01. Introduction
In the first article of this series I expressed the hope that, by looking at the Spiritual Exercises through the lens of transforming friendship, our understanding of their dynamics will be expanded. Furthermore, I hope to show how our engagement with the Spiritual Exercises themselves draw us into an ever-deepening transforming friendship with Jesus Christ, and the God whom he reveals. Certainly, I have witnessed this repeatedly happening in the faith-journeys of those that I have had the privilege to accompany through the Spiritual Exercises.
Using the analogy of friendship to describe our relationship with God has been close to my heart ever since reading The Transforming Friendship by Leslie Weatherhead as a teenager. I realised just how significant this analogy has been for me again at Christmas time last year. Almost each year Debbie, my partner in marriage for forty-six years, makes a journal for me and inscribes a message. Inside the recent journal she gave me, she had written these words, “I pray that these pages reflect your deepening friendship with God which continues to change your life.” Transforming friendship with God continues forever!
02. How Transforming Friendship Begins
For a moment think of a friendship in your own life that has significantly changed you for the better. My hunch is that it began with some degree of attraction to the other person. There was something about that that person, their presence, their character, their way of being with you, that attracted you. This attraction led you to want to spend time with this person, to get to know them, to let yourself be known to them, perhaps even to engage together in shared tasks. As you reflect upon this special friendship in your life, either in the past or the present, recall how you experienced this attraction to this person.
Similarly, a vital transforming friendship with God begins with our being attracted to God. We will only want to be with God, to get to know God, to let ourselves be known by God, and to become a partner with God in our daily lives, if we are attracted to God. We will not want to be intimate with God if we experience God to be against us, or out to get us, or uncaring towards us. Most certainly, without being attracted to God, we will not want to enter a personal, intimate and vulnerable friendship with God.
For this reason, we only begin the Spiritual Exercises after a time of careful preparation called the ‘disposition days.’ During this time the giver of the Spiritual Exercises seeks to help the retreatant to reflect deeply upon their personal ‘image of God’, their felt-experience of God over the years, and their present deepest desires in relation to God. Within the context of doing the Spiritual Exercises in Daily Life, which is the way most of us can participate in them, this time of preparation may last between at least six weeks and a year. It cannot be rushed. Unless the retreatant feels deeply attracted towards God and has some sense of God’s loving attraction towards them, it would be unwise to proceed with the Exercises.
03. The Disposition Days
In 2024, I had the privilege of accompanying Father Russell Pollitt and Dr Annemarie Paulin-Campbell to Manresa in Spain to give lectures on the Spiritual Exercises.This video series is available for viewing on the Converstio website: https://conversatio.org/collections/encountering-christ-in-the-spiritual-exercises/ In her four talks on the Disposition Days, Annemarie emphasized four critical ingredients of the Disposition Days and how practically to engage them: My Image of God; My Image of Self, My Blessed Journey; Prayer and My Foundational Experience of God’s Love. Should you be presently involved in the giving of the Spiritual Exercises, I highly recommend a careful listening to her practical suggestions around how to engage the Disposition Days with your retreatant.
Against the background of my emphasis on attraction as the beginning of transforming friendship, I want to offer three simple suggestions for the Disposition Days that explore the retreatant’s attraction to God and hopefully deepen their awareness of God’s attraction to them. Here are three possible ways we can do this.
First, we can explore with the retreatant their attraction to make the Spiritual Exercises. What has brought them to be willing to give so much time and effort to their friendship with God? There is something hugely significant about what it is that brings a person to consider making this massive commitment. Something, or someone, has aroused this desire. As the retreatant pays attention to their attraction to the Exercises, it can help them become more aware of how God has been actively seeking them within their own experience. After all, we know that our seeking God is rooted in God’s seeking of us.
So here are some wondering questions that we may share with the retreatant: Can you tell me what attracts you to the Spiritual Exercises? When did you first sense this attraction? How do you experience this attraction? What are your longings as you act on this attraction? What does your attraction to the Exercises reveal about your attraction to God? What do you find attractive about God? And, most importantly, how do you sense God’s loving presence in your attraction to make the Spiritual Exercises?
Second, we can explore with the retreatant their sense of God’s loving attraction towards them. The Spirit continually seeks to awaken our awareness of God’s desire for loving friendship with us yet always leaves us free to respond to these loving overtures. We seldom consider God’s loving attraction towards us, how God wants to be with us and passionately desires to live in friendship with us. When we sense how deeply God finds us attractive, it evokes within us a deep response to grow in friendship with God.
However, let’s face it. Many struggle to sense God’s loving attraction. Because of experiences like childhood abuse or neglect, painful betrayal by loved ones, rejection by the church, chronic pain and illness, the premature death of a loved one, they find it hard to believe that God cares personally for them. Rather than experiencing God’s attraction, they perceive God as uncaring, uninterested, and indifferent. This is where the Disposition Days invite our patient, thoughtful and sensitive accompaniment.
What may this accompaniment look like? We could invite our retreatant to ask the Spirit to show them how attracted God is to them. “Lord, please reveal to me how much I mean to you.” We could ask our retreatant, as they ask God for what they need, to unhurriedly spend a few days with their favourite Biblical text and to imagine what God may be saying to them. We could ask our retreatant to think of someone who loves them deeply, and to see this person as God’s gift to them. These simple ways, and there are others, can shift a person’s perception of God positively as Someone who is passionately attracted to each one of us.
Thirdly, we can invite the retreatant to share with God their attraction towards God. It was the Jesuit, Father William Barry SJ, who first made me aware of the importance of doing this. As he writes, “The first movement towards friendship happens when I am attracted to another person and take the chance of showing that attraction in some way.”William A. Barry S J, Praying the Truth, Loyola Press 2012, page 25. If you have ever done this, you will know that it is a risky moment of vulnerability. There is always the chance within our human relationships that the other person may not be interested in friendship with us.
This is not the case with our God. God has already taken the first step in vulnerability by lovingly creating us and giving us the freedom to respond or not. However, when we do respond by sharing with God our attraction towards God, and expressing our desire for a deeper friendship, we open our hearts more widely to however God may desire our friendship to deepen together. Perhaps, right now, you may like to tell God that you are attracted, and that you deeply desire a transforming friendship. What words would you use to express your attraction towards God?
04. Conclusion
Reimagining the Spiritual Exercises as Transforming Friendship underlines for us the critical importance of attraction in our relationship with God. We will only enter the Exercise journey with openness, generosity, and courage when we have an experience-based trust of how lovingly God is attracted to us and of our attraction to God. The purpose of the Disposition Days is to facilitate this foundational experience for the retreatant. Only then are we ready to take the next step.
05. Praxis
Take a few moments to become quiet. Consider briefly that God is deeply attracted to you. Let this good news touch both your mind and your heart.
Now, ponder the Psalmist’s attraction to God when he prays, “O God you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” Notice how the Psalmist expresses his attraction to God.
In your own words, express your attraction towards God. As you do this remind yourself that your desire for God is only a weak reflection of the depths of God’s passionate desire for you.
End your time by asking God to help you to live into your attraction for God in a more wholehearted, generous, and faithful way.