Spiritual Exercises: Conclusion

The five essays I wrote for the class on the Spiritual Exercises ends in a weird place.  There is a sort of conclusion to the Spiritual Exercises, but there really isn’t any end to a spiritual journey.  Surely there is a better place to end than where I ended with my fifth essay.  So, this final installment is an attempt to sum everything up and figure out where to go from here.  I intended to post this shortly after I posted my fifth essay, but I felt like I needed more time to figure things out, to figure out the conclusion to where I am in my spiritual journey, to figure out how to neatly categorize and communicate my spiritual journey. 

But more and more I’m realizing that I will never be able to write about my spiritual journey in a neat, organized, and complete way.  It will always be a work in progress, it will always be extremely messy.

So here is as much of a conclusion to my essays on the Spiritual Exercises as I can offer.

At the time I finished writing these essays I felt like I was on the verge of something, something big, or something that would challenge me, or ask me to do something radically different in my life.  Since this time, I have felt this feeling a few other times.  Each time I feel like I am preparing to “rename” something in my self or in my life.  But I haven’t quite gotten to that point of the actual renaming or making a change.

I’m not sure if it is me backing away or not allowing myself to get to that change.  Or maybe God keeps bringing me close, then sees that I’m not ready and brings me away.  Or maybe God brings me close and then sees that the world isn’t ready and brings me away.  It’s hard to tell.  And it’s frustrating.  It’s frustrating to be on the verge of something and not know what that something is and not know if I’m doing something wrong to not get to that something.

It’s like I’m trying to go over a bridge, a bridge with a steep incline.  I can feel that I’m almost to the crest of the bridge and I can see the other side, but there is something stopping me from rolling forward over that crest.  And then I start rolling backward.  And then at some point I am able to start getting moving forward toward the crest and then the resistance is too great and I stop moving and then start moving backward.  

I don’t know what exactly it is that God is calling me to, but I do know in general it is a Christ-centered life, the ultimate destination for a Christian spiritual journey (well, at least the ultimate destination here on earth).  A Christ-centered life is a life completely focused on and centered on serving Jesus.

I’d like to say that I’m doing everything I can to overcome whatever it is that’s stopping me from getting over the crest of that bridge to a Christ-centered.  But I can’t honestly say that this is the truth.  There’s something stopping me, and I like I said this makes me frustrated, but the fact that there’s something stopping me leaves me being able to stay in a place where I am comfortable and don’t have to take on or do or become something that will challenge me and my faith.

But at this point it seems that all I can do is listen really hard, wait, and try to get myself ready to take on whatever it is that is that something that God is calling me to.  This in itself is a challenge, and it’s a challenge that I’m realizing I will have throughout my life.  I’m not sure that there will ever be a time when I am perfectly living the life God has called me to live- there will always be something more, something better, something bigger than myself. 

For now I’m just working on taking baby steps towards whatever it is that God is calling me to, and really these baby steps are enough- enough to keep me busy and challenged, and enough to keep me wanting to keep taking more baby steps.

Spiritual Exercises: Part 5

 Like the previous essay, this essay is a reflection on the third week of the Spiritual Exercises, the part of the faith journey when a person meditates on the ultimate expression of God’s love and at the same time the ultimate expression of suffering: Christ’s last supper, passion, and death.  This essay takes it a step further and deeper, rather than writing about struggle, in this essay I write about suffering.

This is the final essay I wrote for my class on the Spiritual Exercises, and it is by far the most personal, the most emotional, and the one that I struggled most to write (and even now it’s the one that is the most difficult for me to read).  I debated for a while if I really wanted to post this, but I decided to post it because this was and remains a fundamental part of my spiritual journey.  Without this, my spiritual journey is incomplete.

I do not think that I can honestly say that I have experienced suffering in my own life.  I have lived a very comfortable life and I have been provided with everything I needed and most of the things I wanted.  By no means has my life been perfect or without difficulties, loss, heartbreaks, and pain, but to say that I have suffered would be a lie and would diminish the true meaning of the word suffering.

           

While I have not experienced suffering of my own, I have been with people who have truly suffered.  The Salvadorans I spent time with understand and have experienced extreme suffering.  Many of them have lived through a brutal civil war and all of them are living in the aftermath of this civil war.  Some have survived torture, all of them have had at least one close family member or friend killed in violence, and they all live through the daily structural violence of poverty.  I listened to their stories of past suffering, I saw with my own eyes their current suffering, and I prayed with them that God would bless them with a future of less suffering.  In a very small way I entered into the suffering that my Salvadoran friends have experienced.  My heart broke and my brain frantically struggled to make sense of the suffering all around me.  Yet, I did not suffer despite the suffering all around me. 

           

In my time in El Salvador, I experienced a greater sense of the presence of Jesus.  I think this is in part because I came to better understand the suffering of Jesus through understanding the suffering of my Salvadoran friends.  I have always identified with the risen Christ and I think as a society most Americans tend to identify more with the risen Christ than with the suffering Christ being crucified.  However, many of my Salvadoran friends can easily identify with the suffering, crucified Jesus because they have experienced very similar suffering.  They can relate to the suffering Jesus experienced on the cross and I was able to relate in a small way to the suffering the Salvadorans experienced and thus I was a little bit better able to relate to the suffering of Jesus.  In joining in the suffering of my Salvadoran friends just a little bit, I joined in the suffering of Jesus just a little bit.  The suffering Jesus experienced on the cross is obviously a vital part of Jesus and through joining in this suffering I am closer to Jesus.

           

I do not believe that suffering is something that a person can truly understand unless one experiences it.  I will probably never be able to comprehend or imagine the suffering that my Salvadoran friends have experienced nor will I be able to understand the suffering of Christ.  However, I do believe that the time I spent with Salvadorans helped me to better understand and experience to some extent the suffering of the world as well as the suffering that Christ experienced on the cross.    

           

Yet, I have not suffered and I have been grappling with the question of why it is that I have not suffered.  I think part of the reason is that my parents and others have been protecting me and shielding me from suffering for most of my life.  This is something I am very grateful for and it something that all people deserve as they are growing up.  However, I have at times resented this protection from the suffering of the world.  It has made me feel guilty for having the safety and peace that millions do not have.  More and more I am coming to realize that it is now my own responsibility that I have not suffered.  I have felt that I have fallen short of being a true Christian because I have not answered the call to join Christ in suffering with him and with the people of the world. 

           

I cannot really express why it is, but I long to be with my Salvadoran friends and to join in their suffering. I think this is evidence of the grace of the Third Week starting to be granted in my life.  Even though there is not a whole lot I can do to alleviate the suffering of my Salvadoran friends, I want to share their burdens as much as possible.  It seems that I have the desire to suffer with my Salvadoran friends, but I do not yet have the courage or strength to suffer with them.

The issue of suffering is probably the issue that challenges my faith the most. I don’t know how to further my understanding or resolve the issue.  If anyone has any insights to share, please do.  This essay was the last of the essays I wrote for my class, but this isn’t the end of my spiritual journey, so I’m working on a post to sum all this up.

Spiritual Exercises: Part 4

This essay is a reflection on the third week of the Spiritual Exercises, the part of the faith journey when a person meditates on the ultimate expression of God’s love and at the same time the ultimate expression of suffering: Christ’s last supper, passion, and death.  Specifically it is an essay on struggle in my life.

Note: When I first read over this essay as I was getting ready to post it on my blog, I was a little taken aback by my ramblings and worries and fears.  It struck me that I have made some progress and growth in this area, so like the previous essay, I have left the original essay mostly the same and I added an update at the end.

The biggest struggle for me thus far in my life has not necessarily been living out my call, but rather it has been trying to discern what my call is.  I have only recently begun to fully understand the concept of a call and vocation, so I still have much to discern as my life unfolds.  In some senses I have already been trying to live out my call as I understand it and there have been struggles there, but I am still largely trying to understand what my call is and how I am supposed to live it out.  I struggle to understand my call in part because I’m still resisting saying “Yes” to a call that I might indeed understand but am not yet ready to admit that I do understand it.  I ask questions like “Could this really be what God is calling me to be and do?”  The struggle includes the struggle to hear as well as the more difficult struggle to listen and then follow.      

I struggle to believe that the call I think I’m hearing could be a call that I am worthy and capable of following.  I do not believe that I could ever have the skills, knowledge, strength, and courage necessary to live out my call.  I am not patient enough to wait for God to reveal my calling in God’s own timing- I want to know now what I will do and be throughout my life.  I often fail to trust and remember that God will be with me along the way to offer guidance and help.  I’m not convinced that my needs will be taken care of if I follow the call.  I fear the uncertainty of the call and I fear for my safety.  I fear that others will judge me and I will lose the support and love of people who are important in my life.  Because of these struggles and others, I am still not able (and perhaps never will be able) to offer an unconditional “yes” to my call.

Despite the struggles to accept and live my call, it has been in those moments when I say “yes” a little more to my call (but not yet an absolute “yes’”) that I feel a sense of purpose and I feel most alive and loved.  It is this that encourages me to keep saying “yes” a little more.  I hope that with time continually saying “yes” will become easier, but I fear that it will not.  Even as I begin to overcome the struggles to saying “yes” to the call, I enter into the struggles that come along after one has said “yes.”

In those moments when I am struggling to follow my call to discipleship, it helps to remember those people who have taught me what it means to be a true disciple of Christ.  I think of leaders who have inspired me in the way they follow their call.  I think of people like Mother Teresa, Archbishop Oscar Romero, Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day, John Dear, and Jon Sobrino.  I also think of “regular” people who may not have written books or led movements or received international recognition for their work, but they too have shown me that while struggles will exist, following the call is indeed possible.  My classmates in the Social Justice program have taught me ways to overcome struggles and how to live with the struggles.  My friends in El Salvador have shown me exactly what it means to live out the call with great love and humility.  They put their complete trust in God in everything they are and everything they do.  My Salvadoran friends have sacrificed their own safety, their well-being, and even their lives as they live out their call to love like Jesus loved.  Following a call was not a smooth road for any of these people.  Neither will listening to and living my own call be without struggle.  

Even as I look to these people for help and inspiration when I struggle to follow my own call, it is comforting to know that all of us are working together through our own calls with and through Jesus to bring about the reign of God.  The many times that I have recognized that I have fallen short of living out my call I am reassured to know that there are many other people working with me toward the goal.  My failure and my sin will not bring down the whole project.  While knowing that everything does not depend solely on my work, others following their call encourage me to join back in the work of helping to being about the reign of God.

Update: I have learned to listen better and I have learned to better sense and feel those moments when God is telling me that I am following God’s call: I am being who I am supposed to be and doing what I am supposed to do.  I have more often felt those moments when it is clear to me that I am right where I am supposed to be…it is a sense of calm, of peace.

I have learned to trust more.  I still don’t know exactly where I am going, but I have learned to trust that God is leading me in the right direction and I need to act in trust and just put one foot in front of the other.

And I have learned to be more patient.  God hasn’t yet revealed to me God’s long-term plan for my life, but God has made it clear to me what I am supposed to be doing now.  And for now that’s really all that matters.  I can spend all the time and energy I have trying to figure out what I’m supposed to be doing for the rest of my life, but God just isn’t ready to reveal that to me, so I just need to keep practicing patience.  

Spiritual Exercises: Part 3

This third essay is a reflection on the second week of the Spiritual Exercises, a period in our spiritual journey when we learn how to follow Christ as his disciples.  During this part of the journey we are drawn to make decisions to respond to God’s love by loving God more fully and doing God’s work in the world.

Note: Updating this essay would have required a complete rewriting, so rather than doing this I have left the essay as I wrote it a year and a half ago and I included a short update at the end.

As a young person quickly approaching being a “real adult” (i.e. completing my schooling), friends and family continuously ask me what I’m going to do when I graduate or what kind of a job I will get when I graduate.  I have reluctantly developed answers that will satisfy those who are asking me.  I say something like “I’m going to work for an international faith-based justice organization or I’ll work in a faith-based setting in the US educating people about injustice.”  However, these answers that I’m giving make me uncomfortable in part because I have no idea if or where I’ll get a job, but more importantly this response makes me uncomfortable because it is not a true answer to the deeper question I long to answer: what is my call? 

The place where I have most clearly felt the call of Christ is among my friends in El Salvador.  The call I have understood is to love, to be loved, and to have compassion.  More specifically the call is to love, to be loved by, and to have compassion on those who are on the margins of society: the poor, the oppressed, the voiceless.  Love and compassion are emotions, but I think of these words primarily as verbs.  In this regard my call is clear to me: I am called to be a person who loves, is loved, and has compassion on others.  I still struggle to understand exactly how I am to live out that call, but I rest on the fact that I am called to follow Jesus’ example and love my neighbor as myself.

           

I think I have felt the call so clearly among my Salvadoran friends because they set an incredible example of living out the call of Christ in their own lives and because Jesus is so present among and within the Salvadorans.  Through forming relationships with my Salvadoran friends I have come to understand what it means to be a human, a child of God, and I learned about the responsibilities that come along with being connected to people all over the globe.  Through finding Christ in the Salvadorans, I have come to better understand Jesus and recognize him working in the world and in my life. 

           

This call in my life induces uncertainty and fear in me, but at the same time it brings about certainty and peace.  The uncertainty comes because I have no idea where such a call will lead.  The call creates fear because I know I will have to give up things and people in my life that have brought me comfort.  I also fear that a call to love and have compassion on the marginalized will bring me great pain and perhaps suffering.  Even to get this far in understanding and living out my call has required me to put my safety in God’s hands as I spent time in El Salvador where violence is far too common.  I can only imagine that living out my call will require more sacrifice, and yet this is sacrifice that I welcome. 

My call brings me certainty because even if I do not understand it completely, I know that if I ever lose my way all I need to do is return to following the example of Christ by showing and receiving his love and by having compassion on Christ in the world.  As broad as my understanding of my call is, it still provides clear and certain guidance.  No matter how scary my call seems, it does come with peace.  In my call I feel Jesus walking along side me providing guidance and strength to me.  I am not alone.

Despite my efforts to listen to the call I know I have not listened as well as I should have.  Too often I let the expectations and norms of my friends, family, and culture get in the way of my call.  I let my own expectations and opinions as well as those of others manipulate my call.  I find myself wanting to live a life where I know I will be safe and comfortable, but the call tells me to live a life where safety is not guaranteed and I will be asked to step out of my comfort zone again and again.  

Update: This essay discusses many of the same themes I wrote about in my recent post: Reevaluating.  The call I understood for myself when I wrote this essay above and the call I understand for myself now are very similar, really I just use different words now.  This similarity over time is either is a good thing or a bad thing, hopefully good.  Like I did a year and a half ago, I still struggle to completely understand how exactly God wants me to live out my call, but I think now I am doing a better job of listening and being willing to follow what I hear from God, no matter what it’s going to cost me.

In this essay, I wrote that I have most clearly felt the call of Christ while in El Salvador.  It is still the case that El Salvador is where I have most strongly felt Christ calling me, but in the past year I have frequently experienced moments at my jobs and in other parts of my life that have reassured me that I am doing what Christ has called me to do and being what Christ has called me to be.

Spiritual Exercises Reflection: Part 2

This reflection is a reflection on the First Week (or the first stage of the spiritual journey) grace in my life.  According to IgnatianSpirituality.com, “the first week of the Exercises is a time of reflection on our lives in light of God’s boundless love for us. We see that our response to God’s love has been hindered by patterns of sin. We face these sins knowing that God wants to free us of everything that gets in the way of our loving response to him.”

The time when I most clearly experienced the grace of the First Week, was as I was learning about the injustices in El Salvador, about my indirect and direct role in those injustices and as I tried to discern what to do with this information that I had learned.  In a class I took at Augustana, I learned about the Salvadoran Civil War, the atrocities of massacres, assassinations, rapes, and the countless other injustices created by a lack of food, shelter, medical care, and education for Salvadorans during the war.  Then I learned about the role the U.S. played in these atrocities through sending weapons and funds and standing idly by while thousands were killed. 

This information deeply disturbed me in part because this was perhaps the first time that I fully realized my country’s participation in violence, in sinfulness.  I was also disturbed to learn that similar policies of violence continue today and I am essentially complicit in this manifestation of sinfulness.  What further disturbed and upset me were the questions about God that flooded my head after I learned about the Salvadoran civil war.  I questioned how God could have let such horrible things happen and I questioned if God was really present in me and if God had been present in El Salvador.

For a while I tried my hardest to keep the information about the violence in El Salvador abstract.  I tried not to think of it as anything more than something I read in a book about a far away place where people very different from me lived.  I did everything I could to question what I had learned in hopes that maybe it wasn’t true.  I also made every effort to keep this information and the questions it brought up about God separate from the rest of my life.  I compartmentalized this as academic and when I closed the books or left class I tried to leave these things behind.  This went on for a couple of weeks and for the whole time I was in such a state of inner-turmoil, marked by guilt and stress but I didn’t realize the source at that time.

It wasn’t very long before I stopped struggling to ignore and reject the sinfulness that I learned about and my complicity in that sinfulness.  I came to accept that the evils of the Salvadoran civil war happened and similar things continue to happen today and will continue to happen until the evil of the world is overcome by the coming of the Reign of God.  I accepted that the world is a very broken place and my heart will be broken again and again by this brokenness.  What truly helped me to embrace this fact is that I recognized that one day the Reign of God will be present on earth and we as humans are God’s hands and feet in bringing about that Reign.  There is nothing that we as humans can do of our own will to bring about the Reign of God, but through God’s mercy, grace, and love God will bring about that Reign on earth.

I still recognize my sin and my complicity in many manifestations of sinfulness in the world, but I no longer feel plagued by guilt because of this sinfulness.  Guilt is such a negative feeling and leads to little except more guilt.  I can’t honestly say that I feel completely forgiven by God for my complicit participation in the continuing violence in the world, but I do feel moved and motivated to work to change what I can while accepting those things that I know I cannot change.  I think that the part of me that does not feel forgiven is the part of me that feels that I must do something to be forgiven.  Intellectually I know that this is not true, but I still feel somewhat unworthy of God’s love and acceptance because of my personal sinfulness and because of the sins I have been collectively involved in.  I know I have been forgiven by God, but I do not yet feel completely forgiven, so I still have more to receive of the First Week grace.

My professor wrote a comment at the end of my essay.  He asked, “If God were to address you with these feelings about being “somewhat unworthy of God’s love and acceptance because of my personal sinfulness” etc., what might God say to you?”

I know exactly what God would say.  Well… really I don’t know exactly what God would say to me but I think I have a pretty good idea of what God would say to me about all this.

For some reason I went all out in imagining how God would respond to me.

I imagine God and I sitting down in a nice cozy place, in a couple of comfy chairs next to a warm crackling fire.  We each have a drink- I have a cup of hot chocolate and God is drinking tea (I’m not sure why but it just seems that God would drink tea, but now I’m starting to wonder if really we would be drinking some really good wine…).  We begin with small talk.  “How was your day?”  “Fine. And your day?”

And then the conversation gets to the point where we both know it’s time to start talking about the thing we are meeting to discuss.  I open my mouth to tell God what I have written in the essay above, but before I even have the chance to say one word, God already knows all this and spares me the task of explaining it all.

Then God says something like this to me:

“Melissa, you’re being ridiculous.  I don’t know why you feel unworthy and unforgiven.  There is absolutely no reason to fear that I haven’t or won’t forgive you or love you.  Of course I love you, I made you.  Of course I forgive you, my son Jesus died for your forgiveness.”

And then Jesus walks in, pulls up a chair to join us, and I know that it is true.