IGNATIAN SPIRITUAL EXERCISES TRAINING (ISET)
2023-BLOCK ONE – SESSION 3
Russell: [00:00:00] Welcome to another Monday evening of spiritual exercises training, and we’re going to ask Anne to begin for us today. She’s going to lead us in prayer. So, Anne, we hand over to you.
Anne: Thank you. So, if, depending on what makes you feel more comfortable, if you feel you’d like to switch your videos off and just relax into your chairs, make yourself comfortable, soften your bodies and be open to what the spirit has for you as I begin the prayer tonight, [00:01:00]
You may want to take a breath or two. Breathe in and as you breathe out, just drop your shoulders. Sometimes as we drop our shoulders, it helps us to feel more relaxed and let go of some of that tension that we may be feeling.
Just to make sure that all our microphones are on mute. And I thought tonight I would bring you a blessing as we begin– a blessing of hope, [00:02:00]
Though may we know the hope that is not just for some day, but for this day, here and now, in this moment, that opens to us. Hope not made of wishes, but of substance; hope made of sinew and muscle and bone; hope that has breath and a beating heart; hope that will not keep quiet and be polite; hope that knows how to holler when it is called for; hope that knows how to sing when there seems little cause; hope that [00:03:00] raises us from the dead, not some day, but this day. Every day, again and again and again.
So may we know the hope that is not just for some day, but for this day; now, in this moment, that opens to us; hope not made of wishes but of substance; hope made of sinew and muscle and bone; hope that has breath and a beating heart; hope that will not keep quiet and be polite; [00:04:00] hope that knows how to holler when it is called for; hope that knows how to sing when there seems little cause; hope that raises us from the dead, not some day, but this day. Every day, again, and again, and again.
Just spend a moment or two with the word or the words that stood out for you. [00:05:00] [Silence][00:06:00]
And so, Holy One, as we meet tonight to immerse ourselves in the exercises, we ask for the grace of wisdom and [00:07:00] we ask that you help us as we enter into the space of learning, and we ask this in the blessed name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Russell: Amen. Thank you very much, Anne. And I’m going to hand over to Trevor, who’s now going to lead us in our input for today. So, Trevor, the screen is yours.
Trevor: Well, thanks, Russell, and good morning, good day, good afternoon, and good evening to wherever you may be in the world this moment. I’ve been entrusted with the lecture on the [00:08:00] purpose of the spiritual exercises. And whenever I think of the purpose of the spiritual exercises, there is an image that comes to mind, and I’d like to share that image with you, and I hope that you will hold this image throughout the presentation of the purpose of the exercises today.
And this image comes from the writings of an Indian Jesuit—his name, Carlos Valles—and he tells quite a remarkable story of one day cycling through the Indian countryside. It’s just after the monsoon rains. Everything [00:09:00] is alive with color and sound and freshness and as he’s cycling, suddenly there is a stillness that pervades the whole atmosphere. And so, Carlos stops his bike, stops peddling and looks around the countryside and suddenly he sees the reason for the stillness.
In the tall grass there is a cobra, half erect, kind of standing up; its hood wide open and its tongue flickering and its eyes are fixed on a little bird [00:10:00] on the branch of a tree, and this little bird is mesmerized, paralyzed by the stare of the snake.
And Carlos, writes, and I’ve kind of memorized the words that he writes. He said, “You know, I’d often heard that snakes could do this to birds, but now I was seeing it with my own eyes. This bird. had a voice but could not sing. This bird had wings but could not fly, and even though it had the whole sky as its range, it was paralyzed on that [00:11:00] branch.” And so, Carlos waved his arms and made sounds to break the stare of the snake and he describes how when the stare of the snake is broken, he describes how this little bird that was so attached to the branch, how this little bird finds its voice and begins to sing—finds its wings and begins to fly.
Now, I don’t know how this story lands as it were in your imagination today, but the first time that I read it, it just captured my heart and [00:12:00] mind and I really want to suggest that it takes us to the very heart of what the purpose of the exercise is all about. Somehow this image on the one hand takes us very deeply into the human condition, as it were. We live so often, as it were, caught in the stare of the snake. And on the other hand, the story kind of holds out this incredible possibility of freedom—the freedom to find our voice and sing—the freedom to find our wings and to fly.
So, I want you, if I may, if I can invite you to [00:13:00] keep that image just alive in your own heart and mind. And as we step into the purpose of the exercises, I want to, right at the outset, look at how Ignatius himself “words” the purpose of the exercises in the text of the spiritual exercises.
As we journey through this year, our hope is really to immerse you in the text, the actual text of the spiritual exercises, and that you will become really at home with them in a good way—familiar with them and know your way around them and how the different pieces of the exercises [00:14:00] fit together, and I cannot stress how important this is enough. You know, the text of the exercises emerges from Ignatius’ life. It’s not a curriculum that has been thought up in an academic study. The text of the exercises emerges from Ignatius’ reflection upon his own experience.
And last week, and here again, I want to make a link with Russell’s lecture, Russell took us and immersed us in the life of Ignatius. Now we have in the text itself, we have the reflection by Ignatius [00:15:00] upon his experience and particularly upon his experience within Manresa when he was in Manresa. And it’s out of that reflection upon his own life that the text of the spiritual exercises emerges.
So, I want to take you—and I hope you have maybe the text near you—I want to take you to a statement of the purpose of the exercises, it’s found in two places of the text. The first of these purpose statements is found in what is known as the Annotations. As you open up [00:16:00] the Spiritual Exercises text, the first thing you come across are the annotations. There are 20 annotations, and we will be spending a great deal of time exploring those annotations. Those annotations, or preliminary helps, as Fleming puts it in his own contemporary translation; those annotations are given on the one hand to the one who is giving the exercises, and there are certain annotations particularly aimed at the giver of the exercises.
And on the other hand, there are some annotations particularly aimed at the person [00:17:00] who is doing the exercises. As I said, we’ll spend a great deal of time looking at the annotations, so don’t worry too much about all 20.
But in the very, very first annotation, Ignatius gives us an indication of what the purposes of the spiritual exercises are and I’m going to read, and you can follow them in the literal translation in Fleming if you have Fleming open. You may want to also be looking across at the contemporary translation. I’m reading from Michael Ivens’. Michael Ivens’—this is how it’s worded in Michael Ivens’ translation, “And [00:18:00] so Spiritual Exercises is the name given to every way of preparing and making ourselves ready to get rid of all disordered affections so that once rid of them, one might seek and find the divine.
So, there we have the first indication of the purpose of the exercises in the annotations. Now there is one other place where the purpose of the spiritual exercises is given very clearly. If you [00:19:00] move through the 20 annotations, you will come in the text to presupposition, and to the purpose of the spiritual exercises.
So, if you could find your way—point number 21—and again reading from Michael Ivens, and you will make the links with David Fleming or, you might have Poole’s translation or Gantz, but let me read from Michael Ivens. “Spiritual exercise having as their purpose the overcoming of self and the ordering of one’s life on the basis of a decision [00:20:00] made in freedom from any disordered attachment.”
So, there we have another—slightly different wording—another expression of purpose by Ignatius himself in the text. Now before I look at those two, as it were, definitions of purpose, let me make a quick comment about language. I don’t know if, as I read to you, how this language sounded to you—how it sounded in your ears, but the language can sound very Pelagian.
Pelagius, you will know, was that monk; I think around about 400, [00:21:00] who stressed a human effort in the process or the experience of salvation—that somehow salvation was the consequence of our own efforts. And it’s very, very easy and dangerous to take the words of Ignatius and to interpret them through a Pelagian framework, that somehow Ignatius is saying here that through human efforts we will attain the salvation of our souls, as it were. I want to suggest that nothing could be further from Ignatius’ intention. We know from last week and from [00:22:00] Russell’s description of Ignatius’ own pilgrimage. Ignatius knew from his own experience the futility of human effort in terms of salvation. He knew from his own painful experience that human effort on its own was a dead-end street.
And you will remember, I hope, how Russell took us to Manresa, and you may remember that terrible period of desolation in Ignatius’ life when he comes to the end of his own striving, the end of his own efforts, and then there is that breakthrough of grace in his life. [00:23:00] Very closely linked. to that experience at the River Cardona.
That is why, and you will know this, that in almost every exercise in the text of the spiritual exercises, one of the first things we do is we ask for grace. In almost every exercise, we ask for grace. We ask for the grace to come to know God’s love. We ask for the grace to come to know our own disordered tendencies. We ask for the grace to come to know and to love. and to follow Christ. We ask for the grace to share in the sufferings of Christ. We ask for the [00:24:00] grace to share in the joy of Jesus in the resurrection. We are constantly asking for grace. Grace is the engine that drives the whole spiritual exercises. And asking for grace is a constant reminder of our need for grace, and that everything is going to be given to us by grace.
In the spiritual exercises, Ignatius assumes our dependence upon grace. He assumes that our freedom, our conversion, the redirection of our heart is not achieved by effort, it is not achieved by works, and it’s not achieved by what we can do. [00:25:00] Michael Ivens has a wonderful phrase, and I’ll simply offer this phrase to you, that conversion is the consequence of a graced collaboration between God and the human being—a graced collaboration. And so, I just wanted to make that clear in terms of language, to watch out, not to interpret the purpose of the exercises through a Pelagian framework, but through a framework of deep, pervasive grace.
Now, having given you [00:26:00] those two descriptions of purpose in the text themselves, what I’ve done is I have reflected in depth.
on Ignatius’s words, and now I want to offer to you and kind of untangle three deeply related threads of purpose and obviously I’m doing this in my own words. I’m going to depend upon some of the wisdom of those who are in the Ignatian tradition, but I need to take responsibility fully for my untangling of these three threads. They are threads that are deeply interwoven together and I’m just untangling them. [00:27:00]
First of all, the purpose of the spiritual exercises is all about finding greater freedom. Go back to that little bird on the branch of a tree, caught in the stare of the snake that’s lost its voice, cannot sing, lost the use of its wings, and cannot fly.
The spiritual exercises and the purpose of the spiritual exercises; it’s all about freedom. John English is a Jesuit scholar. I think he died. He wrote a book both describing the dynamic of the spiritual exercises and also offering huge help in giving the exercises, and intriguingly [00:28:00] he called that book Spiritual Freedom.
Ignatius understands the purpose of the spiritual exercises as a liberation, as a liberation from disordered affections and disordered attachments and I say that again slowly. He understands the purpose of the exercises as a liberation, a profound inner liberation, freeing from disordered affections and disordered attachments. These are the stare of the snake in our own lives, and he sees us being liberated from [00:29:00] disordered attachments and affections towards—so it’s from and to—a freedom from and a freedom towards, a freedom towards the seeking and the finding of the will of God in one’s own life. We become free to live for God. Through the conversion, and this is Michael Ivens speaking, not me—through the conversion of our affectivity—the conversion of our affectivity.
Now I’m deeply aware that the language of disordered attachments is a huge arena, and we’ll be coming back to this [00:30:00] whole world of disordered attachments, disordered tendencies, etc. when we explore the first week. But in my simple, my homely way of putting this and its—for me, disordered attachments, and tendencies—they are those attachments and tendencies that enslave me and keep me from becoming the person that God wants me to be. They limit my freedom to love God and to love others.
Disordered attachments always undermine our freedom. They always sabotage [00:31:00] our freedom. And so often, and there are different grids that we can use for this. So often our attachments are in relation to what we do, our work. Sometimes our attachments are to what others think of us, our reputation, for example. Sometimes our disordered attachments are to what we have, our possessions, etc. And sometimes, and this has been a gradual discovery for me, our attachments lie in what we really love. Our attachments lie in what we really love.[00:32:00]
Our attachments paralyze us on that branch of the tree and perhaps we can just take a moment. You know, I don’t want this just to be an intellectual kind of head trip for us. Maybe we can just begin to wander a bit. God, by your grace, be kind to me, but just shine your light gently on some of my attachments at the moment.
What’s limiting my freedom? Sabotaging, undermining my freedom to love God and others and follow God’s call in my life? What are the patterns of my compulsive behavior? Just—Lord, will [00:33:00] you gently show me? If you want to use the Enneagram, Lord, please do. What are the patterns of my compulsive behavior? How freely do I love others or seek to possess them? How free am I to hold lightly in my hands that which has been given to me? How free am I within the loves of my life? And you may just want to ask the Lord, you know, Lord, just shine your light, your grace, your gracious and loving light, that I might move towards [00:34:00] greater freedom.
I think another thread of the purpose of the spiritual exercises—and it’s embedded in those two bits of the text that I read for you—is that the purpose is about discerning personal vocation—discerning personal vocation. Back to our little bird again. When that bird finds its voice and sings, when that little bird finds its wings and begins to fly, that little bird is discovering its personal vocation. it’s becoming who God wants it to be.
Now the Jesuit who has [00:35:00] done I think the best work on this is a Jesuit by the name of Alfonso, I think it’s Herbert Alfonso, and he wrote a little, little, little book. It’s very thin. You can read it in, I would say, an hour and a half, and it’s called Personal Vocation, and it is a very helpfully—I don’t want to use the word argued. He’s not arguing, but he puts forward very strongly his conviction that the aim and the purpose of the spiritual exercises is all about discovering our personal vocation. Let me quote Alfonso to you, I’ve come to realize that the discernment of the truest and deepest [00:36:00] self is the most profound and radical meaning of the election”— the election, the choice— “that is the goal of the spiritual exercises. This truest and deepest self I call our personal vocation.” And so, this is what it means for Alfonso. Now I’m using the language from the text. This is what it means for Alfonso to seek to find the divine will for our life. So, he sees the purpose of the exercises not so much as discerning our functioning life, but the way that God is calling us to be in this world; that the purpose of the exercises is discovering, as it were, the uniqueness of our being [00:37:00] and living it. And so, he describes, and you can read it for yourself, how God frees us progressively at deeper levels, that God usually begins freeing us at the most obvious patterns of sin and disorder in our life.
That’s where it usually begins and then moves. to the conversion of values, and then most deeply at the level of motivation of our heart. And so, for Alfonso, seeking and finding God’s will, which is the purpose of the exercises, has to do with the discerning of personal vocation. Becoming in simple language [00:38:00] that unrepeatable, unique, one of a kind person that God wants us to be.
And then thirdly, untangling another thread that the spiritual exercises—a purpose of them—is all about making faithful decisions. When you go back to the text, and if you go back again if you can, it’s on that handout, that the whole emphasis about making faithful decisions that, as it were, are not contaminated by disordered affections and tendencies. The spiritual exercises have as their aim and purpose the making of decisions that are rooted in a greater freedom.[00:39:00]
It has been quite humiliating for me to discover how many of my decisions have not been made in freedom, but have been made out of compulsion, made out of my disordered attachments for reputation and. achievement and performance. It’s all quite humiliating. God, thankfully, is gracious.
Now, when Ignatius first gave the exercises, many of the people doing it were making a big decision as to whether they became a Jesuit or not. Did they, are they, were they called to the single life? Were they called to marriage? Were they called to, as it were into the life of the religious, to become a companion of Jesus, to become a Jesuit. [00:40:00]
When you and I give the exercises, most people have already made these big decisions around, you know, am I going to be married?
Am I going to be single? What career am I going to follow? What vocation am I going to follow? But that doesn’t take away the importance of decision making in the exercises. And very often people who do the exercises will make decisions with regard to their relational lives, their vocational lives, how they’re living out their choices that they’ve already made, decisions with regard to the social context in which they place, and what faithfulness looks like within the social arena of their lives. Ignatius ultimately wants to move us towards the making of [00:41:00] decisions that are going to be, and this is his language, conducive to the deepening of God’s life in us.
Now, can I make an observation here? And I’m grateful here to Anne Marie and to Russell and to all the Jesuits in my life who teach me these things. But there are two big schools of thought here. There are those who are called electionists. Electionists, on the other hand, those perfectionists. The electionists are those who side on the side that the exercises are all about making and discerning a decision. The perfectionists are on the side that the exercises are all about deepening our union [00:42:00] with God.
So, you have a little bit of a tug of war in the literature between these two sides. But there’s one Jesuit whose name is Melloni— M-E-L-L-O-N-I— who says there should be no contradiction and no tug war. And I quote from him here, where he says, rather succinctly, the Ignatian name for union is election.” Now if that doesn’t stretch your mind a lot, it hasn’t landed.
The Ignatian name for union is election, or to put it a little bit more simply—they go together—that as we grow in friendship with God, we are better able to discern what [00:43:00] decisions to make in our life. They somehow go together. The deepening of our life with God and the making of faithful decisions hang together. They are integral to each other.
So, we’re having Ignatian speak—we become contemplatives in action; we’re not contemplatives, it’s not contemplation and action, or action and contemplation, rather it is integral. We become contemplatives in action.
So those are the ways in which I have—those are the three threads in which I’ve teased out. Those two statements of purpose within the text. But I want to say that as we do the [00:44:00] exercises, and I’m sure this is true, there are many other gifts—that kind of “gift consequences” of doing the exercises. So, I don’t want us, as it were, to get locked in too rigidly. This has to be the purpose of the exercises in your life. I’ve found, as I’ve offered these exercises to others, that the exercises seem to serve many different purposes in the lives of those who do them. And again, I’ve reflected here a little bit on my experience and I’ve just kind of—here are some of the gift consequences.
I think for many people it’s become a wonderful place where our conversion continues. Ashen Brenner has a lovely [00:45:00] phrase—”for many people the exercises are a school of discipleship.” They are a school of discipleship, and the exercises helped me; they’ve really helped me to see that conversion is not a destination, it’s a journey. We are constantly on the road of conversion. Conversion of life and heart and values is constantly happening, constantly happening, and the exercises play a wonderful facilitative role in this ongoing conversion of our life. Once converted, fully converted is simply not true. Once converted, fully converted is simply not true. You know that from your own experience, and I know that from my [00:46:00] experience. Our conversion continues, and the exercises can play a wonderful role in that ongoing conversion.
For many people, the exercises help people to learn how to pray. They are primarily not a school of discipleship, but a school of prayer, a real school of prayer.
I think, sadly, Ignatian prayer gets limited to imaginative contemplation. So, when you talk about Ignatian prayer, everyone goes in the direction of imaginative contemplation, which is a critical part in that school of prayer. But the school of prayer is much bigger than imaginative contemplation, and we’re going to discover as we look at the text all the different other [00:47:00] tools that go into our prayer toolkit as it were. The act of the presence of God, asking for a gaze, colloquy, meditation, imaginative contemplation, examen, the first, the second, the third ways of prayer, and I can go on and on and on.
So, for some people, the purpose is, I learned how to pray. I learned how to pray. For some people, it’s a school of discernment. It really is a school of discernment, that through their exercise journey, they learn how to discern the movement of God in their own life.
Now, I’ve already hinted at this by my reference to Alfonso on personal vocation, but there is a sense, and again you know this, and I know this, calling is not written in concrete. Calling is [00:48:00] daily. God is calling me today into greater genuineness, deeper honesty, more radical faithfulness. God is nudging me every day of my life into calling and what the exercises do for many of us is they help us to discern how the Spirit is calling us in the here and now and that in many ways has been the gift, I think. Well, I received so many gifts, but that was such a gift for me. Just to have a real sense of how—it fine-tuned my awareness of God’s calling activity in my life. So, a school of conversion, a school of prayer, a school of discernment. For many people, and this is [00:49:00] hard to use the word school, but a school of healing, a place of healing.
Veltri is responsible for orientations, and we referenced that last week. You can find that online. He talks that we often make the exercises in a certain mode, and we can sometimes make it in the calling mode, but sometimes people who do the exercises make it in the healing mode. And I have found that for many people, the exercises have been a profound experience of healing.
Just as a simple example, for many people, the exercises heal their image of God, and with the [00:50:00] healing of one’s image of God, healing flows so deeply into the rest of our life. It flows into the healing of our own image of self. and I think Annemarie did a whole PhD on that—profound interconnection of our healing of image of God and the image of who we are. And then from there, the healing of our life and our life in the world.
And for some people, lastly, it’s a school of love. The exercises help us to fall in love again; just to fall in love; to fall in love with God; [00:51:00] to fall in love with Christ; to fall in love with life. Rob Marsh, who is one of my favorite Jesuit people, and you will read a lot of him as we go through our course. Just listen to these words. “At the start of the exercises he was all abstraction and hope and activity, but by the end he is the one I’ve come to know intimately. I watched his birth, and I held his warm weight. And I’ve been there as he has grown up and been made man before me. I’ve seen his struggle, and I’ve loved his laughter. I’ve gazed at him. I found him gazing back. I heard [00:52:00] my name on his lips, and I’ve been drawn into his friendship, and I’ve watched him work, suffered his hardship, wrestled with his own self-discovery, and I’ve discovered that I need him, and I’ve been sweetly shocked that he needs me to. Something has happened. I have fallen in love.”
And so, I’ve done my best to just bring alive for us the purpose of the exercises. Back to that image of that little bird caught in the stare of the snake and our own [00:53:00] lives caught in all our own compulsions, our attachments, our addictions and there is a sense in which the exercises, they break the stare of the snake that we can maybe find our voice and sing, our wings and fly, that we may in fact become that unique person that God wants us to become, and that we may become free enough to be available to whatever it is that God is calling us to be and to do, that we may become free enough again to fall in love with the one who loved us into being.
And so, I offer the words to you and pray that somehow [00:54:00] they can land in your heart and mind today. And so, we have a few moments of break. It’s a time where we can also maybe reflect a bit. And maybe one way of reflecting today is, you know, what was helpful in the input today? What did you learn, maybe, about the purpose of the exercises? Was there anything new?
But maybe also a little bit of personal reflection. What purpose, what purpose did the spiritual exercises serve in your life? What were they for you? How did God use the spiritual exercises in your life as you reflect upon your own experience? And then I [00:55:00] think we’re on our own until I think it’s 15 minutes past the hour. Is that correct?
Russell: Yes, we’ll do that. Annemarie’s put the question, the first one anyway, in the chat for anybody. So, we’ll come back at 15 past the hour, and the questions are in the chat.
Russell: Welcome back, everybody. We’re going to go into our groups now, to share and reflect as you did last week on what you heard and maybe what has come out of your own time of reflection, based on those questions that Trevor offered, and then we will come back around 10 to the hour for our plenary discussion. So, we’ll put you into [00:56:00] your groups. Happy reflecting.
Trevor: Thank you. Well friends, good to be with you and perhaps I can just, you know, remind you perhaps just of the kind of way we are really seeking to work. And that is, you know, input, personal reflection, a conversation in the groups. And now, you know, what is coming to the surface that we can maybe engage with in the larger plenary.
And I’ll always just invite you just to remain confidential to what was shared in the group, but this is the time for us to . . . [taping went silent] [00:57:00]
Trevor: Am I back on the air? Someone muted me. Okay. This is the time just for us to explore further and to respond to questions, concerns, or just to share learnings, and so we’ve become a bit of a community of learners learning from each other, and I think we’ve got so much to offer each other, and I don’t want to minimize that in any way.
Yeah, so, anything that we can engage, anything that’s coming to the top of your own heart and mind at the moment in the light of input, in the light of personal reflection, and in the light of group discussion? What’s, happening for you?
Christine: I have a desire to just express how enriching the experiences already is—like we’re three weeks in and it makes me [00:58:00] very emotional. I’m learning a lot of new things. That’s really surprising because the journey has been obviously, when I took the annotations very personal. So now to learn, oh, this is why people might enter in, so I’m learning a lot; but again, to reflect back on my journey through the exercises, it’s reliving it and it’s also showing me how the growth has continued, and I still work with the exercises. It’s a journey that keeps going for me. Yeah, this is really enriching and life transforming. So, I just had the desire to say thank you to all of you because it’s—I’m still in the process of freedom. I think I took [00:59:00] it as healing. I didn’t know really what purpose I was in; it ended up being healing I can now say looking back.
I think I’m in a stage—lots of stages, but I would really embrace now the freedom part for that to deepen.
Trevor: Thank you. Thank you, Christine really value the encouragement. That’s a very special gift. Thank you. But also wanting just to pay attention to some, I think, important threads of what you what you’ve been saying and sharing.
I think that our experience does give us an opportunity to—it’s almost to keep one foot in our own experience and another foot in our learning. And I think that in that, just in that conversation between [01:00:00] our experience of the exercises and the conversation we have around the text ourselves, I think something new bets birthed. I think it does.
I just find that for myself as well. You know that engaging my own experience, engaging what we’re doing somehow takes me into a new space or a fresh space. And the other thread, Christine, if I may just hold for the whole group is that there’s a sense in which I think the exercises continue for the rest of our lives in many ways. You know, some people say we move into the fifth week and the fifth week goes on forever.
But there’s also a sense in which I think sometimes we may find ourselves again back in the first week or back in the second week or back in the third week or the fourth week. So, there’s a sense in which [01:01:00] you know, often in just a spiritual companionship of walking with someone else, you almost catch a glimpse sometimes of what week they’re in, in their own life and it kind of helps one in one’s companionship with them. For example, we might find ourselves dealing with our attachments again, and there’s a sense in which we’re back in the first week and, so I think just that comment of yours that the exercises keep on going and I want to build on that and say keep on giving as well, you know, just deepening our own journey into freedom as you were saying. So big thanks, thank you, Christine. I don’t know if Russell or Anne Marie want to build on that or say more.
Okay, thanks, [01:02:00] Christine. Any other just things coming to the surface?
Vivian: Yeah, in our group there was some discussion around the beauty of freedom and the desire that we have for indifference and freedom and yet at the same time how there’s something in us that resists that or that we feel a certain sense of it didn’t feel nice. The exercises weren’t always sort of this walk in the park. And, you know, when you talk about the bird and freeing it, it sounds only good and only right. And then to think the bird was trapped in that space. So, I think, you know, just, can you speak into that a little bit more about that, that resistance within us or that the part of us that holds back from freedom?
Trevor: I think you’re [01:03:00] touching the—thank you to your group, Viv for that.
I find facing, you know, the depth of my attachments, which undermine my freedom. I think there is a certain—I don’t know if one uses the word pain or struggle in sometimes acknowledging and so there are, I think, deep resistances towards maybe putting some names towards some of those attachments that we do have.
And I think we’ve got many ways of ducking our attachments. You know, we sometimes see them in others, etc. So, I think it does take a certain [01:04:00] grace to face our resistance to acknowledge our resistance in facing those attachments. But I think our resistance could be a little bit of a gift of just inviting us into perhaps a deeper curiosity with God around what’s going on around resistance. I’m sure Russell and Annemarie will have far more than me to say on this, but I think there’s always a sense in which resistance is like a prelude to another deepening freedom.
They seem to go together a bit. I think our attachments –well, they are very deep. We are comfortable in them. They’ve given structure to our lives. They are the way we [01:05:00] present ourselves to the world and I think the sense of maybe beginning to release some of our attachments with the help of grace, I think can be quite frightening.
So, I think I’m on the side of being wanting to be a tentative towards our resistances and to allow them to become little signals that maybe we need to pay some attention here, but we’re doing that always within the context of grace and that I have a sense that God has a sense of timing with us in God’s grace of bringing, of knowing what we can deal with at a certain time in our life.
So that’s a little bit of an inadequate response, but it’s [01:06:00] best that I can do, and I’m sure Russell and Annemarie will come a little bit to my aid; but thank you for signaling the word resistance.
Annemarie: Yeah. I think I would certainly agree with what she has been saying. I think I think there’s something about, you know, the fact that the exercises are, you know, gift, but they’re also challenging and that in a way you really have to come into them, or the one making the exercises has to come into those exercises with a lot of that generosity and that openness that we kind of spoke about.
At some point, we’ve already mentioned that—that there has to be a very deep desire in order to be able to withstand or to persevere in those moments where there is resistance and where it is challenging, where it is a struggle, [01:07:00] that there needs to be that desire that kind of keeps us opening to that grace that we’re seeking and keeps us asking for the grace that we need to stay present to those places that are more difficult or more challenging. Yeah, so I mean, I think we often talk about, you know, consolation and desolation and consolation being any increase of faith, hope and love, any movement towards God and sometimes there are difficult consolations. There are consolations, but they’re ones that are not easy. So yeah, just a few thoughts there.
Trevor: thanks, Annemarie. Russell?
Russell: I don’t have too much to add. When you were talking, Trevor, I was thinking about just the importance of being able to [01:08:00] –that grace to notice the resistance—just to begin there. Because, I think as soon as we start to notice the resistance, something starts to happen, you know? And sometimes, you know, well, we think we deal—if you want to use that word—with an attachment and we kind of move on. It’s like a bedspring, you know; it’s sort of like, even though it’s in a different space, you always come back to that same point that sometimes in our lives, revisit those, those attachments again.
And, and once again, the noticing of the resistance and then it goes just a little bit deeper. You know, this is really a journey. This is not a once off, but it’s a journey and the ability to—and I think right from the beginning, that’s what Ignatius wants us to do before anything else is to sharpen those noticing skills.
And when it comes to resistance, that would be [01:09:00] something, you know, where that’s really needed.
Trevor: And maybe building, Viv on what Russell’s saying, just in terms of the autobiography of Ignatius, you know, his own attachment to vainglory. That was like that bedspring. I think it was something that he kept coming back to all the time, even as he grew into greater and deeper freedom along the way as well. They both were going on at the same; it would seem at the same time.
Vivian: Yeah. It seemed like at the beginning he sort of was working it out in very physical ways like I’m not going to cut my fingernails and I’m going to wear dis-sheveled clothing, but then as you worked it out more, he was a beggar and he brought that beggarly position into his spiritual way of approaching God, which brings us to so much richness. So, I think we clumsy awkwardly create disciplines that are very physical at [01:10:00] first, or that are kind of aesthetic and then we work them into like that, the core spaces as we stay with them. So, I really appreciate what you said about staying with the resistance and letting it be a signal too; there’s something good hidden under there, like Russell said about the springs. Thank you. Thank you.
Russell: And just to pick up again, Trevor, on what you just said. I mean, even at the end of Ignatius’s life, he writes that autobiography. He’s got no interest in doing it, but it’s almost like his own struggle with his attachment is the thing that ultimately also becomes something from where something new springs because that’s exactly what the Kamara says to him. He says to him, “Look, I’m struggling with vainglory, help me out.” And Ignatius says, “Okay, if this story is going to help you, then I’ll speak about the story, you know, so it’s just interesting there again, how almost his own struggle, his own vulnerability also becomes a [01:11:00] sort of steppingstone to something more.
Trevor: Yeah, thanks, Russell. Well, we’ll keep the screen open. I’ll keep scanning the screen, and there’s a logistical question in the chat from Tracy, which I will leave to Russell and Annemarie maybe to respond to later. Anything else, friends, just in terms, yeah. Thanks, Liz. I’m with you. Liz, you’re muted.
Liz: We talked about how God can lead you to attachment to good things and then want you to detach from them. That all of our attachments are not bad, but they were [01:12:00] just where God had brought us and then says, you’ve become too attached. This is more important than me. So, you need to let it go. Hold it lightly.
Trevor: So Liz, I don’t want to read into what you’re saying that sometimes there’s a sense in which perhaps God gifts us with something or someone, and then that gift somehow becomes an attachment in a way that limits freedom or undermines our freedom or sabotages it or becomes a bit of a God, a little minor God or something, and there needs to be a journey of releasing what has been given to us.
Liz: Yes, while still having it but holding it lightly. Holding it only as God chooses. [01:13:00]
Trevor: Right. And I do find it striking that Ignatius speaks of inordinate attachments, and I’ve sometimes wondered whether, and here again, I need to depend upon my colleagues, whether there was an acknowledgement that there are natural and normal attachments in one’s life that have a place in one’s life in a natural sense, but we need to be careful that that doesn’t become inordinate or destructive so that, they are normal attachments that I have to those in my life—you know, my children, to Debbie, etc, etc. There’s a sense in which Ignatius seems to be inviting me to live increasingly with open hands [01:14:00] and with a great generosity. Thank you. Thank you.
Annemarie: And I think there’s something there about, you know, Ignatius is not into kind of detachment for its own sake. It’s about the kind of right relationship with God, in which our relationship with God is the primary source of our attachments and everything else is ordered around that. So not that we don’t have other loves and other things that are important, but that they don’t supplant or push out or displace the core thing, which is that relationship with God. And I think that when we get to the principle and foundation, we just see that so beautifully as we unpack the principles and foundation, that whole thing of attachments and gift—gifts that God has given us—that God wants [01:15:00] us to enjoy and to savor and to hold with joy, but at the same time, to be sure that they don’t become the center of our life, but that God is really at the center.
So, I think there’s quite a lot of importance in terms of what you’re bringing up there that will be unpacked more and more and more.
Russell: Kind of a metaphor comes into my mind listening. I don’t know if this works, but let’s see. You know, it’s like a relationship with a parent with a child. You know, I think there is an attachment there. Parents are attached to their children. I mean, there’s a relationship there, but you sort of sometimes watch people and they talk about in South Africa, sometimes “helicopter moms,”—you know, like mothers who smother their children and won’t let them and won’t let them or give them the kind of independence that’s age appropriate.
And [01:16:00] therefore, the child might miss out on opportunities. I don’t know. Maybe there’s something there about how there’s still that relationship. There’s still that care. There’s still that attachment, but it’s not an attachment that diminishes. It’s an attachment that opens up, you know, and maybe that’s sort of metaphor for, I think, what Ignatius is talking about.
The attachment’s not the problem. It’s when it’s disordinate, you know; when it smothers, when it chokes, when it squeezes out, or whatever word you want to use. That’s where the struggle is.
Trevor: Thanks, Russell. Appreciate it. Thanks, Anne Marie. Oh, this is just so helpful, friends. Just really this kind of interaction, which takes us into areas that maybe we have neglected or not been clear enough about. So, really find this helpful. Big thanks. Any other just comments, wonderings, [01:17:00] little lights that have gone on, questions?
Bob: Maybe another way to frame some of what’s been said is that as human beings that we are born with the need for security and significance and God is meant to be the source of my security and significance, but over time I can begin to exchange that for something less and then we can hold on to those things as though they are more powerful than they’re really designed to be.
And so, it seems like to me with Ignatius that he’s trying to help us understand that both of those things [01:18:00] are rooted in God and part of the journey is learning how to let go of those things that have, sort of superceded our root significance and security.
Trevor: Right. Yeah. Thanks, Bob. Maybe just holding what you’ve said a little bit longer, that there’s a sense in which we come into this world with some very deep human needs and you’ve mentioned two needs for security and safety, and there are others and that we find ways in which those needs are met in a way that’s helpful, but there’s also always—and this is what I’m learning from you, Bob, that there’s also always the possibility that some [01:19:00] of those ways which we cultivate in meeting that need takes on a place that gets very big and kind of pushes God out of that central space in our life. So, what is a kind of legitimate human need, and we have a real need for safety and security, how that can somehow morph into—the ways in which we meet that need could morph into a kind of little idol within our lives.
Have I got you, Bob, in terms of what you are saying? Would you like to say a bit more?
Bob: Well, one other thing I would just say is, I guess by security, I mean, the need for love and significance [01:20:00] is the need for value. And so, when I exchanged that. with anything but my relationship with God, it’s sort of minimizing and if you will, my humanness that God created in me.
Trevor: Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for that clarification, Bob. Appreciate it. And just as I sit with what you’re saying, Bob, also just for me, and I’m only responding to what goes on inside of me as I listen, that there’s, you know, finding my security in God, it’s quite a journey [01:21:00] and the level, and I need to be so, you know, Lord, I gravitate to other points of security so easily in my own life. And again, my just needing to, I guess, keep the loving light of God shining on—Lord, how am I finding my security right now?
And where am I finding it? And how free am I around this deep, deep question of internal security? And how free am I to be there for you and your calling? So, I think just your words are inviting me right now Into of just keeping that [01:22:00] as it were before God in a way that’s just, you know, just keeping it before God in terms of my own ongoing conversion around my own needs for security. Thank you. You’ve challenged me.
Any other wonderings, friends, any other thoughts? Questions, things that are not clear, things that have become clear. It’s always lovely to celebrate that.
Angela: I think that one of my favorite [01:23:00] things that came out of our group discussion was just this idea that—the way I understood it in our group discussion is that we did not enter the exercises with your list of these are the reasons why I want to do it. But as we reflected back, which I love that you guys are having us do as we go through this, that we could see all of those threads and some more dominant than others. But we were just talking about how we can enter the exercises with the freedom—those things are going to happen and not that I have to enter to make one of those happen. And I think it was just a fun time for our group to reflect back on the threads you’re talking about, even though we didn’t necessarily purposefully enter for some of those reasons. So, thank you.
Trevor: Yeah, thank, thank you, Angela. There’s a whole multitude of reasons why people first of all enter [01:24:00] the exercises and sometimes what brings them into the exercise—obviously God in some way bringing them—but sometimes what happens comes as total surprise and gift, and it’s not what they necessarily quote unquote signed up for but somehow God using the exercises uniquely and creatively in the life of that particular retreatant. I think the real gift of being in a group is somehow catching glimpses of how God used the exercises in different people’s lives in different ways. But I also think what you’re helping us to see, Angela, is for us as givers of the [01:25:00] exercises, we’re not out to make certain something happens; you know, for a certain purpose to be full. There’s a sense in which we really want to be sensitive to how God deals with the creature on their particular journey. And we’ll look more at that as well because that’s such a key annotation, which is given to the retreat giver of really letting God deal with the creature and us keeping our hands off the journey that they’re on. But thank you for opening that up for us as well in our conversation.
Annemarie: We’ve probably got time for one more, Trevor, before we need to answer Tracy’s question and then move towards the closing prayer.
Trevor: You don’t know what a great relief is that for me when someone said we’ve only got a few [01:26:00] minutes for one more question.
Melanie: I just would like to comment on something. I did a little exploring of the books that I got from the recommended list, and I think it’s Iven’s that says that the exercises—he compared it to a workbook, but the textbook is the individual’s life. And I think that’s what I’m hearing, even when our group reflected on how the exercises impacted us individually. And as I hear this discussion around, we listen, we’ve got the workbook that we can, like, assign as a teacher might bring to the students’ needs, but the actual textbook is the individual. I love that—that word picture.
Trevor: Melanie, I think you are lighting [01:27:00] up a big light for us in which we’ll come back to again and again and again. It’s this delicate relationship and critical relationship between the text of the exercises and the text of the person’s life and how in that process, and I think Michael Ivens says this. Almost each person who does the exercises, they get rewritten again in that person’s life. And each person, you know, it’s not kind of canned food, you know, there’s a sense in which the exercises are being freshly given in this person’s life as that interaction happens between the text of the exercises and the particular text of the person’s life and our respectful and our attentiveness [01:28:00] to that unique interaction that happens differently every time. Thank you so much for putting us on to that. Yeah, thank you.
Annemarie: Thanks, Trevor, for that. We really appreciate. Just to pick up on Tracy’s group’s question about the class recordings. The class recordings have been sent to Avo and he’s got them. So, we will now send you guys a link so that you can, you know, get on to the site and access the part of the website that has the recordings, which is a separate link that’s just for you guys so people can’t generally log in now that you’ve been registered with that link and I’m [01:29:00] not one of these tech types. So, Russell might jump in and just help correct me if I’m saying it wrong. But, um, That will get sent to you and we might see if Avo can come online maybe next session just to give a little explanation of the site to those who might like to also just get a sense of it.
I can’t promise it’ll be next week, but we’ll see if we can get it for next week. But in the interim, I’ll speak to Pam and Avo and make sure that you all get the connection so that you can log in and access what you need in the meantime, Russell, is there anything else you want to add there before we pass over to Kathy?
Russell: No, I don’t remember exactly, but I think you’ve got to each have a login, a username and so forth, but he’ll set that up or you go and log in yourself and then you get it from them. But I think the best is if he comes on and he explains to everybody, because he can also show you how to [01:30:00] move around the website, so we’ll try and set that up. Yeah.
Annemarie: Thanks, Russell. Kathy Is going to just lead us in prayer to end up.
Kathy: Okay, so, if you wanna just take a moment to be quiet. There’s so many gifts we receive in the spiritual exercises, gifts that are continuing to give life to us. I invite you to just bring one precious gift that you received from the spiritual exercises and give thanks to God for that.[01:31:00]
I think we can all relate to the powerful story of the cobra and the bird. We know that each one of us has disordered attachments and affections that do limit our freedom. And perhaps today, God’s gentle light has illuminated something for you. And if so, I invite you to hold that in the light of God’s amazing love and grace and offer that to God and if it’s too uncomfortable, maybe just to [01:32:00] ask for the grace to be curious with God about it.
And lastly, what is the grace that I need or desire to fall more deeply in love with God?[01:33:00]
Amen.