggered. So sometimes with an exercitant, it’s just about reminding them how God has made Himself known to them, and that’s who they’re engaging with. Not an old image.
Annemarie: Thanks, Brenda. Maybe just to pick up what Anne’s put in the chat here and link it with what Brenda is saying a little bit here as well.
Anne says, I have found Healing the Purpose of your Life by Dennis Lynn, Sheila Lynn and Matthew Lynn, very helpful in thinking about our deepest desires. I think it’s a really good resource [01:28:00] and they’ve also written a book called Healing Our Image of God. So, there are two good books there, one on desire, one on image of God and both of those things are really pivotal in terms of this part of the journey, particularly. MaddyChristine, how does that land for you; all of that, that we’ve been talking about now?
MaddyChristine: Yeah, that’s helpful. And I think I’m reminded that we don’t enter into the PNF after many weeks of all these themes that we’re uncovering. So, if I have a sense that they’re not ready, then obviously, and which is information I have now, right? I didn’t have that when I was doing it. Yeah. Yeah.
Annemarie: And I think it’s part of that process, some of that faith story stuff also maybe can be helpful to work a little bit of that through in terms of just recognizing images of God and where I’ve come from on the journey that might be quite helpful in terms of this process.
Okay. We’ve come [01:29:00] already to the end of our time. So, I’m going to hand over in a moment to Trevor to help us end in a time of prayer. We look forward to seeing you again in mid-May. So, there is no session on the 1st of May. There’s no session on the 8th of May. And on the 15th of May, we will start in with the first week of the exercises if I remember correctly, and Trevor’s going to help us with that.
Just allow yourself some space with this, space with your assignment. Don’t worry about starting with anyone yet. We’re not going to do that until we’re a little way into the first week so that you’ve got a bit of a head start on your retreatants.
So, we’ll put you in groups at the end of May for the supervision and we don’t want you starting until the end of May at the earliest. So wonderful. Thanks, Trevor. I’m going to hand over to you. [01:30:00]
Trevor: I just thought that we could end very simply. Perhaps I could extend to you a blessing as we end, and I invite you wherever you are to receive it.
I would like to in Christ’s name, bless you or extend a blessing to you, the blessing of a renewed faith, that you may have a sense of your confidence in God’s ever-present companionship being renewed, confidence that in this moment, God [01:31:00] is continuously creating you.
May you be blessed with the gift of that faith today. May you be blessed too with the gift of hope that you may know in a new way that God is continuously working for good within your life and around your life in this present moment. May you receive the gift of a fresh [01:32:00] hope for yourself today.
May I bless you with the gift of love that you may find yourself in your inner being strengthened in your capacity for love. You may be strengthened in your capacity to love God with greater freedom, with a greater wholeheartedness. That you may be strengthened as well in your love for those around about you, especially in your love for those that you are really [01:33:00] struggling with at this time.
So, I bless you in the name of Christ with a renewed sense of faith, hope, and love in your life today. Amen.
Annemarie: Amen. See you all on the 15th of May. Go well.