Ignatian Spirituality

During the fall of my second year at Loyola, I took a class on Ignatian Spirituality and the Spiritual Exercises created by St. Ignatius of Loyola.  St. Ignatius was born in Spain in 1491, and he was the founder of the Society of Jesus, otherwise know as the Jesuits.  Among many other impressive things that Ignatius did in his short life, he wrote the Spiritual Exercises.  Basically the Spiritual Exercises is a collection of guidelines and suggestions to help people deepen their faith, find God’s will for their life, and then have the courage and strength to follow that will.  There are rules to be followed, readings to read, meditations to meditate on, and prayers to be prayed.  If you want to learn more about the Spiritual Exercises check out this website.

For this class I took, we wrote a series of five essays reflecting on how our personal experiences related to or helped us understand the different parts of the Spiritual Exercises.  Writing these essays was very helpful for me.  They helped me understand the class material, the Spiritual Exercises, and perhaps most importantly they helped me better understand my spiritual journey.  I have gone back and reread these essays a few times since I wrote them, and each time I find that these reflections continue to speak truthfully about my spiritual journey and expose areas where I still struggle as well as areas where I have grown.  I’d like to share these essays with you to help you better understand my spiritual journey and encourage you to think about your own spiritual journey.

You’ll notice that my reflections include a lot about El Salvador.  In these assignments we were instructed to use personal experience to illustrate our understanding of the Spiritual Exercises, and my time in El Salvador has provided me with many experiences that have shaped me as a person- spiritually and otherwise- so it only made sense that El Salvador be a part of these reflections.

I’m going to edit my original essays a little.  Some editing will be to include more background and information so that someone who hasn’t taken the class the essays were written for will easily understand the essays.  Other revisions will reflect any changes over the past year in the way I see things.  And I’ll take a few things out that I’m not ready to share with the whole world.

I’ll post these five essays, one at a time, over the next few weeks.  And I’m also working on a conclusion to these essays.

Enjoy.

(And now you have to wait in suspense.  Sorry.)

30 Acts of Beauty

You may be wondering what happened with my Lent challenge to complete 40 acts of beauty, one act for each day.  Well, it was pretty much a failure.  I didn’t complete 40 acts of beauty.

There were a number of factors that contributed to my failure:

Part of the trouble was I got lazy and busy and just didn’t take the time to complete acts of beauty.

Part of the trouble was I had difficulty thinking up creative beautiful things to do.

Part of the trouble was I found myself wanting to record beautiful things that I noticed or that I wanted to claim that I did beautiful things when in reality I was just happened to be in the right place and got to be a part of something beautiful.  Sure, it does take some initiative and effort on my part to consent to being a part of a beautiful situation God places me in, but this wasn’t the point of my Lent challenge.

And part of the trouble was I struggled to do beautiful things when I kept noticing all the incredibly beautiful things that God does in this world: the sunsets, the sunrises, the flowers, the trees, the birds, the people, the way things always seem to work out even if it’s not as I would have imagined they would.  Nothing I can do will ever compare to the beauty that God has created and will create.  I often found myself thinking it was futile to try to do anything beautiful because it couldn’t ever compare to the beautiful things God does.  More than once I found myself frustrated that I couldn’t do great acts of beauty and frustrated that I was failing in my Lenten challenge.

But my Lenten journey to complete 40 acts of beauty wasn’t a complete failure…

My frustration and realization that I had failed show me that I did learn something about myself and I learned something about God.

I learned that God is the maker of all things beautiful: the physical, the immaterial, everything (I guess I knew this all along, but now I know it on a much deeper level.). 

Nothing and I mean nothing I do or make or say or create will ever come anywhere close to being able to compare to the beautiful things God has done and will continue to do in the world.

I learned to look for and appreciate the beauty in life. 

I learned that I sometimes think I can do more than I really can.  And I often think that I can do far more on my own without relying on God.

Anne Lamott says a beautiful truthful thing in a few of her books: If you want to make God laugh, tell Her your plans.  Yep, I’m sure God was up in Heaven laughing at me when I told God about my plans for Lent.  And now God and I are laughing together as we both see that I have learned and re-learned some important lessons.

Here’s the remainder of the kinda close to 40 acts of beauty that I did complete:

 9.   I did my best to ensure that a former co-worker's last evening at work was beautiful.  

10.  Spent a couple of hours working on a knitting project- something I’m knitting for a friend. 

11.  I went for a run.  The gorgeous spring weather just drew me outside.

12.  Started seeds for my vegetable garden

13.  Completed my art project

14.  Decorated my office

15.  Brought my bike up from the basement and got it in outdoor riding condition

16.  Went biking outside!

17.  Got out and set up my rain barrel (already full of water and ready to water my vegetable garden)

18.  Set up my clothes drying rack

19.  Dried clothes outside numerous times

20.  Went to see and meet Anne Lamott

21.  Decided I’m going to be a writer

22.  Kept the house somewhat clean and under control while my mom was away on spring break vacation

23.  Made this delicious pie: Peanut Butter Pie with Pretzel Crust

24.  Wrote a lot

25.  Read more than I have been over the past few months

26.  Had patience and understanding in a difficult situation

27.  Completed a knitting project that I have been working on for far too long

28.  Made some delicious minestrone soup.  The only change I made was to use veggie broth instead of chicken broth.

29.  Found a pattern for my next knitting project…a baby blanket

30.  Did some planning and work for the church community garden  

God's Sense of Humor

I decided to go to the Easter sunrise worship service this morning at my church.  I’ve never been to an Easter sunrise service, and I thought it might be nice to experience and see what happens at a worship service so early in the morning (6:30 am).

My only reservation about going to the sunrise service was that it was so early.  I’m not the biggest morning person, so I was a bit reluctant to set my alarm clock for such an early hour when I could have easily slept in.

But I set my alarm clock, got up when it went off, and got ready for church.  However, my hair wouldn’t cooperate.  I had to slightly modify my planned outfit because it was too chilly outside to wear the late spring/summer outfit I had planned.  I couldn’t decide which shoes to wear and when I had decided I had trouble locating them.  All this wouldn’t normally be a big deal, but my brain takes a while to wake up and wasn’t up to full functioning mode at this point.

When I finally grabbed my purse and turned to walk out the door, I saw the clock: 6:29.  I live close to my church, but not that close.  So I was going to be late.  Out the door.  I turned the key in the ignition, my car dinged at me impatiently to tell me to put my seatbelt on, I flipped on the wipers to remove the morning dew from my front and rear windows.

Car in reverse.  Car in drive.  Left turn.  Right turn.

Then another right turn to the east, and there it was.  The sun rising.  Bright and beautiful coming up above the horizon.

I had the urge to pull the car over, jump out of the car, and stand in the middle of the street and look in wonder at that sun rising.  But I was already 2 minutes late and standing in the middle of the street seemed like a bad idea, so I kept driving.  But I smiled a big smile and drove on in a state of astonishment at that sun rising.  I kept looking through the houses to catch a glimpse of the sun.

I’ve seen the sun rise before, but seeing the sun rise this morning just had a different feel in the midst of my hectic efforts to try to wake up and get to church on time looking halfway decent.

I had a little conversation with God during the rest of my drive to church.  (And just for the record, God didn’t speak to me in audible way like God does to Moses in the 10 Commandments movie.)

I said to God with the excitement and wonder of a three year old, “The sun is rising!!!”

God replied to me in a strong, calm, and collected voice, “Of course the sun is rising, Melissa.  It rises every single day.  Did you doubt it would rise today?”

I replied, still with that wonder and eagerness of a three year old, “Well, I guess I figured it would rise today.  But it’s rising right now and I get to see it!!!”

God replied to me “Of course the sun is rising now on your way to church.  That’s why they call it the Easter Sunrise service.”

God has a real sense of humor sometimes (perhaps most of the time).  With this sense of humor and with all the knowledge and wisdom of God, God knew what I needed this morning.  A simple (yet profound) sunrise, the perfect timing to see it, and enough lucidness (at 6:30 in the morning) to recognize the beauty and miracle of the sunrise on this Easter morning and on the first Easter morning two millenniums ago.

Hit the Fast Forward Button

There is a clap of thunder, my pastor slams shut a Bible and exclaims, “It is finished!”  We leave the church in darkness and in silence to contemplate Jesus’ death on the cross.  This is how our Good Friday service ended tonight (as it does every year).  It’s quite dramatic, as it should be.

The words “it is finished” seem so final and leave no room for anything else.  But we all know that this isn’t the end.  Things weren’t really finished on Good Friday.  Easter is coming and on Easter we will celebrate Jesus’ triumphant resurrection from death.

Yet we have this time of waiting between Good Friday and Easter, a time in which we have to wait to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection.  Every single year it’s the same… sometimes I wish that we could just hit the fast forward button and get to the good part.  It just seems a little silly to wait around in sadness remembering Jesus death when we know that he didn’t stay dead.

I have no choice but to wait.  We all wait.  Every year.

And really, it’s probably good that I have to wait because I get to practice patience and because I am reminded of what I’m really waiting for.

Like we wait on Saturday for Jesus to rise on Easter Sunday, we wait today (and every day) for Jesus to come again, to restore the world to all that God intended it to be.  This is an odd and often times frustrating time of waiting.  I sure don’t understand God’s timing.  At least we know that Easter always comes on Sunday, but we have little idea when the new world is coming. 

We do, however, know what’s coming: a world that is just and fair and filled with peace.  Certainly something worth waiting for.

We also know what God expects of us now as we are waiting for this new world.  God expects a lot of us.  God expects us to be watching and waiting for the return.  God also expects us to prepare the way, announce the coming of the reign of God though our words and actions.

The story wasn’t finished on Good Friday and the story wasn’t finished on Easter.

Every day that I wake up, I have a choice to make.  I can choose to be frustrated by the waiting, or I can choose to be a part of this incredible story that God is writing.  I can choose to play my role in being a Christ follower and try to live according to God’s will, I can choose to do my part to live in a way that will show the world what this story is all about.

When I go to bed tonight I will have failed to live perfectly and do everything I was supposed to, but I know that God willing I will have another choice to make tomorrow morning.  Again I will have the choice to be aggravated by the waiting and just give up, or I can chose to play the role God has given me to a be a part of the most incredible story there is (even though it’s a very difficult role to play and a very difficult story to be a part of).

I know what my choice will be.  Do you?

10 Days

I’ve been a writer for 10 days now.  And I love being a writer.

I haven’t written profusely, but I have been much more successful than I thought I might be in making the time to write.  There have been times when the words came faster than my fingers could move on my keyboard, and there have been nights when I just didn’t have anything to write and that was ok, too.  I have been working on some pieces of writing that I have been meaning to work on for some time, and I have even started some new pieces.  I’ve got a bunch of things lined up and ready to post on my blog, so get ready.

Here’s what I love about being a writer:

… that I actually made a decision without worrying and trying to work out all the details- that I made a decision because I felt the call and then put my trust in God (if God would call me to something, then God is going to help work out all those details).

… doing something for me, doing something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time.

… that I’m closer to fully being the person I am meant to be, and that I can feel that this is true.

… taking the opportunity to reflect on my life on a daily basis.

… thinking about events, people, and life on a deeper level.

… making the time for something that is important in my life.

… noticing things that I wouldn’t otherwise have noticed because I’m looking at the world and my life from the perspective of a person who is looking to write.

… that I’ve stopped with the excuses.  It feels really good to actually do something rather than allow insignificant things decide whether I actually do something that I feel called to do.