IGNATIAN SPIRITUAL EXERCISES TRAINING (ISET)
2023-BLOCK ONE – SESSION 4
Annemarie: [00:00:00] Hey, I think most people are with us now. So, we’re going to hand over to Brenda to lead us in a time of prayer. Thanks, Brenda.
Brenda: Thanks, Annemarie. So, welcome everybody. And as we begin, let’s take some time just to be still. If it is more comfortable to turn off your video, then please do that. Just make sure that you also are muted so that we don’t have background noise coming through.
And so, we just take a moment to become present where we are. It may be helpful to use your ears to listen to the sounds that you can hear outside of the room where you are.[00:01:00] Maybe identify one noise, focus on it for a moment or two, and then listen for the next. Shift your attention inside the room where you’re seated. And notice the sounds you can hear–maybe the buzz of the lights—perhaps the sound of a fan or an air conditioner. Focus on one noise [00:02:00] and then shift to the next.
Now listen to your own body. Listen as your body draws in breath and releases. Don’t try and change the pattern of your breathing. Just listen. And as your body draws in breath and releases,[00:03:00] allow your attention to focus on God—God who loves you—God who gazes upon you with great love. And as you rest in that love that God pours out for you, [00:04:00] be conscious of what you are asking for, what you are hoping for; what grace you ask of God in this moment. What is the inward gift which only God can give that you seek today?
I have a passage [00:05:00] from John O’Donohue to share. I’m going to read it through slowly, a couple of times. Notice what chooses you.
At any time, you can ask yourself, at which threshold am I now standing? At this time in my life, what am I leaving? Where am I about to enter? What is preventing me from crossing my next threshold? What gift would enable me to do it?
A [00:06:00] threshold is not simply about, not a simple boundary, it is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms and atmospheres. Indeed, it is a lovely testimony to the fullness and integrity of an experience or a stage of life that it intensifies toward the end. into a real frontier that cannot be crossed without the heart being passionately engaged and woken up. At this threshold a great complexity of emotion comes alive. Confusion, fear, excitement, sadness, hope. This is one of the reasons such vital crossings were always closed in ritual. It is [00:07:00] wise in your own life to be able to recognize and acknowledge The key thresholds to take your time, to feel all the varieties of presence that accrue there, to listen inward with complete attention until you hear the inner voice calling you forward. The time has come to cross.
We listen again. Notice what chooses you. What word or phrase evokes a reaction, a response within you? drawing you forward.
At any time, you can ask yourself, [00:08:00] at which threshold am I now standing? At this time in my life, what am I leaving? Where am I about to enter? What is preventing me from crossing my next threshold? What gift would enable me to do it?
A threshold is not a simple boundary. It is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms and atmospheres. Indeed, it is a lovely testimony to the fullness and integrity of an experience or a stage of life, that it intensifies toward the end into a real frontier that cannot be crossed without the heart being [00:09:00] passionately engaged and woken up.
At this threshold, a great complexity of emotion comes alive. Confusion, fear, excitement. Sadness, hope, this is one of the reasons such vital crossings were always closed in ritual.
It is wise, in your own life, to be able to recognize and acknowledge the key thresholds, to take your time, to feel all the varieties of presence that accrue there, to listen inward with complete attention until you hear the inner voice calling you forward. The time has come to cross.[00:10:00]
We spend a few minutes with what has chosen us, what God may be wanting us to engage with, or what God may want to give to us in the words that have spoken to our souls.[00:11:00] [00:12:00]
As I read the paragraph one last time, I wonder what you need to be saying to God, what you want to express, what God wants to express to you.
At any time, you can ask yourself, At which threshold am I now standing? At this time in my life, what am I leaving? Where am I about to enter? What is preventing me from crossing [00:13:00] my next threshold? What gift would enable me to do it?
A threshold is not a simple boundary. It is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms and atmospheres. Indeed, it is a lovely testimony to the fullness and integrity of an experience or a stage of life that it intensifies toward the end into a real frontier that cannot be crossed without the heart being passionately engaged and woken up.
At this threshold, a great complexity of emotion comes alive. Confusion, fear, excitement, sadness, hope. This is one of the reasons such vital crossings were always closed in ritual. It is wise, in your own life, to be able to recognize and acknowledge the key threshold. [00:14:00] To take your time, to feel all the varieties of presence that accrue there, to listen inward with complete attention until you hear the inner voice calling you forward. The time has come to cross.
Gently do what you need to do with God and then on your video so that we know that you’re back with us in the circle.
Annemarie: Thanks Brenda.
Annemarie: So [00:15:00] welcome back everyone to our next session. We’re going to be talking today about the dynamics of the spiritual exercises. And so, I hope that you’ve got your outline in front of you and I’m going to just talk you through some of what we need to know around the dynamics. So, I think the first thing to be aware of is that the particular genius of the exercises lies not in their content as such, but in the inner dynamic that they facilitate in the person and that’s what we are going to spend some time exploring together.
We’re going to cover a lot of ground today—a kind of big picture of the movement and the flow of the exercises—but, I want to say that we are going to come back to every part of what I share in more depth as we journey through the course.
So don’t worry if you don’t get all the [00:16:00] detail of what I’m saying. For now, I just want to give you an overall feel for the movement of the spiritual exercises journey and what really facilitates that movement, which is this dynamic.
So, it’s very important, first of all, to remember that the exercises come out of the lived experience of Ignatius. He noticed the way that God worked with him, that deepening conversion that Trevor spoke about last time, and he tries to enable others to experience the power of that grace.
In old ways of talking about the exercises in things that were written a long time ago, people used to talk about the logic of the exercises, but I think the word dynamic is a much more powerful word. It’s a word that evokes movement and flow and energy and somehow captures something of what we want to get at, when [00:17:00] we look at how the process unfolds. When we talk about the dynamic, we’re talking About a process of movement, of deepening and of growth and about the way that Ignatius arranges the materials and kind of the advice that he gives to facilitate the unfolding of this dynamic that he himself experienced on his own deepening conversion journey.
So just to maybe say what Fleming talks about when he looks at the word dynamic. Dynamic is really about the overall makeup of the exercises; how they are constructed, how they’re carefully put together, so that this process of inner transformation is set into motion. And although the term dynamic comes originally from mechanics and physics that talk about forces and their relationship to [00:18:00] motion, the exercises are less like a machine and much more like a living organism.
At its most basic level, the word dynamics refers to the overall makeup of the exercises and the flow or the movement between one exercise and another, between one week of the exercises and another, and to the whole pattern of the exercises. Each person engages the dynamic in a way that is unique to them.
David Longsdale uses a very powerful image, I think. He says, in the course of a day, then a week, then a month, a pattern and a dynamic emerge that are both part of Ignatius’s exercises, and at the same time, particular to each individual person, just as a musician’s playing of a cello concerto [00:19:00] is both the composer’s and at the same time particular or unique to that cellist alone. I
It’s important to note that the dynamic is not so much prescriptive as descriptive. I’m just going to say that again. The dynamic is not so much prescriptive as descriptive. It’s not saying this is what must happen. It’s rather describing what does happen, what does kind of unfold as a person enters into this journey of the exercises and it’s really very remarkable to be able to witness that dynamic unfold as one accompanies someone in this journey. But as you offer them the material and as they enter into the process, the way that Ignatius has carefully constructed [00:20:00] this whole process allows for this movement, this kind of cascade of an unfolding journey where one thing kind of automatically links with the next, and we’re going to talk quite a bit about that tonight.
So, to begin with, what does the dynamic primarily rest on? Primarily the dynamic rests on two things—desires and graces, or desires and God gifts—and the coming together of God’s initiating and my responding. So, there’s a kind of a dance that happens between me and God and the process facilitates that engagement, that movement that begins to unfold. And we do what we can to open ourselves to God, or we help the retreatant to do that, but we trust that it is God that is drawing the person [00:21:00] along this path at the pace that is right for them.
The spiritual exercises really presuppose the presence of desire. And I think that it’s quite easy to hold that as something quite core. Nobody comes into the exercises unless God has initiated within them a longing for something more, for something deeper. And so, it’s a key moment that begins this process, that sense of the desire that is initiated by God in the person.
Joe Veale, an Ignatian scholar, a Jesuit who has since died puts it very well, I think. He says this, and I’m going to just read you or quote to you what he says. He says ,
All Saint Ignatius is doing is taking a person where he or she is, [00:22:00] patiently staying with them and listening, while there may be yet some way from being ready to begin. And slowly uncovering the layers of debris that cover the frail shoot of desire. disclosing, or better, enabling the person to disclose to him or herself. the underlying desire. The underlying desire for what? For God? For Christ? Or perhaps something that ,at that point he or she would only call goodness. And then Ignatius invites the person at the level at which they are ready to make some exercises and he suggests some exterior conditions and inner climate that he himself found from experience would facilitate that growth.
So, desire is very, very important. The desire is a longing for a particular gift or grace [00:23:00] from God. And grace builds on grace. As the person begins to pray, and sometimes Ignatius puts it very, very strongly and says, begins to beg for a particular gift or grace. And as that grace is given, it propels the person organically, automatically, into the next movement of the exercises. It automatically shifts in them something that elicits a desire for the next grace, the grace of the week that is coming. And in every single prayer exercise, Ignatius suggests a grace for the retreatant to ask for at that moment in the process, and the receiving of one grace naturally elicits the desire for the next one.
And as that process unfolds, as grace builds upon grace, as the thread of desire is followed through the [00:24:00] journey of the exercises, the person is led into a deeper freedom.
We’re going to just talk for a moment. I’m going to make a little kind of digression just to name a couple of other layers of dynamics, and then I’m going to go back to show you how all the graces connect as the person moves through the exercises.
But just pause for a moment to look at and just name, very briefly, the layers of dynamics that exist in the exercises. The first one is the dynamic of relationships. There’s a whole set of relationships that are happening within this journey.
There’s the relationship of the retreatant with God. There’s the relationship between the one giving the exercises and God, the relationship of the one making the exercises and the one giving the exercises, and there’s also a [00:25:00] relationship with the text of the exercises. That journey of those different exercises in that text that we’ve told you is so critically important.
And there’s a very helpful article that was written by Peter Hans Kolvenbach, who was once leading the Jesuits worldwide. And I’m going to send you that article so that you can have a little bit of a sense of what are the dynamics of relationships that are involved in this process.
And then we have, and we’ll talk more about this as we go through the course, and I’ll unpack it slightly more at the end of this talk—we have things like the dynamics that happen within components or parts of the exercises. So, there are the dynamics of a particular hour of prayer and how one moves through that hour. There’s a dynamic in what we call the Ignatian day. If someone is making a 30-day retreat, there’s a dynamic that happens as the person [00:26:00] begins to pray at the beginning of the day and moves towards the end of the day. And that is there too when we do the exercises in daily life or the 19th annotation, which most of you would be taking people through. So, it’s a way of unfolding that process.
And then there is the dynamic that happens in each week of the exercises. So, for example, as one begins the first week of the exercises and moves towards the conclusion of the first week, so within each chunk of the exercises, there is something that is happening; there is a dynamic, and there is a dynamic between the weeks that form the overall dynamic of the exercises.
So just having named those, and I’m aware that you might be thinking, well, I don’t really understand all of this yet, but just hang on. I promise you it’s all going to become clearer as we go. Basically [00:27:00] what I want to begin with now in a little bit more depth is the overall dynamic, the big picture dynamic of how the bits, the chunks of the exercises shift and how the movement happens in that process.
I also like to think of the exercises as a kind of spiral that takes people deeper and deeper onto a journey. So, each week of the exercises has its own grace. Let’s take this really slowly because this is the most important part of what I’m saying tonight. So just to look at how do we go through the process of the weeks of the exercises.
So, the first thing which I mentioned when I spoke about the importance of desire is that God places the desire in the person and that starts this dynamic. They experience a desire to deepen their [00:28:00] relationship with God which maybe leads them to come and talk to you to say I’d really like to make the spiritual exercises. I’ve heard about them; I’m interested. Can you help me with this journey? Can you help me with this process? So that might be the very first movement that happens as they are drawn into the process.
And then the person is led into a time of disposition, we sometimes call it; sometimes we call it introductory days –time to begin this journey by really looking at the love that God has for the person.
And that introductory process leads into what we call the principle and foundation, which is the first bookend, in one sense of the spiritual exercises. And we’re going to spend a lot of time looking at the principle and foundation and [00:29:00] unpacking it, but you will remember that that principle and foundation bit happens right at the very beginning of the exercises.
And it’s a reflection that is really about what is our purpose? Why is it that God has created us? What has God created me for? To praise, reverence, and serve God, and then it unpacks some of that. And the grace that we are asking for as we pray the Principle and Foundation is really the grace to know ourselves as created by God in an ongoing way and as deeply and personally uniquely loved by God.
And as the person prays into the Principle and Foundation and receives that grace, it automatically evokes in the one making the exercises a [00:30:00] recognition that my response to that love of God has been very inadequate. That God has created me and sustained me in this incredible love and somehow, I have become aware that I have not responded as generously as I might have to that love and that automatically leads us, very naturally into a consideration of our brokenness and the brokenness of the world. So, it leads the person into the first week of the exercises.
As the person prays that journey starting with the sin of the world, and then moving inward in concentric circles to come to looking at their own sinfulness, their own brokenness. The grace that is being sought ultimately in the first week is to know that I am a sinner, loved by God— [00:31:00] that I am a sinner loved by God, and when that grace clicks into place, when the person really comes to a sense of that reality, there’s automatically an inner shift into wanting to respond generously, wanting to follow this God who has loved me, forgiven me, graced me with that sense that I am a sinner loved by God. And so, there’s this longing to respond generously, to respond to a call.
That shifts us into a kind of bridge meditation that bridges the first week and the second week, which is called The Call of the King. You may remember that one—that sense of really being invited to consider the invitation of someone we really admire and trust, inviting us to become part of [00:32:00] their project.
And then that, helping us to see that as a parable that allows us to look at God’s invitation to us to follow the King, to follow Christ and that is the beginning of the second week. From knowing that I am a loved sinner called by God to be in partnership, we are moved into wanting to know the one that I serve and that fundamental grace of the second week as we pray through the mysteries of the life of Jesus is the desire to know you more clearly, to love you more dearly, and to follow you more nearly. That is the grace that we ask for over and over at the beginning of each exercise—wanting to be free to respond fully and generously to that invitation.
And that, as we pray that grace, and as we begin to receive it, as we pray for [00:33:00] that, that we desire—to know, love, and follow, something else begins to happen. And we start to see two aspects of the dynamic working in parallel. On the one hand, the imaginative contemplations on the life of Jesus, which helped me to come to know him and love him and follow him more deeply and alongside that interwoven into that makes three key meditations, which are designed to lead the person into greater freedom–the two standards. the three classes of persons and the three kinds of humility or the three ways of loving.
Don’t worry if you’re not sure and don’t remember all of the names of these key meditations or don’t recognize them. We’re going to be going through all of this bit by bit. We’re going to be working through this whole process, this whole dynamic. But there are these three key meditations interspersed [00:34:00] in between the imaginative contemplations on the life of Jesus, and these two strands together prepare the person for making a decision about how they are to live.
Either an election, i.e. a big life choice, a significant decision about how to live their path or a way of living the path that they’re already on in a more faithful, more radical kind of way. Trevor spoke a little bit last time when we talked about the purpose of the exercises, about that thing of choice being one of the core things in the exercises, something very important.
And then as we move into that place of freedom to make whatever decision we need to about how to follow. as closely and as radically as we can, we then move into the third week. The cost of that [00:35:00] decision, the cost of that discipleship that the second week has led us into, and that cost is the cost of the passion. It’s the cost of Jesus’s suffering and of our own suffering as we choose to follow him, even though sometimes some of that is going to have things that are very hard about it, and there is something there about a grace of compassion. Wanting to be with Jesus who suffers, wanting to suffer with, to be with and that is the grace of the third week. And there’s a shift here from doing with Christ t being with him on his journey of ministry to a place of being with Christ in his passion. That pushes us, as that grace is received, as we have that sense, we receive that sense [00:36:00] of being with Christ compassionately, sharing in his suffering.
That pushes us into the desire for the next grace. We move into the desire to share in the joy of the risen Christ, to enter into his joy and to know him in the role of consoler. And so, Ignatius invites us and encourages us to ask for the grace to be glad and to rejoice intensely because of the great joy and Glory of Christ our Lord.
That place of sharing in Christ’s joy, sharing in Christ’s risen experience, sharing in his ministry of consolation, all of that, naturally moves us into the last book, into the bookend on the other side of the exercises. Remember, we started with the Princeton and Foundation as the [00:37:00] first bookend. We now come to the last big exercise in the spiritual exercises, which is known as the Contemplation on the Love of God or the contemplation for learning to love as God loves in which the grace that we are seeking is profound gratitude and a deep surrender and offering of ourselves and our lives in mission and in service, and that takes us back to the beginning of the spiral. It connects us at a new and a deeper level back to that—that gift of God’s creative love at the beginning, which we prayed in the principle and foundation.
Once the exercises are set in motion, and the person really prays them with faithfulness, It’s almost like there’s a kind of domino effect. That one grace—receiving the grace that we ask for in the Principle and [00:38:00] Foundation—pushes the person interiorly into the desire for the grace to know that they are a sinner loved and forgiven by God. And that naturally pushes the person into that grace of the second week of wanting to respond with generosity to the call to follow and to come to know, love, and serve. That naturally pushes us into the grace of the third week. When we’ve been with him and we’ve developed that intimacy, we want to stay with him when he is suffering. We want to be close to him in compassion and then into sharing in the resurrected life. and then into gratitude leading us back to the very beginning.
So, it’s that domino effect, that motion—that one grace leads to the next grace—that grace builds upon grace. As the director, what we are really listening for, and the main role that [00:39:00] we have in accompanying someone in the journey of the exercises, I would say, is that we are trying to notice when the grace has been received because it is at that critical moment that the person is ready to receive the material of the next phase of the exercises.
So, we have to be very tuned in. We have to really be listening incredibly deeply and trying to sense. You know, the grace may be beginning to come, but when has it really come in its fullness or the fullness of how much the person is ready for it while they’re in the exercises. That is the most important gift and skill, I think in accompanying someone in this journey.
Just to recapitulate that, the key role of the director is to listen for when the grace has been received and at that time to offer the [00:40:00] new material that will feed into the next grace; and both the asking for the grace And the colloquy or the conversation between the directee and God are absolutely key in that. Okay, so very, very important as you’re listening to the person you’re guiding.
Fleming says something that I find very helpful here. That’s David Fleming who wrote the book, Like the Lightning. He says that the week-to-week flow of grace received might be described in a way analogous to a psychological model of adult development.
The stages of one’s development cannot be skipped, and during the exercises, we see a natural progression. There’s a spiritual growth in terms of graces received, and that cannot be forced, and it cannot be jumped. One grace leads to the next, and [00:41:00] if a grace is not received, you don’t really want to be moving the person on because it’s not going to be helpful because they don’t have the foundational grace that they need in order to be able to receive the next grace. That’s the general rule of thumb.
On occasion, and we’ll talk more about this as we go on, there might be times when you end up moving a person on anyway but for the most part, you really wait. You wait, wait, wait, until you sense that the grace being asked for has been received.
So, as I mentioned a little bit earlier when I named the fact that there were a whole lot of different dynamics that are also involved in all of this, I said that within each hour, within each day, within each week of the retreat, there are also dynamics that [00:42:00] are involved that support this process of receiving the different graces, and those dynamics involve primarily moving from a more active engagement, so a using of the intellect, of the imagination, of just really engaging very actively with the material, for example, to a much quieter, more receptive kind of space. So, there’s a movement from activity to passivity, from action to receiving, to a place of deepening and of greater simplicity.
So, to just explain that a little bit more, the Ignatian day is designed to move us from active involvement with the prayer’s content material through a progressive distillation of its meaning through repetition–going back to the material, [00:43:00] staying with the places where we have really received the most grace or where we found the greatest resistance and allowing ourselves to stay with those places that have touched us the most in that process. And so, you will see that there is a more active engagement, for example, on a 30-day retreat when the person is praying in the morning, moving to a gentler, more simple, quieter engagement in the evening. So just to be aware of that, and we’re going to be talking about that a lot more.
Ignatius points out to us I think that, you know, one of the things that that we really need to be able to do is to really connect with where the person themselves is at. So, we need to be listening deeply to two things. We are trying to stay in touch with the map of the process of the exercises themselves. We’re getting to know the [00:44:00] text really well, and we’re going to help you as we move through this process to really read the text of the exercises so that the text is internalized so that it’s in your bones. And then to also be reading in a sense, the texture of this particular person’s engagement with the text, because nobody engages in this process in the same way as anyone else. Every person enters into this dynamic in their own particular way, and they move through the journey at their own particular pace. So, it’s not a paint by numbers kind of thing. You can’t say this person needs to stay for four or five chronological weeks praying on this particular material because that’s how much material is in some of the [00:45:00] secondary resources if they’re not yet receiving the grace that is important for them in order for the dynamic to unfold.
So, you as the director are having to do something that is really significant, really important. You’re having to hold this understanding of what Ignatius offers in terms of what he discovered those graces are likely to be—the one grace that is going to lead into the next and lead into the next and at the same time be deeply listening to the person who is in front of you to be moving at their pace to know that God is at work in that person and that you really are trying to allow space for this dynamic to unfold.
We will look later at what we call the annotations, the little pieces of advice that [00:46:00] Ignatius gives to the director, and one of the phrases which has already come up as we’ve been together on this journey so far, is that it is critical to allow the creator, God to deal directly with the creature, i.e. the one making the exercises. We really are there to listen and to watch for the unfolding dynamic that happens within the person, which happens Incredibly. It is recognizable if people are really praying this journey. You can see it happening. It’s almost sometimes as though you can sense, oh my goodness, this person has already started to step into the next part of the exercises. They come back to you, and you know that the next bit of material is this, but they don’t know that it’s that. And as they share with you, as they talk about [00:47:00] what’s been happening in their prayer, you can already hear the echoes of the desire that is growing in them for the grace that Ignatius invites them to pray for next. So, there’s something quite wonderful and quite remarkable about that.
I want to just end a little bit with talking about that faithfulness. We want to be faithful for two things. We want to be faithful, first of all, to the dynamic of the exercise’s journey, but we want to be even more faithful to the dynamic of the exercise’s journey within this particular retreatant—this particular person whom God has drawn to come and for me to accompany them through that process.
Michael Ivens, who you’ve heard about already, who has written that wonderful book, that [00:48:00] commentary on the text called Understanding the Spiritual Exercises, says that each time the exercises are given, they are in a sense rewritten because of the way that the dynamic is at work in the person who is sitting in front of you.
Joe Veal puts it this way, he says,
The dynamic of the exercises comes not from a cunning selection and ordering of a sequence of exercises and their interrelationship. Those serve and are subordinate to the normal way of the human spirit and its desire in faith and grace. Their forceful growth comes primarily from the dynamic interplay between God initiating and the person responding.
Between the person exercising themselves and striving [00:49:00] and God responding. Between a person’s activity and God’s waiting and illuminative inviting and freeing. It’s a dynamic interplay of two freedoms. the sovereign freedom of God and the imperfect, crippled, blind, aspiring freedom of the human spirit. God wrestling with Jacob and Jacob with God.
So that is really what I want to share with you tonight about the dynamics of the exercises. The key thing to hold on to is the fact that the exercises unfold. They unfold in a way that connects most strongly with the idea of desire and grace—that God puts the desire in [00:50:00] the person, the person expresses that desire, God responds to that desire by gifting that person with the grace that they seek and so there is that interplay, that dance that happens between God and the person.
There is also that sense of Ignatius really understanding from his own experience how people are led through a process of deepening. of coming to a more and more intimate relationship with Christ—that school of discipleship that we spoke about, that falling in love of Rob Marsh that Trevor spoke about last time. All of those things are supported and enabled by means of this amazing sense of [00:51:00] desire and grace and the dance between them.
So, I’m going to leave it there. And I’m going to just remind you of the questions that I would like you to reflect on now, which are at the bottom of your sheet, but you might like to look at them and someone might like to put them into the chat for us. The first question:
- in what ways did I notice the dynamics of the spiritual exercises at work in my own experience of making them [and maybe at the time you didn’t notice it particularly, but now as you listen to this input, you start to become aware of something, to notice something as you think about it from this perspective].
And the second question:
- What strikes me as I listen that is new for me? What strikes me as I listen that is new for me?
And so, we’re going to take now 15 minutes to have some time to reflect and [00:52:00] to process a little bit of what we’ve been talking about, and we will come back at 10 past the hour. And we will then go into our mentor groups or tutor groups and then we will come back and have time for us to really talk things through—anything you don’t understand, anything that didn’t make sense, anything that’s where there are lights coming on for you.
Let’s just take 15 minutes now and come back at 10 minutes past the hour. [Break]
So welcome back, everyone. Before we open the screen and hear how that conversation went, I want to just share a picture with you, which might just help some of us who are more visually inclined to just recap what it is that we were talking about in terms of that dynamic. [00:53:00]
So, if you look at the center circle, you’ll see there the principle and foundation. Now, the person who drew this diagram has placed it in the center because it so much connects with every single part of the exercises. We, in fact, go back to the prayer that echoes the Principle and Foundation throughout the exercises.
There is the Principle and Foundation—the introductory days that lead into it and there’s a sense of praying around my true identity, having a sense of that grace of being unconditionally loved by God, created by God. And that takes us into that that next grace, okay, which is into the first week.
So, where the person then prays around the personal and social disorder. And there’s something about that grace here around forgiveness and [00:54:00] healing, coming to know that I’m a sinner loved by God. So that’s the first week.
And then, the receiving of that grace pushes me into the meditation on the call of the King. I’m called by Christ. Okay. And that draws me into a desire to know Jesus more and to grow in relationship with Jesus—to know him, to love him, to follow him more deeply and it continues.
The second week is in green, and the second week takes quite a big chunk of what’s going on—this green space—so, as you are praying that with the imaginative contemplations and going into this, there’s a deeper level of relationship and commitment, and there’s a kind of a refining of the dream—a faith sharpening. That’s where the election comes, or the big decision that might be made around, how [00:55:00] do I do my part in living the life in this dream? What is my choice for God? How do I live this out practically? And the commitment to that dream. So that sort of comes into that part of the election or the choice.
So, once I’ve made that election or that choice, there’s a movement into kind of a deepening of that in terms of the passion. So, there’s a movement into the third week—to be with Jesus in his suffering and in his death, in a kind of faithfulness or fidelity to the dream. So that’s the third week.
And that pushes me into a sense of praying for a sharing in joy with the risen Christ—sharing in the joy of the risen Christ—and in that, there’s also often a sense of confirmation of that commitment, that decision that was made here that we’ve [00:56:00] tested out during the suffering and death of Jesus. We’re now living into a kind of confirmation with the joy in resurrection life.
And there we come to the last big contemplation, which is the contemplatio, or the contemplation on the love of God–the final bookend in a sense—finding God in all things, being found by God in all things and that kind of brings us back. So, you’re back to the Princeton Foundation and then back into that circle.
So, for those of you who are of a visual mindset, that might be quite a helpful way to just think about it. So maybe we can stop sharing that; we’ll come back to it again. I’d like to also encourage you to use your book, your text of the exercises. You might be wondering, where are all these things?
So, for example, if you grab hold of your book right now, [00:57:00] –hopefully you’ve all got a copy of your exercises right beside you at your right hand or your left hand, whichever is the one you use—you will see that, for example. every part in the exercises has a paragraph number. If you look for paragraph 23, which in Draw Me Into Your Friendship is on page 27, if you look at paragraph 23, you’ll see the Principle and Foundation is on that page—God who loves us, creates us, wants to share life with us forever. And our love response takes shape in our praise and honor and service with the God of our life. So, you’ll look through that.
As you journey through, you’ll come to the first week of the exercises and the graces that are being asked there. So, for example, if you look at paragraph 55, which is the second exercise of the first [00:58:00] week, you’ll see that the grace that is being asked for there is, “I ask God for the gift of a growing and intense sorrow, even to the depth of tears, if grace so moves me for my sins.” So, there’s that moving into the first week.
If you keep going, for example in paragraph 91, you’ll see that there’s a movement of Christ the King and his call, and you’re moving then into the call of the King which is the very beginning—it’s the bridge between the first week and the second week.
So, we’re going to be talking you through all of this stuff as we move through each of these parts of the exercises, but I’d like to encourage you to go and start familiarizing yourself a little bit with the text, because most of us didn’t get given the text during our own making of the exercises, so we may not be at all familiar with it.
We may have used Warner or O’Brien or Veltri [00:59:00] or Teklo or one or other of those may have been the supportive text for us. But we want you to begin to start reading Ignatius’s own text as well, so that you can see where this comes from. So, I’m going to just after saying that, open the screen and say, What thoughts do you have on this whole idea of the dynamic? Is it something that feels very new? Is it something that you yourself had a sense of as you were going through the exercises? To open up some conversation for all of us now.
Heather: I’m so deeply by the feeling of something that has stood the test of time. Something that is so valuable from many, from so long ago, which we’ve all [01:00:00] just so experienced and loved. So, it feels to me like we’re entering this space of where God is so in it and be so soaked in it because it’s stood that—you know, everything is so fragile at the moment, but this is actually stood all that fragility of the world. And it’s just, I don’t know. I can’t even explain it. It’s so rich with life. But it stood the test of all that stuff that’s going on, but it’s there. The exercises are there; all I can say is it seems it stood the test of time, and today that is amazing. Things don’t stand the test of the day, you know?
Annemarie: Yeah, that’s absolutely right, Heather, that there’s something about this—that sense of it stood the test of time. It is something that you said has that [01:01:00] life in it. And I think that speaks of that dynamic, that living sense within the exercises, but also it of having been something that—you know, this was 16th century and we’re finding it a helpful process today to live into a conversion dynamic. So, there is something quite amazing about that. I think that’s absolutely right. And I think part of that, the reason it may have stood the test of time so well is that first of all, there’s something fundamentally so intrinsic to the human spirit and how God relates to us.
But I think also there’s something about the way that Ignatius encourages us to adapt it and to use it creatively in our own time and our own context. And I think together, those two things maybe kind of connect in with what you’re saying there. So, thanks for that, Heather.[01:02:00]
Annemarie: Hi, Melanie.
Melanie: Hi, how are you? I was wondering if you would speak to the dynamics. As for impacted, perhaps by gender, are there nuances with the dynamics when offered to men or women? In my experience of making the exercises, there was a section where—it was in the 3rd week—identifying with Christ’s suffering that it was almost unbearable and I just was wondering from your knowledge and experience, how that has impacted.
Annemarie: Thanks, Melanie. I think that Gender is a very significant part of the way that people come into the exercises. It’s one of the aspects, one of the dimensions that impacts the way that a person will experience the exercises.[01:03:00]
Everyone experiences the exercises uniquely, but I think that there are definitely ways In which gender does impact and we’re going to as we move through each section pay attention to that. So, I don’t want to talk about it too much now, but I think that you’re highlighting something that is really important. Quite often the content of the exercises that different people who are women or men or, I think gender identity is becoming so complex these days. It’s not even only just so binary as it were, but there’s something that is important there, but I would say that it is more the content and the way we give the content that is significant than the dynamic itself. But I would like to think about that a little more because I haven’t really framed that question in terms of dynamics specifically. [01:04:00] So maybe we can unpack that a little bit more as we move through the process, but we are going to talk quite a bit about gender. So, thanks for that, Melanie.
Russell: So now because I’m Annemarie’s boss, I can jump in here and I can say something. There is a text, The Spiritual Exercises Reclaimed Uncovering Liberating Possibilities for Women that looks at specifically the questions around women. I think it’s a good text as well for us in terms of if we’re going to speak about gender. Anne Marie says we will do that later, but I’m giving this a punt. It’s available and you can get it off Amazon or anything. She would be a little bit humble to advertise it, but I’m advertising it. There we go—new edition just came out recently— second edition.
Annemarie: Thanks, Russell.
MaddyChristine: I [01:05:00] have a question. I am wondering at what point does a director to help the retreating to stay. What if a retreatant really feels Oh, I’ve received my grace, but you have a nudge that they might not be quite there yet or in our conversation, it came up that one of us, the director had a sense like you need to move on and the person followed, and she said it was good. And what I noticed in that is that the director determined for her—that person gave a lot of information. At what point do we really want the directee to uncover for themselves if they need to stay or if they need to move on,
Annemarie: I think that’s a really interesting question, Maddie, and I’d be really keen to hear the rest of the team kind of jump in on that as [01:06:00] well. There are a number of things that are important. So, I think the first thing is you want to not get in the way of the creator dealing directly with the creature. So that’s a key thing to, to be bearing in mind. So, the director is generally not very directive because you’re trying to just hold the space for God to be at work with this particular person.
But that being said, you need to have a good rapport, a good sense of trust with the one that you are guiding. So, they need to have a sense that you understand the process, that you’re deeply listening to them and that you’re saying to them, because you’ve got experience and maybe, you’ve made the exercises, you’ve given them a number of times, you might be saying, you know, if you really feel like they haven’t got the grace yet, she might be kind of saying it sounds like you have a sense that you’ve received the grace. I’m [01:07:00] wondering though, it might be an opportunity for us to deepen that grace and to just really stay with it to receive all that gift may hold for you, and just to gently encourage. the person to stay a bit longer.
You know, If somebody is stuck somewhere and there’s a sense the director has that they’re choosing to stay somewhere where actually the grace has been received, there may be a gentle kind of invitation and kind of encouraging the person that, you know, even challenging very janky sometimes. I’m wondering if there’s maybe a little bit of a struggle around thinking about moving on, and I’m wondering what that might be around. So, there are ways of helping the person, but I think what’s key is the dynamics of the relationship between these different parties.
So, I spoke about those relational dynamics. There’s the relationship between God and the one giving the exercises. So, the one giving the exercises has to be [01:08:00] listening deeply to God. There’s the relationship between the person themselves and God, which is the key one. There’s the relationship between you as director and the one making the exercises and that has to be a really good strong relationship. For example, Ignatius says in the annotations, “always put the best possible interpretation on what the other is saying.” So there has to be the sense of real openness and generosity. Part of what’s really important in the initial phase of the exercise’s journey is building that trust, deepening that trust, so that you can help the person as they journey by bringing your experience and your knowledge of the map—the dynamic as a whole to help them. I would say that, but I would love for Trevor, Brenda, Adri-Marie, whoever on the training team to chip in there.[01:09:00]
Trevor: I just wonder if the word co-discern could be helpful here and that if in the relationship with the person doing the exercises, perhaps from quite early to develop some sense that we are working together with God—how God is working in this person’s life. So, I would like to build a climate of co-discernment in the way I’m with the person from the word go and I noticed Anne Marie that you used the word two or three times when you said how you would respond, and it was the word wonder.
And I think just expressing a kind of wondering question, that perhaps I and the person doing the [01:10:00] exercises can explore, in terms of discerning whether the grace has been received in its fullness, whether we need to move on. So just wanting to put that word there as an invitation for myself and to offer it to the person as well.
Annemarie: Thanks so much, Trevor. That’s really helpful. Brenda?
Brenda: The other thing that strikes me is that it’s got to be gentle, so that rapport because some people get really sucked into, “I haven’t done what I’m supposed to do.” So, holding a dynamic and a gentle discerning, as Trevor was saying, rather than a performance, “I’ve got to achieve this.” So that sense of gently journeying together, listening for God together, and holding that with subtlety and mutuality for me feels [01:11:00] important. The danger of performance always sticks its head up.
Annemarie: Thank you, Brenda. Adri-Marie, is there anything you want to add into the mix?
Adri-Marie: I love thinking about the dynamic as almost like a feel or a life force of it around the kind of in the back of the back tune, the back rhythm of the exercises. And something I’ve noticed when I supervise exercises is, there is this mystical part that where we feel it in our bones. And I want to say that sometimes when I, as a supervisor, listening to a giver, giving it to somebody, it’s like I could even feel it all the way through as they even talk about that person’s experience.
It’s like the fuel; you can feel the fuel is now there, something is clicking, there’s a bit of a life on [01:12:00] its own going on. And sometimes you feel the opposite. I don’t know if you’ve ever been with somebody who’s learning to drive, but it feels a bit like stop and go, and then we can sometimes wonder, I wonder what’s happening with the dynamic.
Are their graces met? What’s happening in the day? What’s happening in the week? So, it’s a bit like the fuel and there is this listening and giving them absolute generosity and interpretation and what they’re giving you, as well as trusting what you feel in your bones. There’s sometimes I would ask the giver, “What did they experience as the person spoke about? What do they sense about the grace? Because that’s the little bit of the mystery that we almost can’t capture, and that’s why I think supervision is also so important.
Annemarie: Thank you, Adri-Marie. Okay.[01:13:00] Vivianne.
Vivianne: Yeah. We spoke in our group, and we were wondering about kind of the mystery of the dynamic that happened to all of us. But it was unnamed and unbeknownst to us that we were participants in something beyond ourselves. I’m just curious now that we’re like behind the stage a little bit in the set and we are seeing what’s happening with all the actors coming and going and getting to be witnesses of a little bit behind the scenes.
How much of that does Ignatius wish for us to fail in mystery or name for people? And it seems a really significant part of the tradition that people don’t receive the exercises up front or that the way is only given bit by bit so that it can be a really personal relational journey. And I’m wondering, is there a place in the exercises where Ignatius gives us a little insight [01:14:00] on protecting that mystery? And what would you say to that?
Annemarie: Thanks, Vivianne. I think that that’s really important. And yes, it pops up in the Annotations. So, in those little notes that Ignatius gives to the director and if we find our text. Where is my text now? I put it down somewhere and, oh, here it is. Let’s see if we can look at that quickly.
So, you will see right at the beginning of the book–having a quick look to see where we are. So, there are a number of places, but for example, one of them would be paragraph nine or annotation nine. Since there are different sets of instructions about the way we are moved in the first week in distinction to the second week and thereafter, the director needs to be careful to [01:15:00] present and explain only what is more immediately helpful for where we are at present in our retreat. Otherwise, we will only get confused by the very explanations that were meant to help.
And if you look even earlier than that, Just having a look where it is. It says in annotation two in that paragraph two, the exercises are above all a time for immediate contact between God and a retreatant. We as retreatants will profit far more from the understanding and love aroused by the grace of God within us than from the rhetoric or brilliant insights of a retreat director.
So, there are a number of those places. I won’t go into too much because we’re going to do annotations very soon. And we’ll go into that in some depth, but I think that what Ignatius is really saying is, we want to take people into using that [01:16:00] sense of desire that brings them to wanting the exercises into this journey, but if you then go into your head and start reading about this, you can be cheated in a way or deprived of the fullness of the actual experience of entering into it. And so, he’s saying, don’t spoil it. It’s like if you have someone who’s going to watch a rugby match—not that I’ve ever really watched a rugby match, I have to confess—but it’s a big thing in South Africa.
People watch these things, and they’ll often say, please don’t tell me how it goes in the second half or what the score is or whatever because it spoils the experience. You can’t fully enjoy it if you already know what’s going to happen. Or if you’re watching a TV series and you are being told what’s going to happen to the characters down the line, it’s almost like it takes away from your own entering into the journey or your own experience of it.
So, I love your word of mystery. [01:17:00] My examples are a bit more prosaic, but I think your word of mystery when it comes to the exercises is absolutely right. It’s not that we want to hide things from people. It’s not some kind of esoteric thing, but it’s really an honoring of each person’s journey, and the fact that for every single one of us on the screen, our journey will have been different to anyone else’s. You don’t want to prescribe what someone’s experience is going to be because you can’t. God is going to work very particularly and very individually with that person, and they are on their own journey and it’s going to unfold in the way that God desires for that person.
I think there’s also something about that, about protecting the experience of the person. So usually on a practical level, when I take someone through the exercises, I don’t give them the book, or I specifically ask them not to read ahead of the text. And [01:18:00] I will give them a photostat of what they need to do when they get to it, or I will say, please go to this page and this is the exercise I want you to do. But I really strongly encourage them not to read ahead. And in fact, if they read ahead in the text, it looks so dull and boring anyway, they probably will, not be at all interested in making the exercises. It reads more like a car manual than a mystical journey, so, there’s that too.
Vivianne: Maybe that’s part of the allure; make it look like a car manual to disguise the mystery in all of its layers. Thank you for that. Thanks.
Annemarie: Thanks, Vivianne. Anyone else wants to chip in, please do. We have time for another one or two questions, maybe even three, depending how we go. Comments, [01:19:00] noticing’s.
Melanie: It’s been so fun just to see a little bit behind the scenes, like Vivianne said, because my director did not—I wasn’t really aware of where I was going and what I was doing. I just was doing the exercises. And so, I’m being let in on a secret.
Annemarie: Yeah. Sounds like you had a good director, Melanie. Yeah. And there’s something quite exciting about being able to see the incredible way that this journey hangs together.
Yeah, that kind of sense of wonder—something that we are drawn into, and it is powerful for us, but we don’t fully understand maybe why it’s so powerful. We start to maybe understand some of the dynamics, [01:20:00] some of the elements that contributes to creating that space.
Trevor: Maybe I can just say that witnessing the dynamic unfolding different ways in different people for me has been a real consolation for myself. particularly in desert times when I’ve been in a desert time or a very dark time struggling, but then getting the front row seat of God’s grace at work profoundly in another person’s life becomes a bit becomes a shared consolation. And it’s usually around this area of the dynamic unfolding so deeply in their life.
Annemarie: Thanks, Trevor.[01:21:00] Brenda, Adri-Marie, anything? Any other questions or thoughts?
Tracy: Yeah. This is more of a sharing. I don’t know if a question will emerge out of this, but I was triggered with this thought when Heather was talking just like the genius behind Ignatius and the way he captured the movement of grace and desire of God’s natural movement. And I was reflecting on it this weekend because—I’m sure some of y’all have heard of the Asbury Revival that’s happening and I’m an Asbury alum, and they had an alumni call with us where some of the leaders from the school got on and one of the students wqw sharing about the dynamic of how the revival started and what amazed me about it [01:22:00] was they started out with just like maybe 20, 30 students like just soaking in God’s love. And they said the natural rhythm that is happening is people come in and they soak in God’s love. And then as they soak in God’s love, they shift to confession. And then after they shift to confession, then they shift back to just wanting to be with Jesus. They said they have seen that pattern over and over and I was just like, man, that’s the beginning of the exercises, and I just loved watching how God was doing that in a really organic way.
Annemarie: Wow, that’s amazing, Tracy. Sure. Thanks for sharing that. It’s very confirming, I think, of that sense of how something that is almost intrinsic to the way we are as human beings, the way that we relate to God and God relates to us kind of being. You can see it made visible [01:23:00] in many different contexts and spaces and it’s so powerful. Yeah.
Christelle: Annemarie, I feel like the dynamics in the exercises are really—you can definitively know that there’s a dynamic going on whilst having a retreatant in it. So, it’s really; it’s subtle, but it’s not. You know it’s there and you really know it’s not there. It’s not really difficult to see that there is no dynamic going on.
You don’t have to dig deep. You just see it. You feel it. You know it. So that’s the interesting part for me about the dynamic is it’s very definitively there, and also very sacredly there. That dynamic is interesting to me that it’s there, but it’s not there. [01:24:00] Yeah, I don’t know if that makes sense.
Annemarie: It sounds, Christelle, like here’s something of that energy of that movement that is just so powerfully evident as one listens to someone—that when it’s stagnant or stuck and the person isn’t in the dynamic, you know when there’s that flow, when there’s that movement, when there’s a natural unfolding. It’s a different field and you can see that it’s there. Yeah. It’s very powerful. Thank you, Christelle.
Annemarie: We still have a little bit of space if there’s someone else or anyone who wants to respond more to what Christelle has said.[01:25:00] Okay, so maybe to say that we’re going to send you a couple of articles to read about the dynamic. The dynamic is something that weaves obviously the whole way through the process, so it’s something that in one way or other we return to all the time. And we’ll pick it up from different angles. We’ll pick it up from the gender angle. We’ll pick it up from the angle of a particular week and the graces of that week—the way that the exercises are given. So, it’s something that will really be part of our ongoing journey.
If you look at your book, Like the Lightning—those of you who’ve managed to get a copy of that—there’s a very good chapter, chapter three on the dynamics of the exercises, which I will [01:26:00] actually also email to you. That’s the one chapter that we’ve actually scanned to send you because it’s a very important chapter and it’s only a few pages of the book. So, we’re not violating copyright or anything like that by sharing it with you. So, we will send that. There’s quite a lot of complexity in it, so don’t worry if you don’t understand it all.
You can just read it and with a sense of, as I read it, I’m just trying to get an overall feeling of the flavor of this. And as we go through, the bits that won’t make sense on a first reading, probably, will make sense much more in three months’ time and in six months’ time. So, it’s something to keep going back to you and you’ll understand it more and more fully as you return to it.
So, I encourage you to read that. I’ll also send you an article by Joseph Veal on the dynamic of the exercises. And I think that there might be one other, [01:27:00] but I’ll send them to Pam, and you can just start that reading process. So, I’m going to hand over now to Adri-Marie to just take the next five minutes to draw us in a closing prayer together. Thank you, Adri-Marie.
Adri-Marie: I’m welcoming you to just give a bit of a sigh. We are exiting our time together, but I’d like to invite you to remember, for a moment, how you entered this space today. So, if it’s helpful for you to close your eyes, you can do that. If it’s helpful to make a few notes, you can do that. But just to consider how you entered the space today, and we had an opening prayer,[01:28:00] words that were read. Perhaps there were some words that chose you. We had a bit of input time, a break, some sharing time, the wheel, question and responses.
So, in all of our time together, I wonder which time felt quite full of life. Perhaps it evoked even a bit of awe, a bit of feel, bit of life, but just reconnect with that feeling.[01:29:00] And as you are reconnecting to that feeling, also just becoming aware of God’s deep gladness presence with you.[01:30:00] And also remember perhaps a moment that felt a bit like learning to drive, the stop starting, something that perhaps felt disruptive, and just offer that. Release it, or perhaps note it, Whatever you need to do with it.[01:31:00]
And as you consider the rest of your day, maybe it’s the start or the middle or the closing or the middle of the night—what is it that you’d like to ask? And I’m going to invite if there’s perhaps a song that comes to mind. I wonder if there’s a song that you’d like to sing today?[01:32:00]
Beautiful Lord, thank you for our own unique songs in our hearts and also that you’re God in all the movements, all the types of songs. We are grateful , grateful, grateful for our time together. Amen.