Advent is the season of longing – of recognizing the ways in which our lives are not complete and making room for the one who can complete us. Maybe God works these longings into our lives more acutely during the holiday season. If God made humans to be restless and to long for a completeness not known during our earthly lives (as Scripture and tradition have always suggested), then maybe God also initiates this restlessness and longing more now en masse than at any other time of the year. This week, this Advent, I am recognizing that God initiates the longings I experience. And he initiates this longing through glimpses.
There were moments on my 30-day retreat of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius where I glimpsed fullness of life with God. At times, I felt immersed with God, completely connected with him. I glimpsed God’s overwhelming love for me exactly as I am. I glimpsed God’s delight in all of creation, including me. I glimpsed total love, peace, harmony, fulfillment. I say I glimpsed these things not because they were superficial – no, my experiences have (hopefully) sunk deep into the marrow of my bones. Instead, I say I glimpsed life with God because even as I felt God with me, I knew I experienced only a small sliver of who God is and also a sliver of life that will come for me when I die and become forever joined with him.
I’ve been back from my retreat longer now than the entire retreat lasted. While I still feel moments of God’s overwhelming love for me, these moments are becoming less intense and less frequent. Given this, I realized this past week that I am grieving. I am grieving the strong connection I felt with God during my retreat. I long to feel that which I felt/glimpsed during my retreat. But, I also see that if God had not given me glimpses of loving connection with him, I would not notice its absence now. I would not yearn for it so deeply now. By giving me glimpses of a better life, God opens me to imagine, to desire more.
These glimpses of a better life fuel our desires, fuel our vocation, fuel our longings. We can imagine life where young men do not go into shopping malls and shoot people. We can imagine life where we get along peacefully with family. We can imagine better friendships, better romantic relationships, better jobs, better grades. At the very least, we can imagine life where the gifts we want to buy are affordable, stocked on the shelves and available in stores without long check-out lines. Why? We so easily imagine these things because God gives us glimpses of these things in our daily life – moments when we feel peace with family, moments when our jobs or classes are going perfectly, moments when we feel alive and well and right with the world.
In the past I thought I originated my longings, authored my desires. This Advent I am learning firsthand how God gives me both the glimpses of fullness I experience as well as the longings for more. God gives me the glimpses and the longings. Alpha and omega. Beginning and end.
Showing posts with label Spiritual Exercises. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spiritual Exercises. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Monday, May 21, 2007
New Vocational Phase
I begin a new phase in my vocational journey tomorrow. The irony of this new movement in my life is that if I am really to be successful, I will do so only by losing my self. “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.” (John, 12: 24)
Now, I am certain that at many points in my life, I have thought of Jesus’ call to disclipleship as recounted in John. I am certain that I have told myself that I was doing this – dying to self so that I could do as God wills. Indeed, I suspect I have thought of this verse most frequently when I felt like work was asking too much of me, times when I felt overextended, underappreciated, and certainly underpaid.
But, Jesus’ suggestion has a different meaning for me now. You see, tomorrow I will accompany three retreatants who will participate in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius for eight days. I am to be their retreat director. In my prayer, the only thing that runs through my mind is that I will only be successful as their director if I can just get out of the way so the Lord can work with and through these retreatant. The retreat is about God and the individual. It is not about me. If I am to be successful as a retreat director, it will only be because I let each retreatant spend eight days with God and I did nothing to interfere with His work in their lives.
“[15] The director facilitates the movement of God’s grace within us so that the light and love of God inflame all possible decisions and resolutions about life situations. God is not only our Creator, but also the Director of our retreat, and the human director never should provide a hindrance to such an intimate communication.” (A contemporary reading of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius by David Fleming, SJ)
For me, right now, this is what it means to die to self, to be a grain of wheat that dies. I should not be a hindrance. On better days, I might even be able to facilitate the movement of God’s grace. Maybe this is not just a directive from St. Ignatius on how I might be a director of his spiritual exercises. Maybe this is a way for me to approach all my work, as a professor, an administrator, a daughter, a friend. Maybe this is how a grain of wheat dies and produces much fruit.
(PS Please pray for these retreatants May 22-29. And for me as their director.)
Now, I am certain that at many points in my life, I have thought of Jesus’ call to disclipleship as recounted in John. I am certain that I have told myself that I was doing this – dying to self so that I could do as God wills. Indeed, I suspect I have thought of this verse most frequently when I felt like work was asking too much of me, times when I felt overextended, underappreciated, and certainly underpaid.
But, Jesus’ suggestion has a different meaning for me now. You see, tomorrow I will accompany three retreatants who will participate in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius for eight days. I am to be their retreat director. In my prayer, the only thing that runs through my mind is that I will only be successful as their director if I can just get out of the way so the Lord can work with and through these retreatant. The retreat is about God and the individual. It is not about me. If I am to be successful as a retreat director, it will only be because I let each retreatant spend eight days with God and I did nothing to interfere with His work in their lives.
“[15] The director facilitates the movement of God’s grace within us so that the light and love of God inflame all possible decisions and resolutions about life situations. God is not only our Creator, but also the Director of our retreat, and the human director never should provide a hindrance to such an intimate communication.” (A contemporary reading of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius by David Fleming, SJ)
For me, right now, this is what it means to die to self, to be a grain of wheat that dies. I should not be a hindrance. On better days, I might even be able to facilitate the movement of God’s grace. Maybe this is not just a directive from St. Ignatius on how I might be a director of his spiritual exercises. Maybe this is a way for me to approach all my work, as a professor, an administrator, a daughter, a friend. Maybe this is how a grain of wheat dies and produces much fruit.
(PS Please pray for these retreatants May 22-29. And for me as their director.)
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