IGNATIAN SPIRITUAL EXERCISES TRAINING (ISET)
2023-BLOCK TWO – SESSION 18
INTRODUCING THE CALL OF THE KING
Adri-Marie: [00:00:00] Hello everybody. Welcome, Welcome. Welcome.
We are welcoming you to Session 18 and we are going to talk about the Call of the King tonight. So, before we start that, I would love to ask Vivianne to open today with the opening [00:01:00] prayer. Thank you, Vivianne, over to you.
Vivianne: Thanks, Adri-Marie. Just want to welcome you to turn your cameras off so that you can have some private space. And one thing that Ignatio often referred to was this beggarly position. It’s so powerful to consider that is our position of desire. So, maybe there’s a posture in your body that particularly helps you to be aware of that need.
Maybe it’s cupping your hands. Maybe it’s the way you posture your head. Maybe it’s looking upwards or maybe it’s folded, but I want to invite you to take a posture in your body. It allows you to [00:02:00] remember your beggarliness and just breathe and become aware of your great need and your great desire.
As you come to this place in your body where your breath and your hands and your neck and even your facial expression [00:03:00] begin to remind you of your great need, may that be a small portal to meet with Christ—always waiting, the hound of heaven—pursuing, looking for our need.
And we just say to you today, Jesus, yes, come Lord Jesus. We beg you, come.
Eternal Lord of all things. I feel your gaze on me.[00:04:00] I sense that your mother stands near, watching, and that with you are all the great beings. of heaven—Angels and powers and martyrs and saints.
Lord Jesus, I think you have put a desire in me. If you will help me, please, I would like to make my offering. I want it to be my desire and my choice, provided that you want it too, [00:05:00] to live my life as you lived yours.
I know that you lived an insignificant person in a little despised town. I know that you rarely tasted luxury and never privilege, and that you resolutely refused to accept power. I know that you suffered rejection by leaders, abandonment by friends and failure. I know[00:06:00]
I can hardly bear the thought of it all, but it seems a toweringly wonderful thing that you might call me to follow you and stand with you. I will labor with you to bring God’s reign if you will give me the gift to do it.
And so now from your beggarly posture, I invite you to receive into your body, and into your imagination, and your spirit that personal prompting and [00:07:00] invitation from Jesus to you today, and just linger there.[00:08:00] [00:09:00]
And as I read it again, I just invite you to perhaps even shift your posture in a way of acknowledgment or saying yes. to that prompting. So, if your chin was up, maybe it’s down, or if your hands were open, they’re now [00:10:00] holding. But whatever way you can invite your body to respond with a yes to this personal invitation, this personal seed of desire planted in you, as I read it again.
Eternal Lord of all things, I feel your gaze on me. I sense that your mother stands near, watching, and that with you are all the great beings of heaven. Angels, and powers, and martyrs, and saints.
Lord Jesus, I think you have put a desire [00:11:00] in me. If you will help me, please, I would like to make my offering. I want it to be my desire and my choice, provided I know that you wanted it to, to live my life as you lived yours.
I know that you lived an insignificant person in a little despised town. I know that you rarely tasted luxury and never privilege, and that you resolutely refused to accept power. I know that you suffered [00:12:00] rejection by leaders. abandonment by friends and failure. I know.
I can hardly bear the thought of it all, but it seems a toweringly wonderful thing that you might call me to follow you and stand with you. I will labor with you to bring God’s reign if you will give me the gift to do it.
And in this final moment, perhaps you want to say yes in your own [00:13:00] phrasing, in your own way, with your own posture, just to articulate yes, yes, yes.
I welcome you to turn on your video as our little community of beggars coming together to receive from the Lord. It’s good to be with you. Very thankful for our message today and what Trevor will bring to us.
Adri-Marie: Thank you so much, Vivianne; how lovely. [00:14:00] Trevor, over to you. I must say that usually at this point, I always feel like greeting everybody again. So perhaps I can say again, good evening, good morning, good day to every person. Perhaps you want to give a little bit of a wave to each other.
Trevor: It’s really good to be with you. Perhaps you may like to have with you your copy of the Spiritual Exercises. I’ve got Dave Fleming’s one before me, and, as I say, it may be helpful to have it as a point of reference as we look today at the Call of the King.[00:15:00]
It’s also often called the kingdom exercise. David Fleming calls it a rich, structured exercise—a rich structural exercise, and you will know from your own experience of going through the exercises that in the second week, there are a number of key structural exercises, exercises that Ignatius has, as it were, created himself.
I want to offer you, if I may, three introductory comments as we head into our own reflection upon the Call of the King. The first is quite obvious in that the title of the exercise introduces the language of calling. [00:16:00] It’s the Call of the King and you will know by now that the exercises have a very important relationship to calling.
The word often used is the word election and that for many people who do the exercises, it becomes a container for folk to discern the unfolding core— the dynamic calling of God in their life.
I have many favorite phrases from the Bible. One of my favorite, favorite phrases is called by name—called by name. That phrase just reminds me again and again of the deep [00:17:00] reality, to use the words of Paul, that “we are God’s handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works. which God has designed for us to do.” We are God’s handiwork that God’s creative love—go back to the Pinciple and Foundation, God’s creative love is constantly forming us and shaping us, creating us. God is constantly knitting us together. God has not put those knitting needles down into the person that God has called us to be.
Now must probably, the person that you take through the [00:18:00] exercise has most probably settled most of the big decisions of their life already. Most probably, they may have already discerned the career maybe with into which God has called them. They may have discerned whether they’re called to the single life or to a married life. They may have already discerned whether they were called into a kind of religious order of some kind or a particular ministry.
I think it’s important though, for us to keep before us the idea that calling is dynamic, unfolding. Fleming has this wonderful phrase that God is the beckoning God, the beckoning God, [00:19:00] the God who is always beckoning us, calling us, inviting us. So, when we enter into this exercise, we’re in the world of calling.
I think secondly, can I suggest that this exercise can be seen as—and I’m going to use two images here—can be seen as a bridge and a steppingstone exercise. So maybe I can spend a little bit more time on the first image—bridge, and I’ll come to the steppingstone image when I look at the actual content itself of the exercise.
At this stage, the retreatant has hopefully received the grace of the first [00:20:00] week. They know deeply and personally that they are deeply loved sinners. And hopefully with the reception of this grace, there has been within them the renewal of a deep gratitude to God, and a deepening desire to be part of God’s work, a deepening desire to offer themselves for whatever it may be that God is calling them, or to use the language of Viv earlier—a deepening desire to say again our personal yes.
This exercise could be seen as a bridge from [00:21:00]the movement of the first week, into the movement of the second week, into which now we’re wanting to come to know, and to love, and to follow Christ. We’re wanting to say yes to Christ in a new, and deeper, and richer way.
Now, as a bridge exercise for the second week, the Call of the King exercise has been seen as a Principle and Foundation for the next three weeks in total. It seeks to arouse within us, to awaken within us those affections, those dispositions of generosity, of openness to calling, of a deep [00:22:00] desire to follow wherever Christ will lead us.
We will also see that it is a steppingstone exercise. So externally, it serves as a bridge from the first week, the movement of the first week, into the movement of the second week, and indeed serves as the foundation for the remaining journey in the exercises. It’s a very important exercise, but within its own content, it’s also a steppingstone exercise.
You will know it has two parts to it, and the first part, and we will see this later, so I’m not paying too much attention to this now. The first part is a kind of steppingstone to the [00:23:00] second part. So, that’s my second introductory comment.
Then my third introductory comment is that like the Principle and Foundation, we could say that the Call of the King exercise is a consideration. It’s a consideration, and you can see this for yourself. It has some similarities, and it has some differences to the Principle and Foundation, and one of the main differences is that the Call of the King exercise comes with a grace. You will remember that the Principle and Foundation doesn’t have a grace.[00:24:00]
And so, it’s a consideration, and by a consideration, what we mean simply, it’s a kind of exercise in which we think through things; we ponder things; we reflect on things with God. So, there’s a prayerfulness about it, but essentially a kind of thinking through, a pondering, a wondering.
And as we shall see, while no colloquy is explicitly suggested, it does end with a prayer, and we will pay attention to that. [00:25:00] I want to say this before we go any further. We can almost see where this exercise finds its birth in Ignatius’s own life.
When you remember his autobiography, the first part of his pilgrimage was pretty self-focused. It was really him wrestling with his own relationship with Christ in many respects. You may remember that ordeal at Montserrat when he really seeks to make the perfect confession, and how even when he goes to Manresa, that desire to make the perfect confession is still with him, and then that remarkable experience of Cardona, the River Cardona. One of the major things that happens, and you see this in the autobiography, is that through his [00:26:00] experience at the River Cardona, the focus moves away from a self-focus to a deep, deep other centeredness and you find a little phrase appearing again and again in the autobiography, “he wanted to help souls.”
Now within the Ignatian tradition, the spirituality of Ignatius is seen primarily as an apostolic spirituality, not so much a monastic spirituality. It’s a spirituality that takes us outwards towards others with Christ.[00:27:00] So, those are my introductory comments. I hope I’ve whetted your appetite to listen to the rest.
If you look at the exercise, you will see that it has a preparatory prayer. By now, I really hope you know that the preparatory prayer is a critical part of every exercise that you do throughout the Exercises. This preparatory time of looking at God, looking at us, and then expressing that deep, deep desire that our whole being will be [00:28:00] directed towards God’s praise and glory, and hopefully by now, the retreatant has kind of created their own preparatory prayer, that they now pray every time that they enter into the exercises till the end—maybe for the rest of their lives.
I did the exercises 30 years ago and I start almost every time of prayer, whenever I pray, 30 years afterwards, I always say, “Lord, will you direct my whole being to your praise and glory and into your great love.” It’s just become my way of orientating [00:29:00] myself as I enter into prayer, kind of away from a self-focus, or kind of overly self-consciousness towards God.
Just two days ago I got an email from someone who did this course the first time around and has done the exercises. I’m not going to name the person obviously, but this person has continued doing the preparatory prayer. And this person did not know we were going to be talking about it now. So, this person says to me, “I thought I’d share a cool prayer experience with you. This morning, as I entered into beholding Christ, beholding me, while still with no loss of the intensity of Christ’s [00:30:00] personal gaze upon me, I got the distinct sense that Christ was lovingly gazing on me and the entire world, every person, the whole creation at the same moment.”
Now that is what you call a moment of awakening. I always say, “Dear God, will you just give me one of those experiences before I die, and I’ll be happy.” The preparatory prayer is a very deep part. I guess I’m underlining it because it can kind of so easily slip out of the picture.
Notice the two preludes. They’re more obvious in the literal translation than in the [00:31:00] contemporary translation. The first prelude of the exercise is simply a composition of place. Imagine Christ in the context in which he ministered. Just, have a sense of the villages and the town and the people. But again, it’s a kind of subtle reminder that we need to be related to context—our world that we live in. This exercise is happening within our context, within our place, whatever that place may be.
The other prelude—did you notice this—is the grace. It’s that a beggarly posture that we were invited into before I started [00:32:00] speaking.
I’s a grace that has two critical dimensions. On the one hand that we may not be deaf. It’s the grace of being able to listen. You will know and this is a confession to you, so I ask for your forgiveness. I only stumbled across this about 10 years ago, that to listen is the first commandment. Deuteronomy 6: 4—”Listen, O Israel. Hear, O Israel.” That is addressed in the imperative. [00:33:00] We cannot love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength until we’ve learned to listen. It’s the first commandment. Shema. Shema.
We are called to be a Shema people. Ignatius knew that. And he said, when you pray, pray that you will not be deaf, that you will learn to listen. He knows that listening lies at the heart of our relationship with God. It lies at the heart of our dynamic unfolding calling. It lies at the heart of all ministry. It is God. God who beckons. It is our responsibility to listen.[00:34:00] Christ is the initiator of the call. We are the responders.
On the other hand, let’s move. We are to ask for the dispositions of a deep readiness and willingness to follow wherever Jesus leads. Now, can you see the resemblance to the Principle and Foundation? Here is the theme of indifference. Here is the theme of radical freedom. We want to be freely available. We want to have open hands here.[00:35:00] At this moment, we may not know the details of the calling, but we are indicating our openness and our availability, our yes. Here is a bad illustration. We are signing a blank check and we’re saying, “Lord Jesus, you fill in the details.”
As I prepared this talk, and I did that early today mainly, a word came to me that for me kind of captures this grace in one word. I think what we’re asking for here, and I’d love to have [00:36:00] conversation with you about this, is we’re asking for the grace of wholeheartedness. of whole heartedness. Lord, I want to respond to you with the whole of me, with all of me.
So, there are the two preludes. It’s contextualizing Christ in His context, hopefully reminding me of my context, and it’s asking for the grace. The grace has two parts.
And now we come to the three-part structure of the exercise. First of all, Ignatius says—now remember here, Ignatius,16th century [00:37:00] Spain, all the images and the metaphors of that context. He wants us to think of an imaginary king, an imaginary leader who is honorable. William Tim Barry says with his tongue in his cheek, “this must be a fantasy exercise because there’s never a political leader who is honorable.”
Now remember, he’s wanting to provide here a steppingstone to the second part of the exercise. So, he wants us to think of a human leader who awakens in us some attraction, someone that we would say yes to if this person were to come to [00:38:00] us, this leader and say to us, “I want you to join with me in terms of bringing life to others.”
How would you feel? Someone that you really admired invited you to work and to labor with them. Someone who selects you, chooses you, calls you, and wants you to be an intimate companion with him or with her. What does it feel like? You may want to think about that right now. Just think of someone that you really admire, someone you’ve really got a lot of respect for, and that person comes to you and says, would you join me in a work that we [00:39:00] can do together. And this person invites you to be part of something quite significant, quite special. How do you feel?
Now, it’s those feelings that Ignatius is seeking to awaken within us that hopefully will lead us into the second part of the exercise. If we can get in touch with that sense of being called or chosen to share with someone that we really respect in a significant work, that’s the feeling Ignatius is after, and for us to take into the second part of the exercise.
The second part [00:40:00] obviously is Christ and His call to us, and the retreatant now is asked to consider this call of Christ that goes out to us to work with, to labor with, to be with Christ in the world, and to become part of what he’s doing.
Those of you who like Dallas Willard and have appreciated his writings, he has that wonderful book called The Divine Conspiracy. It’s an invitation to become part of the divine conspiracy, the overcoming of evil with good, wherever we are, wherever we are—our context.
Now Ignatius indicates or hints at the response that he really [00:41:00] hopes we will give. He says, it would really be reasonable to say yes to this. So, he, first of all, kind of speaks to our reasoning. it would be good sense to join up with Christ in this adventure. But then he says, why don’t we go beyond reason into a wholehearted response to Christ? Why don’t we move into a wholehearted self-offering? A wholehearted self-abandonment. a wholehearted self-surrender. You can hear the echoes of the magis here—the more, the more.[00:42:00]
Then we come to the closing prayer. Now, it’s also interesting here to note that he’s not stressing a colloquy. I’m sure if we want to talk with Christ, about it, that’s fine, but it’s not his suggestion. Rather, he offers us a prayer that we can just listen in on. He’s not assuming that we can pray it yet. He wants us to listen to this prayer. It’s a prayer of wholehearted self-offering, wholehearted self-abandonment, wholehearted self-surrender. It’s a [00:43:00] profoundly moving prayer.
We can ask the retreatant just to consider this prayer, to think about it, to listen in on it. What feelings does it evoke as you listen in on this prayer? There may be some resistance, There may be some attraction. My hunch is, there will be a fair amount of ambivalence around this prayer, but we’re just asked to notice that at this stage.
I often will say to the retreatant, how was it for you to consider this prayer? How was it for you to listen in on it? Was there anything that you found very attractive about this prayer? [00:44:00] Was there anything that you resisted in this prayer?
Now, I want to suggest that the Call of the King exercise or the kingdom exercise has got quite deep theological underpinnings, and I just want to draw your attention to them—at least two. On the one hand, it’s an invitation to participation now, to really begin to participate in God’s dream for this world, to participate in the divine conspiracy, to participate with Christ in the healing work, the liberating work of this world.
In the first week, we were primarily recipients. Now, we become participants. [00:45:00] We received in the first week; now we’re invited to participate.
William Barry has a very down to earth illustration, which I love. God has got a family business. The family business is not the church. The family business is the world. It’s the healing of the world. It’s the redemption of the world. It’s the saving of the world, and each one of us is called to play our part in the family business. I find that analogy accessible to my own heart and mind.
It’s also an invitation to partnership, and it’s an invitation to a very intimate [00:46:00] partnership. If you read it through carefully in the literal sense, the words, “come with me, come with me, come with me, come with me.” They appear four or five times. It’s an invitation into an intimate companionship/partnership with Christ.
Christ who is with us calls us to be with Him. Prepositions always work two ways in the New Testament. The one who’s with us until the end of the world calls us to be with him and you see the depth of the intimacy in the exercise., even when you go back to the first part with the leader. The leader invites us to eat with him, eat with her, invites [00:47:00] us to drink what she drinks, what he drinks. Can you feel the intimacy to wear the same clothes? There is a call here to intimate companionship and friendship.
The focus so much is not on what we’ve got to achieve. The focus is into an intimacy of partnership and companionship, but it’s against the bigger background of God’s family business. It’s Christ and me and the world.
Now, the challenges of giving this exercise today, I think are immense. There is a metaphor here, [00:48:00] which Ignatius is using, and there is language here, and images here, that I think could really jar images of kingship. They are quite jarring.—images even of warfare a little bit in the background, strong masculine imagery.
I think we face an added difficulty today because we live in a culture or a cultural moment that is highly suspicious of any kind of leadership. A few years ago—I’m not going to mention names now, but I had to go to my little personal [00:49:00] library and take off the bookshelf a number of books written by someone who was one of those people I admired deeply. And when all the exposure came out of the wreckage of this person’s life and the pain and the abuse, it’s like, you know, who can you trust? Who really can you trust?
So, the language of leadership today is I think we are in a crisis of trust around leadership. And so, I think this exercise has to be very carefully adapted to the person that we’re taking through the exercises and to their context. [00:50:00] So rather than being abstract, I’ve created a case study made up of a whole lot of people from all over the world that I’ve had the privilege of taking through the exercises. You will not be able to identify this person. This person only exists in my imagination but brings together threads of human experience that I’ve heard from a number of people.
I don’t know what name to give this person, but I’m going to give this person the name Mandy. Mandy has been married for 17 years and is doing the exercises with me. [00:51:00] Her marriage has lost all sense of closeness and intimacy and romance. She and her husband are not angry with each other. There’s a coldness. They very seldom touch each other. Most of the talk goes around the children and household responsibilities. Mandy is very tired, very weary.
The first week has meant the world to her to know that she’s deeply loved and valued by Christ. Now she comes to the exercise of the kingdom, and the last thing she wants to think about is a King [00:52:00] and being called to labor in a suffering world. She’s feeling quite tired and exhausted. It’s enough just to get through the day with the kids.
And so, for me, I feel a sense of responsibility to draw her towards the call to become Christ’s intimate companion. I feel that will be good news for her, that Christ is calling her into an intimacy of companionship and partnership.
I ask her if there’s any person that really moves her in this world and attracts her. [00:53:00] Maybe someone she reads about, and she tells me she loves the poet Mary Oliver, and now and then she finds her way to one of Mary Oliver’s poems. She loves reading Mary Oliver’s poems.
And so, I say to her, why don’t you take a few days to imagine Mary Oliver inviting you by name, Mandy to a poetry conference, and she wants you to be a special guest because she’s got some poetry to share with you, and I want you just to imagine how you would feel and what would be some of the feelings that would rise up within you when [00:54:00] Mary says to you, “Mandy, I want you to come to a conference with me.”
And now, gradually, I move from Mary to Christ, and I invite her to think of Christ inviting her to a conference on poetry. Christ wants her to be a special guest and a special companion. He wants her to be very near to him, to sit very closely to him, to begin to share with him in making beautiful poetry and writing beautiful poetry. I invite [00:55:00] her to write out her own response in a prayer to Jesus, expressing how she feels towards Him when He invites her to create some poetry together.
I ask her to think about poetry in a marriage and what a love poem could look like, and what a love poem might look like as a mother at the moment. And what would it mean for her life to become a poem of love at this moment? And what would she need from Christ?
I just think there is an incredible power in rediscovering Christ’s call to [00:56:00] companionship within our context, and we need to be very specific about the context we’re in and what it may mean and not get lost in lofty abstractions at this point.
At the corner of my eye, I see that I’ve got two minutes to go, and I never got to the end of my talk. So, I just want to share with you some words that always mean a lot to me, and that I sometimes give to people when we do the Call of the King exercise. God sends every person into this world with a special song to sing, with a special message to deliver, [00:57:00] with a special act of love to bestow. No one else can sing my song. No one else can deliver my message. No one else can bestow my act of love. Only I can. That for me is the call of Christ in our lives. Amen.
And there are the reflection questions just to begin to think about.
How did today’s presentation resonate with your own experience of doing this particular exercise?
And was there anything fresh, one fresh main thing, maybe that kind of just was helpful in [00:58:00] terms of this exercise and giving this exercise?
We’ll talk a little bit more about when to give it, how to give it, but we’ll do that in the question answer or sharing insights and learnings and resources when we come together. But now I think now we take a break, Adri-Marie, is that right? I’m in your hand.
Adri-Marie: Yes, we are taking a break. Folks, enjoy your time of reflection and stretching legs. We will come back at 20 past. See you then.
Trevor: Well [00:59:00] friends, welcome back. I look forward to a conversation with you, either with what is fresh and new or whether you have some wonderings about the input. I’d also be interested whether there were resonances or a lack of resonance with your own experience of this particular exercise.
I’m aware that the internet connection is a little unstable, so I ask for your grace around that at the moment. What I omitted to speak about when offering the presentation is in terms of how to give it timewise and I’d be interested to listen to the experiences of each of you in this respect, but I find it quite helpful to develop this exercise within the 19th annotation over one whole week at [01:00:00] least.
And to spend time with the grace. the preparation and then the first part of the exercise. That’s for the first part of the week, and then maybe the second part of the week, move on to the second part of the exercises, because in a 30-day retreat, it’s usually given on the first repose day and you’re invited to go through it, consider it twice at least. And usually, as you know, a day within the 30-day context works out to plus/minus a week within the 19th Annotation journey.
So, I think all of us are leading people through the 19th annotation. This exercise most probably would take about a week, and it could be supplemented as well with some of those scriptural verses that speak particularly of [01:01:00] calling should you want to do that.
Anyway, let me not talk too much now. The screen is open, and it’ll be great to be engaged with you.
Beth: Trevor, thank you for today. It was wonderful. I always appreciate your teachings. I wanted to ask about that William Barry quote. I wanted to make sure I got it downright. Also, if you had the source, do you mind sharing that again, please?
Trevor: Are you referring to the fact that
Beth: The family business one?
Trevor: I don’t have the exact reference here in terms of book and page, but I can do that. And I’ll get that to you via Pam and get that to the whole group. But it’s a metaphor that he often used in his teaching and in [01:02:00] a number of his books where he compared God’s great work in the world to a family business.
And that the family business concerns God’s relationship primarily with the world and that we all have a role as it were within that family business. He always liked to stress, which I always find very helpful, that we share in the family business right where we are. So, it’s within the actual context of our own lives, communities, neighborhoods, etc. I’ve always found that really helpful because I think there is a possible danger of, in this exercise, kind of drifting off into a big picture abstraction. And while I think the big picture is important, I don’t think abstraction is helpful. I think it’s [01:03:00] really helpful to begin to pull the exercises down.
to adapt the exercises into the particular context of the person that we’re taking through. But I certainly will get the exact reference to you, Beth. Thanks for that.
Beth: Thank you.
Trevor: Any other wonderings, thoughts, interactions, lights, resonances, Viv? Thank you for that prayer.
Vivianne: Oh, thank you for your words today. and especially, I think in our group, we appreciated just your permission to give us space to adapt things and the very practical [01:04:00] example. I think we’re always hearing adapt things, but then not always like here’s an example of something I’ve done that, that kind of really takes it out of the cloud into something practical and everyone in our group felt really inspired by those words in that example, and how helpful that was and so just thank you for the permission and the practical example that helps us to see that really what’s important is when Jesus was weaving parables, it was things that were common to the people. It was things they were familiar with. We aren’t super familiar with sheep and shepherds, so probably those might not maybe be the most practical analogy. So, thank you for just giving us encouragement and practicality of how to take this to the people now so that it becomes a real engaging invitation to a participatory life with God. I really, really appreciated that and our group did too.
Trevor: Oh, thanks for that, Vivianne. I do think it is important, [01:05:00] and I guess this is saying the obvious to some degree. I think it’s really important to use the context of the person, and particularly their loves, the things they do well, the things they’re interested in, their language, Etc.
So, it’s all those ingredients from their life world, that we begin to use as we offer the exercises and as we begin to adapt. For Mandy, she already had an attraction to a poet, which had been picked up previously and then it was from there onwards. Once that was in, one could then build images and possibilities around that thread of poem, poet, poetry, etc. [01:06:00]
Vivianne: Thank you. I also think Jesus might not have disclaimed any of his sayings with, I know this might seem obvious, but probably to him it did seem obvious.
Trevor: Sure.
Jaco: I would just like to share that looking back on my journal, and I don’t know how my director, did this, but he brought out in me the art of possibility thinking—what might be, what can be, if there’s no constraints concerning finances or time or energy, what are the possibilities that you and Christ can do together?
That energized me a lot. I look at the pages and what I wrote and how I dreamt up possibilities and it was just a beautiful time and it’s great to look back on that. [01:07:00] I think not nearly 10 percent of that has been actually realized, but there’s a dream there and it ignited a lot of energy in me.
That’s what I love about this, that it can unlock a lot of great positive energy towards the Kingdom of God.
Trevor: Right. Thanks, Jaco and I think I can feel the energy as I listen to you, but I think what that person was doing really helpfully was getting you in touch with some of your own deep longings to share in God’s dream for the world.
I think so much of our energy is within the realm of some of those deepest longings and desires. I think he was on the one hand, keeping the integrity—and I think this is important—keeping the integrity of the exercise [01:08:00] itself, but taking very seriously, you and your desires and longings to participate with Christ in the world.
Jaco: Yeah. And I’m usually seriously a cautious kind of person. I’ll take it in small baby steps, and he helped me to not do that, to go for the big reach. Yeah.
Trevor: Yeah. Sure. I’m so glad you journaled. Just for me to underline that again, for the person to maybe have their exercise journal with them just to record and to go back like you have, I think is absolutely critical. Thank you for that.
Jaco: Thanks.
Trevor: Any other interactions that can enrich us?
Gavin: I always am helped by you mentioning the [01:09:00] word listening, which is part of your calling and you’ve done it well. But this whole thing of the family business in the world and our context versus getting stuck in the church. I have much more time to engage with my neighbors now so it’s a lot of fun and it releases energy for me. But can you comment on that so that we can be in the family business and not just in the church business?
Trevor: Thank you, Gav. I’m not too sure if I can comment helpfully, but first of all, I do find it so helpful when certainly William Barry, in his reflections on the [01:10:00] exercises uses a metaphor like the family business and relates it particularly to the world in which we live and then he even unpacks it just a little bit more by using some wonderful phrases like God’s family business where we are.
So that really places us in context. Where are we? So, it can be quite helpful, I think, to begin to put some particularities to where we find ourselves living and working as we do the exercises and that gives, I think, some practical contextual content to family business. Then he also picks [01:11:00] up that usually the family business has a personal dimension and a public dimension. A kind of interpersonal dimension, which obviously most probably relates to our relationships and our family, and then the more public dimension, which relates to the wider community in which we are placed.
I do find it interesting and significant—and here I might be depending a lot on my colleagues–it seems that in this particular exercise, there seems to be a kind of bypassing almost of the word church.
I get the feeling here that Ignatius is picking up theologically that God’s first love is the world, not the church. “For God so loved [01:12:00] the world,” not so love the church like the world is God’s first fiancé and so I have the sense that it’s that theology that underpins this exercise rather than a theology of the church. I think the underpinning theology here is one of God’s relationship to the world rather than one of God’s relationship to the church.
However, having said that, I think that for some people, it could be that as they begin to imagine partnership with Christ, it may happen within the church as well, and it may be the reshaping of their own calling within the church and their own participation within the body of Christ in a more specific way.
I don’t know if that’s helpful, but [01:13:00] that’s what’s on my mind as I listen to you, Gav. Yeah.
Gavin: Thanks. That’s very helpful. Thank you.
Adri-Marie: Perhaps Trevor, I’ll just share some of the things that came up for me as I listened to both you and to Gavin as well and was sparked by Jaco’s joy.
From my personal point of view, It’s just such a beautiful one of Ignatius’s exercises to introduce. I really enjoy introducing it because you get to have a bit of conversation, because you have to explain the exercise, so you get to have a little bit of conversation about what sparks a person and who inspires them.
Sometimes we have to help thicken the imagination around it or the encouragement of dream and this is why it’s so important for us to keep memory on our behalf of our person and why disposition days are [01:14:00] so important because the person will always give us a few clues on what is important to them.
They might at some stage say, I love movies or this person’s writings are important to me. At some stage, it’s beautiful how it works, but it is true that they very often give us a clue even before this particular exercise that we introduce. I think the encouragement to use your words, Trevor that says steppingstone. Ignatius didn’t write the exercise to immediately go to Christ calling us. It’s like he knew we need a little bit of loosening of our desires and imagination and whatever comes to mind working with that.
That kind of, for me, crosses any boundary of a particular, the kingdom is only active here, because it encourages us to go with whatever [01:15:00] feels inspiring or who we’re drawn to and that could be any character, no matter if they are of whatever background. So, I think that could be curious. And as always Ignatius combines everything with an examen that always steeps us deep into the real world. Sometimes one could encourage a person in that week to become aware of what inspired them in their examen in that particular week.
The examen is also our companion, our fellow cheerleader, our extra lens that help the grace. So perhaps in that week’s examen, we can in an extra way, notice where did my heart burn? Or where did I feel a sense of Christ’s invitation or just anything that perhaps inspired. It’s just some thoughts.
Oh, and I must share this with you because it helped me so much in my own training. [01:16:00] One of the previous trainers Francis Carrera. I think it was her who used this example that she guided a person who loved the Lord of the Rings, like absolutely loved it, and not like I had a collection, loved it.
And when it came to the Call of the King she then said, “Does that feel inviting?” Imagine yourself within this story of Lord of the Rings however that played out. So, it was a fantasy world, but it hit the first steppingstone that kind of set up the second stuff. That’s just that. Let’s share.
Trevor: Thanks, Adri-Marie. Any other comments, friends? Observations, resonances, little [01:17:00] lights that have gone on? Hi, Melanie. Good to be with you.
Melanie: It’s good to be here as well. What was just welling up in me is just this sense that in this call, it’s really an invitation to become more of who God dreamed me to be, not a cookie cutter version of a religious person, and that is my desire as I’m noticing that to be able to adapt and help my retreatant connect with that.
What is your unique? What is my unique? All in this world and how can I realize if that’s actually what Christ’s inviting me to live into fully is what I’m gathering.
Trevor: Thank you. Yeah. Thanks, Melanie. You’re introducing a number of themes and I’m just going to hold them because we’re going to come back to them again and [01:18:00] again and again.
I think the one obvious one that you started with is it’s like finding God in all things. It’s that this is not necessarily a “religious calling,” [inverted commas] religious, but that it involves all of life and God can be found in all of life. And then also what is that unique way in which God is calling me to both be in this world and to do in this world, that there is a sense for me about personal vocation.
It’s like a double invitation. It’s an invitation to be and to do, and that calling finds its way both into being and doing. I’m called, for example, to be a [01:19:00] companion of Christ in my own uniqueness—and what does that look like—as well as to do with Him in the world. I think you’re opening up for us this landscape of there’s not sacred, secular, no split spirituality. God is the father in all, through all, over all.
Then this whole big landscape of personal vocation or personal calling. I think for many people who are not particularly religious, I think there could be a kind of background thinking that God only calls certain people to certain tasks. But I think what you’re saying here is that it’s a wide-open canvas that each of us are called by name, and it’s for [01:20:00] us to live into the uniqueness, as it were, of the truth of our own being wherever God has placed us. Thank you for opening all that up for us—a much wider landscape. I think I see Maria’s hand.
Maria: I normally take a morning walk around the neighborhood, and I often take a walk that would be away from my direct neighborhood so that I could listen to my podcast and just not get interrupted by a neighbor. But about a month ago, I felt the invitation just to stay within the circle of homes that are just directly around my neighborhood and not listen to the podcast Just be, and just [01:21:00] be present and just say the neighbor’s names as I walk by their homes and just pray for them. And this morning I was in California, and to be on time for class, there was this resistance to take the walk, and I just felt like God say, “Even if it’s a short one, just go for it.”
And it was interesting. I stepped out front of my home and as I started the walk, He said, “This is so important for you because it tells you that you’re part of the world and that to go out and when you walk out of your home, it harkens to your thought about Ignatius spirituality is not about the monastic life,” and I love that part of it, just being in my house and but also but that this is not about that, and it was just a beautiful invitation that I heard just in the quietness of the still small voice that just to be out and it’s good for you Marie to be reminded that this is [01:22:00] about being out with others, and to bring whatever is your way of being out with others.
Trevor: Oh, thanks Maria, and I think what I respond to so warmly in your sharing is the physical nature of what you’ve shared. It’s not thinking about my neighborhood, it’s actually walking in my neighborhood, and I just find that it’s like contextual. It’s getting to know the smells and the sounds and the voices and the sights of my neighborhood in a new way. This is my mission trip. It’s happening in my neighborhood. It’s the context of my life. And again, we see the importance of that very first prelude of situating in Jesus, in [01:23:00] context, in the villages, in the towns, me in my village, town, neighborhood, complex. This is the context of life for me. So just thank you for that. And I just love the walk. Hi Liz. Good to be with you.
Liz: Good to be with you, too. In your talking about giving up everything for the call. I’m reminded that as we grow older, we think of our legacy, what we would like to leave behind—our reputation, our good works, our finances—and the call says to abandon all of that—your achievements—everything just to follow and be with Jesus and just to enjoy the intimacy and how challenging that is for us, because it’s a sense of giving up our [01:24:00] identity.
Trevor: Thank you, Liz. You’re opening up a big door for us. Let me just make a few comments that are just coming from my heart to your heart. I find it significant that many Jesuits do the exercises in this phase of their life. They’ve done it before, usually twice and often do it in “the third phase of life.” I’ve often wondered about that and, you know and what does election look like and what does personal calling look like in the third stage of life?
A quick other thread that comes to my mind as I listen to you and interact with you is Ronald Rothaus’s very helpful framework of human life and [01:25:00] development, that in the first half of life, we get our lives together, hopefully.
In the second half of life, a healthy adult gives their life away and then in the third phase of life, we learn to give our deaths away. I have a sense that we are in that phase of our life, learning from God with Christ, how to give our death away in a way that blesses and enriches the lives of those around about us.
And so, you’re opening up a whole massive landscape for us, Liz. But I think there could be great value for people in the third phase of life to do the exercises. I really do and you’ve hinted at what could happen in terms of our [01:26:00] companionship with Christ and the relinquishment and the diminishments that do come at this time of life for you and me. Thank you.
Adri-Marie: Trevor, if I could just add also something that I made a note of is this theme of calling might feel very big to us. This one exercise is not going to be the be all and end all and Ignatius is not suggesting it to be. All of these exercises build up. If anybody’s feeling great pressure that you must now help your exercitant figure out their whole life, that is not what this particular exercise is about. It’s about us holding [01:27:00] space, being curious together with what God is up to, and then trusting the experience of the exercise. However, your person is experiencing or contemplating in that particular exercise, work with that part—whatever comes to them. Perhaps great resistance comes because the word “call” jars a thing. Great! Then follow that. Explore that more. Perhaps they couldn’t get into it. That’s okay. Linger. Unpack it a little bit. See what did stir. If words don’t come, maybe an image comes. But what is beautiful about the suggestion of this as a bridging exercise is there are many moments that get picked up again from the second week to the third week—”calling type” moments.
Also, we’ll get to that election type [01:28:00] conversations, so do not worry about packing it all out and getting it all together. Ignatius is pretty. smart in terms of loosening the ground, getting clues, and not leaving stones unturned. You will also note that Veltrl puts it a little bit later, just for those of you who wonder, but we particularly enjoy doing it as a transitional exercise between week one and two.
Trevor: Thanks Adri-Marie. I think we have time maybe to explore one more interaction or resonance or fresh learning and it’s over to Dinah.
Diana: Hi Trevor. I have [01:29:00] a wondering about how would you accompany someone who maybe has been brought up in a culture that is quite collective and really strong on conformity that’s like a very high value and so the concern is you know, they might think oh, this is how it should look like for me based on what everyone else is doing around me because what I’m hearing is like this encouragement to find a unique, personal way of being with Jesus or this is how it happens. I think of like in my context, I would encounter a lot of people that are used to just always thinking about what other people are thinking and doing and so they would be like, “Oh, this is what I should be doing. This is what Christ is [01:30:00] calling me to do.” Yeah.
Trevor: Right, sure. Thank you, Dinah. A number of thoughts come to my mind but let me just hold a few. I think first of all, I would want to be deeply honoring of the context of the person to whom I’m giving the exercises. I think there could be some folk who come from an extremely individualistic culture, which we need to be aware of. So, I think my awareness of the collective nature of the culture, I would want to honor and respect and be aware of. I think that would be my first thread.
I think I would secondly, want to stay close to what I think is the part of the genius of the exercises, and that is allowing the creator to deal with the creature, that this [01:31:00] exercise does open up just a little bit of space to consider the possibility that I am called by name, not being in any way antagonistically with the culture at all. Within this context, this gospel possibility of Christ calling me by name to share in a collective group, Some, I think, wonderful overlaps where the collective culture can really be a corrective to some over individualistic way of living my faith.
On the other hand, I do think I can[01:32:00] trust the Creator with the creature and with the genius of the exercises and the metaphors of Scripture— that ability, that something for me to offer this world. And I think that could come as gospel, as good news.
I think it would also be important for me to hear from this person, the voices that they do hear in their own heart and mind, telling them what they must do, and for them to bring that, not to dishonor it, but to bring that into their own prayer as well, as they enter into, and as Adri-Marie was saying, this is the beginning of a journey and it’s not [01:33:00] the end point, but now as they begin to get to know, love and follow Christ and as they bring the voices that they’ve heard into that conversation to trust the creator to deal with the creature, not dishonoring their cultural context at all. I’m honoring that. I’m also trusting the creator who knows that. to work with that person. So, I would want to honor that person’s experience in all ways, bring it into prayer and into their journey with Christ in the exercises. How does that land?
Diana: Yeah, that’s really helpful. I think to see it as a kind of leveraging of the person’s experience using that as an opportunity to connect that with the exercises. [01:34:00] I do really appreciate how we are to honor the ways that they’ve been shaped and to be aware. I also have to be aware of my own biases and maybe my own personal opinions on that and one of the ways to do that would be to honor those experiences and say, yeah, we can use that. God can still use that to help them to consider that they have something unique to offer to the world. So, thank you. Yeah.
Trevor: It’s enabling that person to recognize and to respond to God who is present in everything, in every call, in every culture. Now that doesn’t end, but it does affirm deeply God’s presence and now can we recognize that presence and can we recognize that [01:35:00] activity as we get to know Christ more deeply and follow Him. And that could be quite an adventure, I think, because I think it does affirm deeply the person and the context in which they have grown up.
Diana: Thank you. Thank you.
Trevor: I’ve overstepped my time.
Adri-Marie: What a joy to be together and to remember the yes’s even of our own lives. So, if you need to immediately go, I really do want to give you that permission, and I will just let us land with the next minute just to give a nice big exhale,
Give a nice big exhale,[01:36:00] and perhaps just recall your yes moment right in the beginning. And perhaps there was even another yes during our time together where you felt your heart. your body, your mind respond.
And so, Loving God, we would love to respond with a big yes. I thank you for [01:37:00] also knowing that sometimes our yes is not that big. Sometimes we need a bit of courage even to nod yes, or to sense the invitation. We want to want to, Lord. Thank you for our time together. Amen.
See you next week.