IGNATIAN SPIRITUAL EXERCISES TRAINING (ISET)
2023-BLOCK TWO – SESSION 20
THE SECOND WEEK: THE BIG PICTURE
Russell: [00:00:00] So hello, everybody, and welcome to Session 20. It’s good to see you all again. I’m finally back from Europe, where it was very hot to a very cold Johannesburg, where we even had snow today, which is a very Greek thing in Johannesburg. The last snow was 10 or 15 years ago. We greet you from a snowy, cold Johannesburg for those who are here.
[00:01:00] I’m going to hand over to Becky, who’s going to lead us in prayer this day.
Becky: Hello, friends. It is good to be with you, and I’m going to invite you to settle in. Make yourself comfortable. Turn off your video if that works for you, and just right here, wherever you are, ease on into yourself. Draw your awareness to your breath, the movement of air in and out, inhaling and exhaling.
As you continue to settle in, welcome your thoughts, welcome your ideas, welcome your emotions, [00:02:00] welcome your body, and welcome your life.
As you are settling in, dear friends, take note of all the things that are crowding your heart. and your mind. Walk around these things. Name them. Notice them. Acknowledge them. Look at them. Now ask if any of them would like to leave you.[00:03:00] If so, send them away with your blessing.
Now, take note of the things that still remain, and ask if any of them would like to go take a nap for just a little bit, and if so, go tuck them in tight.
Now look at all the things that want to stay with you. Then, in the spirit of generous hospitality, welcome each and every one of them—receive them. You do not have to send them away.
Now if they’re sitting right there on your lap and smooshing you a bit so you [00:04:00] can’t breathe, consider giving them a chair of their own, a warm cup of tea, and perhaps a cookie. Then they’ll be separate from you, but still with you, and you can breathe again. There is room for them. There’s room for you. There’s room for all. This space is big enough, spacious enough, generous enough for all of you.
Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. For I am gentle and I’m humble in heart and you will find rest [00:05:00] for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
Jesus. Oh, Jesus. This is my cry of faith in you. Not that you are the son of God, but that you invite me into your love. Not that you are great and mighty, but you are there for me in love, that in my weariness you are present, not to ask me to believe, but to help carry the load, that I may be yoked with you side by side, breathing together your and my life and the burdens shared, that [00:06:00] I may learn from you, from your humble gentleness that that might be my burden too. That I may lay down every burden but to love and yoked with you to know that labor as delight. That I am called not to strive heroically, but to come alongside and to find rest for my soul.
Beloved, with you, even the greatest suffering for the sake of love is an easy yoke, and my burden is light, pure light.[00:07:00]
I’m going to read it again and just see if there is a phrase or a word that wants your attention.
Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle, [00:08:00] humble in heart. And you will find rest for your souls, for my burden is easy, and my yoke is light.
Jesus, Oh Jesus, this is my cry of faith in you. Not that you are the Son of God, but that you invite me, me, into your love. Not that you are great and mighty, but that you are there, there for me, in love, that in my weariness, you are present not to ask me to believe. Oh, no, but to help carry the load that I may be yoked with you side by side, breathing together your and my life and the burden shared that I may learn from you, from your humble gentleness, [00:09:00] that might be my burden too. That I may lay down every burden, but to love and yoked with you to know that labor as delight. That I am called not to strive heroically, but to come alongside and to find rest for my soul.
Beloved with you, even the greatest suffering for the sake of love is an easy yoke. And my burden is light, pure light.[00:10:00]
I’m going to read it one more time. I invite you to let the words wash over you. Soak in them. Sink into them.
Come to me. Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble [00:11:00] in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
Jesus, Jesus, this is my cry of faith in you. Not that you are the son of God, but that you invite me into your love. Not that you are great and mighty, but that you are there, there for me in love. That in my weariness you are present, not to ask me to believe, but to help carry the load. That I may be yoked with you side by side, breathing together your and my life and the burden shared. That I may learn from you, from your humble gentleness, that that might be my burden too. That I may lay down [00:12:00] every burden, but to love and yoked with you to know that labor as delight. That I am called not to strive heroically, but to come alongside and to find rest for my soul. Beloved with you, even the greatest suffering for the sake of love is an easy yoke and my burden is light, pure light.[00:13:00] [00:14:00]
When you’re ready, I invite you to turn your cameras on and return here to the group.
Russell: Thank you, Becky, for helping us to enter into this moment of reflection and learning together. I’m going to hand over to Trevor, who’s going to give us the input today. So, Trevor, the screen is yours.
Trevor: Thanks, Russell and warm greetings to each of you. It’s always a privilege to be with you and to share with you.
I’m going to offer to you today a [00:15:00] kind of big picture view of the second week. And then next week, we will drill down a little bit more specifically into the details, the structure, etc. of the exercises in the second week.
I thought that I could ask as we move into this today if I could ask you whether you would consider yourself or whether you would self-describe as a disciple, as a disciple of Jesus? Not necessarily asking you whether you’re a Christian or would describe yourself as a Christian or as a believer or as a confirmed baptized member of a church, important as all those things may be, but [00:16:00] just wondering how it fits for you to self-describe as a disciple of Jesus.
I’m aware that that word might bring a lot of unhelpful baggage with it. So, there might be other words that you might put in its place, a follower of Jesus, perhaps, a student, a learner, a pupil. As you know, Dallas Willard would often speak of as an apprentice and if your answer is yes, and I guess my assumption is for the sake of full disclosure, my, my assumption is that I think most all of us would most probably self-describe as a disciple of Jesus.
I want to ask you what your mental landscape is of discipleship.[00:17:00] What for you really is the heart of discipleship? And I’m asking this question, I guess for two reasons. The one is that discipleship is really an integral part of the good news of the gospel. I think for some time, I had this picture in my mind that Jesus kind of enters into his public ministry—and you can read about this in Mark chapter one, verses 14 to 20—He enters into his public ministry, and He announces the good news of God. The kingdom of God is at hand. You may remember that; it’s found in verses 14, 15, and then in verses 16 onwards to verse 20, He begins to call disciples to follow Him. And for a long [00:18:00] time, I thought to myself, the good news is the kingdom is available. The reign of God is available. Then the kind of bad news is I’ve got to become a disciple you know? Disciple was the heavy lifting.
But I want to suggest, and I’m grateful to Dallas Willard for this insight, that the opportunity to be a disciple is the greatest opportunity that life can ever give us. It is the greatest opportunity that life can ever give, and that the cost of non-discipleship is much greater than the cost of discipleship.
So that’s one reason why I asked the question. The other reason that I asked this question is because the second week [00:19:00] itself—and I’m using Aschenbrenner’s phrase here—the second week itself can be framed as a school of discipleship.
The second week draws us more deeply into our discipleship. into our Christ following. However, I want to suggest that it is only as we are disciples that we can in fact help others discover this life for themselves. I think the standout feature for me of Ignatius’s life is that he himself was living the life into which he was inviting others. He was himself living the life. into which he was [00:20:00] inviting others. There was a contagiousness about his own discipleship. There’s almost a sense in which Ignatius, like Paul, could say to us, follow me as I follow Christ, and to help us with that, he gives us the spiritual exercises.
So, with that introduction behind us, let me just quickly introduce the grace. And again, I’m not wanting to go too far down this road because of next week but in in introducing you to the grace –again, I just want to do a little bit of repetition, so we keep moving as it were in the direction that we’ve come from and the [00:21:00] direction to which we’re going. The exercises are carefully structured. They follow a very carefully thought-out way of deepening our life with God as followers of Christ.
These exercises arise out of Ignatius’s own reflection upon his own experience and the dynamic of this whole journey is dynamically fueled by what we desire from beginning to end, and the development of our deepening relationship with God through the exercises is indicated by the shifts in what we [00:22:00] desire. Can I say that again? The development of our deepening relationship with God as followers of Christ is indicated by the shift within the exercises of what we desire. And that is why we’ve been talking about, the dynamic of the exercises and that this dynamic is reflected so powerfully in what we desire, in the grace that we ask for.
And so, with that as a background, simply to say that as we move into the second week, at the heart of our desire is to know Christ more intimately, to love Christ more intensely, and to follow Christ more closely.
So that is the shift. [00:23:00] There’s a shift in the grace. from the overall grace of the first week into the grace of the second week and it’s reflecting our own deepening discipleship and our own growing in relationship and friendship with God. And you can notice from the grace—and here again, I may use words from Dallas Willard—there is a Christ focus as it were to the grace.
Then asking for this grace, and this is so important for me to say very carefully, in asking to come to know Christ more intimately, I’m asking Christ to reveal himself to me—implicit in this grace. I’m begging him [00:24:00] to reveal himself to me. I want him to rub off on me, to reveal his heart and his mind and his attitudes and his values, and most especially the nature of his relationship with Abba, for it is that relationship with Abba, with Christ, that we are invited to share.
I like the words of Aschenbrenner here. In discipleship, and I’m quoting him here, so I’m just going to read this for a moment.
“In discipleship, you enter into a relationship that leads you deeply into the sentiments, the thoughts, and the values of another person.”[00:25:00]
And for that to happen, Christ has to reveal himself.to me, which moves me into the third movement of my presentation. Given what I’ve said and holding that as the background, the key now for the second week is the phrase I like to use is the key of interpersonal engagement. It’s the key of interpersonal engagement.
Generally speaking, and I mean, generally here; generally speaking, broadly speaking, there are two ways in which we can come to know.[00:26:00]
We can come to know about Christ. We can come to know where He was born. We can get to know about the town, the village in which He grew up. We can enter into the historical backdrop of His culture. We can get to know some of the facts of His life, the way He died, the way He was put to death.
But this is not the kind of knowing that Ignatius is after. He’s after a knowing that comes through interpersonal communication. engagement. He speaks of an interior knowledge, an interior knowledge, an [00:27:00] intimate knowledge, and we could almost call this a personal, firsthand kind of knowing. This is what the biblical writers had in mind when they used the word know most of the time.
If I remember correctly, the Hebrew word for know, Yada, Y A D A; it’s a very intimate knowing, a very intimate knowing of another person, and sometimes that word being located in the most intimate engagements between human beings. So, the kind of knowing that we’re after here is not knowing about; [00:28:00] it’s not getting to know more about Christ, it is getting to know Christ in a firsthand, personal kind of way. Aschenbrenner says, “The teaching here will not require a blackboard. It will not require chalk or a computer. It occurs in interpersonal relationship.” This getting to know Christ will take a lifetime, and my hunch is it’s going to take eternity.
I’ve been married for 42 years, and I say sometimes to myself I know Debbie so well that I know nothing about [00:29:00] her at all. You know, the sense of mystery of another human being and Christ being the supreme mystery, and that it’s a knowing that will go on forever and ever and ever in deeper loving.
Now, we know how this knowing happened for the first disciples. You read the Gospels. They were actually with Jesus, physically. They interacted with Him. They had meals with Him. They walked with Him. They worked with Him. They ministered with Him. They asked Him questions. He asked them questions, and it was in that context of friendship and relationship that they were formed as disciples of Jesus.
Now, He is no longer with us in that kind of way.[00:30:00] Rather now, as the risen, ascended Christ, who lives beyond crucifixion, He is now present to us in and through His own Spirit. And so, the question that I want to ask myself with the second week in the back of my mind, is how does the second week help us to interact with Christ in His spirit? How do we interact with the risen, ascended, Christ who is available and present to us in His spirit. How does that interpersonal engagement happen?[00:31:00]
As I look and take a wide-angle view of the second week, I want to suggest there are five Ignatian distinctives. And you wouldn’t be surprised that the first one involves colloquy.
Colloquy, that very fancy word to describe intimate conversation, as a friend speaks with a friend, a servant sometimes with their master. I’m going to labor this point a little bit—part of the colloquy is asking for this grace. [00:32:00]
Asking is a very natural part of intimate relationships. As intimacy grows in a relationship, I find that my asking in that relationship gets deeper and deeper and deeper. It doesn’t become less and less and less. And part of colloquy is not only speaking; it is also listening.
One of the things that happened to me when I did the exercises—and I just really pass this on–often I committed myself to an hour a day in the morning and then the examen at night. But after about 30 minutes, I always thought to myself, I’m finished now and how am I going to hang around for the next 30 minutes. I
‘ll never forget the person guiding me said very simply, why don’t you [00:33:00] come back to the grace? Let the grace become the engine that keeps the interaction alive. And so, I want to suggest that the second week grace gets repeated maybe throughout the prayer, it maybe gets repeated throughout the day. Christ doesn’t only reveal himself to us in our one hour of prayer. He may reveal himself in a host of ways during the day. So, the grace becomes a friend for the whole day.
Perhaps the other thing I can say about the colloquy here, as I’ve suggested before, is that when we share ourselves intimately with Christ, we are not giving him information that he doesn’t have. [00:34:00] This is not about sharing information. This is about growing in interpersonal engagement and as I share with myself with Christ, what I’m doing is I’m giving him access to reveal himself to me in those areas of my life that I’ve been sharing with him.
In other words, colloquy leads to mutual self-revelation. It leads to mutual self-revelation, which is at the basis of personal knowing. Think of any friendship, it grows through mutual self-revelation.
The second thing, this engagement, this [00:35:00] interpersonal engagement, it happens as we keep company with Jesus in the Gospels. He may not be with us as he was with the first disciples, but we have the Gospels. And one of the ways in which we grow our interpersonal engagement with Jesus is keeping company with Him in those Gospels.
I’m not sure if I told you; by now I never know what I’ve said and what I haven’t said, and we [I think he is talking about Dallas here?] were sitting in the lounge and I wanted to I guess impress him and I brought–I’ll never forget, a pad—I wanted to write down. I said, “Do you have any important books, theological, philosophical books that I can really give myself to?” And I was ready to write down [00:36:00] what he said to me, and he was quiet and then he said, “Trevor, I think Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John” And I said, “Now I’ve got that. What else do you have in mind?” He said, “No, I’ve got nothing else in mind—Matthew, Mark. Luke and John.” And then he said to me, “Perhaps you can give it about 20 years or so” And I think the invitation was to keep company with Jesus. It was to deepen that Christ focus.
And Ignatius in the second week—and again, not going into specifics—but Ignatius is going to immerse us in the Gospels, The spiritual exercises are profoundly Gospel centered [00:37:00] with the prayer that Christ, the Eternal Word, the Living Word, is going to step off the pages of Scripture, and in doing so, reveal Himself to us, so that we can come to know Him, and love Him, and follow Him.
A third distinctive in the second week is this interpersonal engagement happening as we keep company with Jesus in the Gospels and as we enter into a particular way of prayer. Ignatius speaks of an imaginative contemplation of the Gospel stories.
I think as we’ve discovered [00:38:00] by now, the exercises open up a whole toolkit of different ways of praying. The two main ways of praying during the exercises, kind of meditation, the powers of understanding and memory and the will, and then the way of contemplation, and Ignatius uses the word contemplation in a very particular way and it’s a way that is somewhat different to the way that the word is used generally in the literature of Christian spirituality.
So let me just say a few things very quickly. And all of us, I know, because we’ve done the exercises are familiar with imaginative contemplation, [00:39:00] but let me just say a few things.
You will remember that essentially, it is a way of entering or participating imaginatively in a Gospel story. It’s not underlined a case of going back to history to reconstruct the event in the past. I’m not seeking to step back 2,000 years and recreate necessarily exactly the event as it happened then. Rather, I’m entering into this event almost [00:40:00] as a Gospel mystery that is present now that Christ who is the risen one, the ascended one, he’s with me in the power of his Spirit.
I take the details given to me in the Gospels as my launchpad, trusting that spirit of Christ to, as it were, take me on a journey in the story, and Ignatius would suggest that we see the persons, we listen to them, we watch them, and we ourselves begin to participate in that story. And remember, at the heart of that participation is our grace. Lord, I want to come to know you. Reveal yourself to me.
I [00:41:00] really like the way—I think it’s Aschenbrenner—I wrote down these words and I want to share them with you. “The risen Jesus remembers every jot and title of his own experience. Nothing escapes his memory.” And for me, that’s what’s happening. I’m entering into the story now with Christ in the here and now, and it’s almost as if Christ is sharing his own memory of this experience with me. Ignatius helps us, I think, here. The Gospel events are not one-dimensional historical events. They are lively mysteries. available to us in the here and now.[00:42:00]
Another little guideline in imaginative contemplation, and I’m grateful to Gerard Hughes here, we encounter Jesus primarily, as it were, in His humanity. In this imaginative engagement with Jesus, we engage Him particularly in His humanity as someone who is one with us, who grows up like us, who was tempted like us, who has human emotions like love and joy and sadness, just like us. And so, there is a sense in imaginative contemplation that Christ meets us very deeply in our humanity as well, not outside of it.[00:43:00]
Another little tip around imaginative contemplation is that as we engage in imaginative contemplation and as Christ Jesus reveals Himself to us, we are also catching glimpses of who we are called to become. Remember, I spoke about Christ rubbing Himself off on us, and this is not a case of us trying to imitate Jesus as a model or an example. That can be quite wooden. But rather we’re opening up our life to Him, so that He may reveal Himself to us, that we may come to know Him, and in coming [00:44:00] to know Him, get a sense of who we can be as his spirit works in us.
And there is a sense in which each one of us is a one-of-a-kind follower of Christ. There are no carbon copies. And Christ, the way I see myself in Him and the way you see yourself in Him will be very, very different. I think that is why Ignatius often does in the second, encourages us maybe to read a biography of a saint, because they are so different. Christ reveals himself so differently to us in people, and particularly in the saints.[00:45:00] There’s quite a big difference between Dorothy Day and Billy Graham.
And then I think, and this is maybe the last thing I want to say, that in imaginative contemplation, we enter into Christ’s relationship with the Father. This is the relationship around which the whole of Jesus’ life found its focus. His first recorded words really are, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” Some of His last words, “Father into your hands I commit my spirit.”
Everything about Jesus—it can only be understood in relationship to His relationship to Abba Father. [00:46:00] And so as Christ reveals himself to us, and as He takes hold of us, as it were, as we beg to get to know him and to love Him, in the process, we are being drawn into that relationship that He had with the Father. There’s something also trinitarian about this week.
The fourth area of personal engagement are the structured exercises. In the second week, Ignatius puts four structured exercises, and I’m not going to look at them, but I’m going to mention them. We’ve already looked at the Call of the King, where we are called to come to be with Christ in Christ’s mission.
We’ll soon be looking at the two standards in which we [00:47:00] get a deeper sense of the way of Christ and the contrast with the tactics of the evil one. The three types of persons, you may remember those three people who are invited with large sums of money, and it’s a kind of exercise that gets us in touch with our unfreedoms and our desire, maybe for greater freedom, and then three kinds of humility, three kinds of loving, where we are invited into Christ’s way of gentleness and humility.
If we put all those four exercises together, there’s a commonality that runs through them all. We are being invited into a school of discipleship. We have been invited into interpersonal engagement with Christ. We have been invited into companionship and friendship and partnership, being yoked with Christ as Becky [00:48:00] invited us to at the beginning today.
We are beginning to be invited into the freedom that this discipleship brings into our lives, and we are being drawn into the way of Christ in the world. I know that’s a mouthful, but I’m just saying the same thing in a whole lot of different ways. And all those exercises are drawing us into this interpersonal engagement, into the school of discipleship, into this companionship with Christ.
And then lastly, in the second week, interpersonal engagement happens as we begin to wrestle with election.
As we get [00:49:00] to know Christ, and again I want to say this as simply as I can, and as carefully as I can, as Christ reveals Himself to us, as we get to know Him more personally, at the same time, we are becoming aware, too, of His calling in our life, of how He is calling us. It’s not a case of one or the other. As I’m drawn into deeper discipleship, so my desire to follow Christ within the unique context of my life deepens.
Now usually, the person we are taking through the exercises most probably has made most of the big choices of their life already. [00:50:00] They’ve may have made a choice around whether they want to remain single or whether they want to explore marriage or they maybe have made a decision around the religious life. They may have made a decision around career, vocation—some of the real biggies have been settled. Some of them, not all of them.
They may not have entered the exercises with the purpose of making an election or making a decision or making a choice. They may have entered the exercises; let me give you some reasons. They wanna deepen their faith, they wanna deepen their relationship with God. They want to become more intentional and sometimes election isn’t on their landscape at all.
I’m [00:51:00] intrigued that Veltri—he walks on a very narrow rope here, a narrow ledge here—he says that even when the person has not come in with a conscious choice, it may be wise not to impose a choice upon them, but to see whether there is a choice to be made. a choice maybe around the shape of my life, the deepening of my discipleship, and maybe even as I’ve got to know my retreatant, maybe I’ve picked up just from listening to them that they are dealing with certain issues at this moment in their life, and for me to have my antenna up [00:52:00] around the possibility of a decision to be made and to engage Christ in and with this decision.
You see, I think one of my own hopes is that if I can give the retreatant some experience of discerning a decision in the exercises, I’m helping them with their future decision making after the exercises.
Let me quote Veltri ,word for word here. “If the exercises are to be a useful instrument in the directee’s ongoing life, In the personal, public, and societal spheres, she, or he, must [00:53:00] understand the spirituality of the exercises from a decision-making perspective. The standpoint from which Ignatius wrote them.”
If the exercises are to be a useful instrument in the directee’s ongoing life, in their personal life, their public life, their societal life, they need to understand the spirituality from a decision-making perspective, which is the standpoint from which Ignatius himself wrote them. So, this is a tricky one because, as we’ve said, we can experience the exercises in different modes.
For some people, they experience the exercises very much in the healing mode, not in the call mode at all. [00:54:00] But Veltri is just inviting us, even if it’s not the dominant theme of this person’s journey to maybe explore the possibility of engagement with Christ around a decision or a choice. But again, he would constantly say, this is not a case of me imposing anything. I really do need to let the creator deal with the creature, but perhaps I can invite or suggest and some of you who have got Veltri’s content will know that he devotes some.—this is from memory now—I think it’s the 18th unit. He devotes a whole lot of exercises to bring to the surface the possibility of a possible [00:55:00] decision to be discerned.
So let me end because I have two minutes to go. I want to come back to a word that I used, I think, in my last little talk with you. My sense here is that in the second week, Ignatius is after a wholehearted response to Christ, a wholehearted response to Christ, wholehearted at so many different levels. Wholehearted at the level of generosity, wholehearted at the level of availability, wholehearted at the level of openness, wholehearted at the level of passion;.[00:56:00] That somehow, as we live into the grace of the second week. we are being drawn into a wholehearted discipleship. And to end with the words of Rob Marsh again, as we enter into the second week—to fall in love again with God. Amen.
Russell: Thank you so much, Trevor, for that wonderful overview of the second week. You’ll notice the questions that we asked you to reflect on are in the chat. They may also be on the form.
How does what you heard connect or not with your own experience of the second week?
And what is becoming clearer to you in the light of the input.
[00:57:00] They are up on the chat. We’ll take our time now for a break. It’s 6 PM so it’s on the hour wherever you are, and we’ll come back at a quarter past—15 minutes past the hour wherever you are, and we’ll see you just now.
Russell: Welcome back everybody. I see there’s just 10 seconds to go and everybody should be with us. There we go. I think we’re all back. Any questions, reflections? Anything that came out, maybe something you’d like to share. Trevor is ready and waiting.[00:58:00]
Trevor: For a moment, I just thought that Russell was going to offer himself as facilitator for the discussion. Any thoughts, friends, any wonderings, interactions, things that landed with a little bit of light or things that landed with a bit of confusion and uncertainty.
Gavin: Can I just put you on the spot quickly? I just wanna ask you, what are your two favorite Gospel contemplations? I know you have many. You’ve lived in the Gospels. Your presentation was simply an invitation to all of us, so thank you. [00:59:00] We had more than one comment in our group. Can I guess? Is it the Prodigal, or is it something other? I’m putting you on the spot.
Trevor: This is the moment. My favorite Gospel story doesn’t happen in the second week. My favorite Gospel story happens in the fourth week. It’s John chapter 20 verses 11 to 18, and it’s the story of the risen Jesus and Mary at the tomb.
Gavin: Okay. Thank you. Thank you.
Trevor: And all the others, of course. Any thoughts, any reflections folks?[01:00:00]
Elizabeth: Trevor, I appreciated so much basically every word of your presentation, especially the part about keeping our eyes open for the possibility that there may be a decision, a choice that the retreatant may not even be aware of and the idea that, to the extent that we can do that together, it then launches the retreat into the rest of life, perhaps seeing that differently.
That happened to me in the second week. I’m in my 70s. I thought, decisions are made, and without getting off into [01:01:00] specifics, i was surprised by a large shift, choice to shift emphases in my life, which this is a year and a half ago that this happened, and it continues to impact my daily life in a wonderful way. So, I just want to underscore that. Thank you.
Trevor: Thanks Elizabeth. That’s lovely to hear your witness to what happened for you in terms of that element of almost, could one call it a surprising discernment of this phase of life and living it in a particular way and that it kind of came into the conversation of your journey almost as a little bit of a surprise?
Elizabeth: Yes, as a surprise. And without my director, I don’t know how [01:02:00] consciously she led me to this. She did play a big role in it, but she didn’t overtly let me know that “You have a choice. Let’s keep our eyes open” kind of thing. It really came in through the back door, and apropos of the rules of the second week, it had everything to do with something that’s very good in my life that was being emphasized in terms of hours committed to it every day. So, it was not you should stop shoplifting. It was really a relational decision that I was surprised by, and I continue to see the fruit.
Trevor: Thank you just for giving us that. Also, what you’re doing for us is that you’re giving us a little bit of a kind of landscape for what an election could look like as well—that it could have a relational dimension [01:03:00] to it as well. Let me not move away from what you’re saying. And I also like the fact that there was a sense in which it was almost a bit of a co discernment between yourself and the person giving you the exercises. There was attention to what was the source of a consolation for yourself and a sense, maybe of following that consolation in terms of maybe some concrete decision in terms of the particularities of your own life. Thank you so much for that.
And maybe just for us to pause here for a moment. It is a bit of a ledge to walk on, you know, one wants to let the creator deal with the creature and really have that as a very dominant guideline for one’s [01:04:00] own taking someone through the exercises. The exercises do provide a wonderful opportunity, a container for almost practicing a discernment around a particular choice or decision and Veltri walks that line, and he uses words like perhaps one in the light of one’s journey, and maybe this is what the person did with you. You can invite your retreatant or make a suggestion to them that perhaps this choice may be worth looking at.
So, thank you, and thank you just also for giving us a sense of what a decision may look like in terms of shaping one’s life in a particular way going forward. Any other hands up? [01:05:00] I don’t see everyone.
Russell: Maddy’s got her hand up.
MaddyChristine: Hi. Hello. ‘m asking my group to step in if I am skipping parts of it. We talked a lot about imagination, and maybe they can help me word what the questions that we landed on. I think I noticed in our group that for some the imagination in week two was
easy, smooth, organic, where others really need a prompting from their director. With my retreatants, I’m noticing questions like, well, they’re taken back by it. Not that I’m in week two. I just started. Is this biblical? I’ve never done this. And so, what is our role as a spiritual director in terms of prompting was one of the questions that came up or when someone is struggling with imagination, [01:06:00] how much does personality play into this? Or do people read fiction books that they’re used to using imagination or Enneagram type. So, we had good and fun discussion on just the imagination piece of Week Two.
Trevor: Yeah. Thank you for bringing that into our conversation here. I’m going to depend a lot upon. Russell and Annemarie who have done lots of work in this area. May I just say a few things in response, and I’m sure there’s going to be a lot else.
I think where there is hesitancy about the use of imagination, I think sometimes it’s helpful to talk with the person about the fact that the Gospels themselves are imaginative literature. They are stories; they are [01:07:00] parables. So, there is an imaginative dimension to the Gospels themselves.
One just has to think of a parable that Jesus tells of two hearers. He is immediately engaging their imagination. So, I find that where there may be a little bit of reserve around imagination, I think it can be helpful to maybe just talk about the genre itself of the Gospels and of the material in the Gospels.
I think another thought that’s been important for me is I think some of us are more dominant in some modalities imaginatively. Some of us are very visual. Some of us auditory. I king of I intuitively enter into a Gospel story. [01:08:00] I don’t have a very vivid imagination. So, I just want to notice; I just want to be aware of how this person best can engage the Gospel stories imaginatively, and it may not be the way that I did it.
I think another thought that I would like to add is that when I’m invited into imaginative contemplation, I’m placing a God given faculty imagination at the service of my faith. I’m not trying to imagine something into reality. I’m placing imagination at the service of my faith. So, for example, when I began to pray as a 16-year-old, I had no one to teach me, but I would imagine Jesus sitting with me and I would talk with Hm.
Now, [01:09:00] what I was doing there simply is that my faith affirmed Jesus was with me. I put my imagination at the service of that Gospel conviction, and it helped me to enter into the reality of my faith a little bit more deeply. So, I think sometimes with people who have hesitancies around imagination—and I’ve got two more things to say and then It’ll get filled out—sometimes some folks are concerned that this is really all about projection; that this is really an exercise of projection and therefore it’s invalid. I’m projecting onto Jesus what I want him to be like. I’m projecting onto other people what I want them to be like.
I want to say that [01:10:00] I think in all our relationships, I think there’s always a measure of projection and that’s how relationships get going. So, it doesn’t rule out the validity of an imaginative encounter with Christ—the fact that there may be projections operating. Before I got married, I’m sure Debbie thought I was the most compassionate person around. It was a projection. She’s now got to know me, but thankfully she hung around through the projection and we got to know each other in greater reality.
I think the last thing I want to say is that I think folk who like to be in control, I think sometimes battle, to just relax and let this begin. I think a lot of encouragement with folk who like to be in control and because I think this encourages us to enter into an [01:11:00] exercise of trust and faith and letting go a little bit. And ultimately, we’re not going to get mocked on whether we did it well or not. Does it lead us into getting to know Christ a little bit more deeply. and being able to share ourselves with him. That’s where we want to ultimately go.
So, I’ve said too much, but let me go to my colleagues who will, I think, pull this one out in a very helpful way.
Annemarie: Maybe just a couple of additional thoughts there. I think sometimes it’s helpful to try and understand what the anxiety is, where it’s coming from or what it’s about, because I think different people are anxious about the imagination for different reasons. And sometimes they’re aware of what those reasons are and sometimes maybe not, but sometimes it can be a good conversation to have where there’s a [01:12:00] resistance to just explore that very gently.
I think that culturally, generally there’s a kind of a sense that imagination is devalued. It’s almost a kind of thing of, you should grow out of looking at things in a way that’s imaginary. There’s a kind of a pejorativeness often around imagination. And so, I think that sometimes is part of it.
I think that certain church traditions or church cultures have a strong suspicion around both imagination and feeling and tend to prefer intellect and reason as being feeling more solid as ways of knowing God. Sometimes there needs to be a bit of conversation around that to say if intellect is a gift that God can use, and our reason is a gift that God can use, and Ignatius uses that as we come into prayer. Ignatius is also offering for us to see the other parts of us as ways to God as well, [01:13:00] potentially our imagination, our feelings, our will—all of the different parts of us—our bodies, every single part of us. Nothing is outside of where God can act in terms of the faculties that God has gifted us with.
Sometimes I think it really helps people to be quite explicit—to invite them to ask the Holy Spirit to guide their imagination, to deliberately put their imagination under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, because I think that sometimes there’s a bit of an anxiety about imagination can be used by the bad spirit or Satan or that sort of thing. So, it’s really just asking God to guide it.
And I think there’s something about the imagination being a kind of bridge between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind, and that sometimes saying to people, this is a way in which God can reach parts of us that we may not even be aware of. Of course, it might make some people more anxious but I think [01:14:00] there is a real gift in that sense that very often what emerges in the imaginative prayer is stuff that’s just below the surface, things that maybe need healing, that need grace and that somehow the imagination is a doorway into parts of ourselves and our experience that we’re not always completely aware of so I think there can be something around that too.
I think for some people it takes a little bit of practice, a little bit of just accepting the fact that the first few times I do it, or the first while that I do it, it might feel quite awkward and difficult to get into but it’s worth persevering and it’s okay that it’s unfamiliar and not that easy to maybe get into it first. Try different things with people; sometimes people find that it helps them to be given a picture or an image as a kind of way to kickstart it. Sometimes when people say I don’t have any imagination, [01:15:00] you can say something like can you tell me what you think your ideal holiday would be like?
Imagination is actually something very. very much part of our everyday experience that we’re constantly bringing images to mind of things that are not concrete in a way but that are powerful. So those are a few of the thoughts that are in my mind as we talk about this.
Russell: It can also be helpful to go back to the life of Ignatius as well if one looks for example at his experience at the Cardona and what happens afterwards when he’s confirmed, when he goes and prays in front of that taught cross; it’s imagination. It’s not something that he thinks about; it arises from his imagination and so often in his life, we see the power of imagination.
I read something recently. I was looking for it now [01:16:00] and I can’t find it, but it was a nice diagram where it was two circles and one was our lived visible, touchable reality and the other one, which overlapped with it was the divine or the invisible. The author was saying that where they overlap, that’s the space of imagination, that there’s a combination there, of something that’s happening in reality and also something that’s happening from the divine that’s happening from the invisible and in that space is imagination.
The one other thing I wanted to say, just listening to Trevor and Annemarie as well, is I think it can be helpful to say to people, maybe when they’re struggling with this thing of imagination, that imagination is not something that we’re producing, but something that’s happening in us. Especially in prayer, it’s something that’s happening in us. It’s not something that we are making, but something rather that is happening within us. That can [01:17:00] also be helpful for people, I think, who have this this struggle with imagination.
I remember one person who came for spiritual direction, and I think the real issue was when we started to speak about this and they struggled with imaginative prayer, is that we have in the West, as Annemarie says, so highlighted the rational, and we have sort of put down anything that doesn’t seem to be rational or intellectual or something like that. And once people can move through that barrier, especially with this fellow, for example, that I see, it really does make a difference. So, the question as well of persevering, I think, is also very important. He really struggled.
And one last thing, for those of you have read James Martin’s book on prayer. He has quite a funny little thing in there. He has a religious sister who comes to him and says, look, I’ve got no imagination, and he tries all sorts of things to get her to pray imaginatively [01:18:00] and so forth, and she comes back and says, “Look, this doesn’t work. I’m telling you, Father, I have no imagination.” He says, “Sister, have you ever had a sexual thought?” She says, “Oh, yes.” He said, “You have got an imagination. Use it.”
Trevor: Thank you for that. Hi Shirley.
Shirley: I’m working with a gentleman who has exactly said this to me. He’s a number five on the Enneagram, and he started our last conversation with, “Well, I have no imagination and if you want me to imagine a gospel story, yeah, right, okay.”
We are only in the disposition days. We haven’t gotten to the imaginative gospel stories. I’m wondering, and I haven’t looked ahead or anything, but has Kathi or any of the people that have put resources together given something that can be prayed through [01:19:00] that I could give him that would be effective to maybe open the door?
I’ve just written down what you guys have said and there were 15 different things that you guys said; if I told him all 15 things, he would run terrified from the room. How do you do this gently, because it’s a door that for my retreatant, he would very much like it to be opened but has no way of opening that door.
Trevor: Thank you, Shirley. Perhaps I can ask Kathi if she wouldn’t mind responding to that direct question about resource, and then again, open it up to Russell and Annemarie and I can maybe respond a bit.
Kathi: Yeah, so I I have an explanation of what it is in my resources. I don’t have a kind of a step by step one, but I [01:20:00] have some written out that I’ve given to people and maybe I can make a couple of those available as an example that might be helpful. I can do that.
Shirley: Thank you.
Kathi: Yeah, just a couple specific ones with some of the different questions that they can ask or be aware of. So, I’ll do that. I’ll send that.
Trevor: What I appreciate ,Shirley is that in the disposition days, it would seem—this is an assumption I’m making that you’re introducing your retreatant maybe to a few ways of prayer and you’re now just giving an opportunity for him to try imaginative prayer.
Sometimes, I have sat, and we’ve done an imaginative thing together, and I’ve just done it with the person with some very—I think less is always more—with just a few [01:21:00] little invitations to picture or to imagine whatever, just to lead the person into the gospel story and a sense of Christ meeting him in the here and now in the story. So, I think a little bit of coaching if I can use that word in the session itself may be helpful along with the resources that Kathi has shared. I think there’s a lot of help coming from Anne, and I think Annemarie, and Russell, and Cherie-Lynn.
Anne: I have an exercitant going through the second week, and she really struggled with imaginative prayer. And so, she said, “It’s always lovely when you talk me through it; then I get it.” So, would you maybe [01:22:00] record— say we are working with the gospel, could you record some way in for me? So, I think I did it twice. I recorded myself introducing it, helping her to get into the gospel story using her senses. We did that a couple of times, and she found that very, very helpful and then it suddenly clicked with her. She finds that she writes a lot of her thoughts down. So she’s praying and then she writes and it’s almost like a journaling thing where you can have that conversation with God. I think that’s how it works, but she has had the most incredible time in the second week using her imagination. I just think it takes patience and creativity to get that going.
Trevor: Thanks Ann. Any other suggestions? [01:23:00]
Annemarie: Yes, there’s a wonderful chapter in the book by Margaret Silf; the book is Landmarks around imaginative prayer which I think is well worth giving to people because it’s so accessible and just a lovely arm kind of introduction and I can send that to people if it would be helpful.
I also think the coaching thing is really important. Maybe taking people through that one about blind Bartimaeus with the question, “what do you want me to do for you?” I find as one of the first ones to possibly try. And also, sometimes because the senses can be a way into the imagination, getting someone to do a walk using their senses—creative senses, sensory walk—those kinds of things can be a bit of a bridge for some people, I think into the imaginative prayers.
Russell: An experience as well that I heard somebody had been—it was very simple, that when they started, and they were doing [01:24:00] the examen they moved along and then they struggled with the imaginative prayer and the person took them back to the examen. And suddenly it started to click that if you look back over your day and there was something that happened and you smelled something or you saw something, that started to click as well with them. So, it was just simply helping them in the examen to notice that they were already using their imagination before they even got to this imagined place that I can’t do this. Well, you were doing the examen and you’re looking back over your day and remember the time that you had to fight and how angry you felt. Well, there already, it was at work. And I just remember somebody telling that story of how it opened it for someone who struggled as well with imagination when they got to imaginative contemplation.
Trevor: Thanks, Russell. I think Beth will be the last one. Lovely to be with you, Beth.
Beth: Thank you. Mine’s on the same topic. [01:25:00] I have a pastor friend who is very much against the use of imagination, and he’ll quote Genesis 6:5 that says, “And God saw all the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of thought of his heart was only evil continually.” And we’ve had many conversations about imagination and imaginative prayer and where we finally landed was visualization. He could accept the word visualization; he did not want to use his imagination because he felt like it was evil, but he was willing to visualize. So, it became a terminology issue, but I also thought it was helpful for the people who do push back at times against the idea of imagination that maybe they could visualize if they are willing to consider that, so just throwing that out there.
Trevor: Thank you. There are some synonyms that are maybe imagination, [01:26:00] visualize, or picture, and sometimes some words, as you say, come with a little bit of baggage, but thank you for that. I appreciate it. Russell: I see that Angela put in the chat if they haven’t noticed it—sometimes my directees have found Timothy Gallagher’s book, An Ignatian Introduction to Prayer it’s the prayers in the scriptures are written out, and that might open up some ideas as a beginning. So just to highlight that Gallagher’s book as well. Thank you, Angela.
Trevor: Thanks, Angela—extremely helpful.
Russell: So, thank you, everybody. Looks like we’re on time. Thank you, Trevor, and we’re going to ask Anne Marie to help us to pray and imagine, I think.[01:27:00]
Annemarie: Let’s just take a moment to be conscious of the God who is with us, who has been with us in this time, and will continue to be with us as we move through the week ahead.
I want to share some words that perhaps connect us with that sense of that relational encounter that is so critical. So, I invite you to just allow these words to speak into your heart [01:28:00] tonight.
Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in love in a quiet, absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the mornings, what you will do with your weekends, how you spend your evenings, What you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. [01:29:00] Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.
Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes? Your imagination will affect everything. It’ll decide what will get you out of bed in the mornings, what you will do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what [01:30:00] amazes you with joy and gratitude, fall in love. Stay in love and it will decide everything.[01:31:00]
As we bring this moment to a close, we pray together. May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Be with us all evermore. Amen. Be blessed.
Russell: If you’re in summer, please pray for us who are in winter. It’s very cold here. And hopefully next week it will be warmer here when we talk to you. As you can tell, I’m not someone who likes the cold. Have a wonderful week. God bless you [01:32:00] all.