30 day retreat e-mail reflection: Week 4

Week IV

Alright! Almost there! I'm giving myself a self pep talk.

This resurrection week was very interesting for me. It was actually a difficult week for me, because I was really beginning to yearn to come out of silence. I was watching the calendar closely and the time. Just wanting it all to end. Running up the walls, so to speak. Yet, I knew that I needed to spend the time, and when I did, I always felt grateful of having spent it.

Ultimately, this week was a reflection of what the resurrected life means for me. What does it mean to go out into the world with this "new life" given to me during the retreat?

I had a hard time at first with prayer. I was imagining the resurrected scenes, but I was mostly watching them like a movie, with funny moments here and there. I wasn't entering into the scenes as I had in the second week. This was kind of an unintended result of my reflections during the third week, since I felt called just to watch those scenes unfold and not to interact too much with them. What I was doing more was watching without reflecting. Paul pointed it out to me like it was almost a game, seeing what would come to my mind. It was a calling back to reflect with the union of mind and heart, and not with just mind alone.

This matter of the heart was an important insight for me. The belief that God is speaking to me in my heart, and that my heart is where God resides. And to follow my heart after the retreat, to follow my instincts. In my prayer, I strove for it never it to be merely a matter of an intellectual exercise, but to infuse my heart into it. That was where the authenticity was; that was where the true me was. It's good to remind myself of that...I've already forgotten it.

Also, the enormous gift I received from this last week was the gift to be thankful. To give thanks for all that was given to me for me was so important. In the act of giving thanks, it daily reminds me not to take for granted what I have but to cherish them. For Jesuits, it is the challenge to "See God in All Things." Indeed, I have much to be thankful for. And, personally, there's just something liberating and freeing about giving thanks, a feeling I have throughout the day that I miss when I haven't spent those few moments to do so.


Closing of E-mail

What a funny subheading. Or, maybe I just think it's funny...

Well, if you have read through all of this, you are definitely a trooper. I hope in this long reflection that you were able to gleam something from it.

I pray that all of you are doing well as we enter these final weeks of the year. Especially for those in school and are in finals, you are in my thoughts.

While we were in this retreat, it became very apparent to us how many people were praying for us. The Jesuits from outside the community who would say Mass for us would say: "the 3rd graders next door are praying for you", "I was in California and they are praying for you," "Our Brother Columbians are praying for you," "The elder community at Regis is praying for you." In all of it, in all of our differences and beliefs, there is something very powerful in being able to transcend our prejudices and misgivings about one another and to just pray for each other, to hold others up in your thoughts, no matter how much you don't like the other. Indeed, some of the most influential and inspiring leaders have attested to the power of prayer.

So, I am so thankful for all of the support that I have been given.

I'll be sure to write when my next big adventure comes! If you have any questions about anything, just shoot me an email! Also, I'd love to hear how you all are doing.

You are all in my prayers,
Ryan

30 day retreat e-mail reflection: Week 3

Week III

Hmm, is anyone still reading this??? I wonder...I guess this is me getting all of this out of me after being in silence. Well, I won't have a month of silence to write about again for quite a long time. The next time Jesuits enter into this month of silence after the novitiate is a few years after they are ordained. Maybe 14-15 years from now??? We'll see

Well, I spent an exhaustive two days just witnessing the Passion and Death of Christ using Ignatius' "contemplation of place," and spent one day ritualizing the death using incense. It was...truly graphic. I saw him scourged, beaten, pounded to the cross, and labor in agony until his last breath. God-Man, tortured and killed. The madness of it all. And, to think about where we continue to do this in our society today. The cross, the instrument of death, for us Christians becomes the instrument for our life due to our belief in the resurrection. The belief that Jesus became more powerful than ever because of his humbleness and submission unto death.

I was reading Gary Smith's book Radical Compassion again at this time. Something very powerful reading this again, both because I now recognize the places that he talks about in his book, but also in the context in which I am reading. Just reflecting on the suffering that continues to take place in our world, and, as I see it, it is as if Jesus continues to suffer along with them. His one story about a "leper," a term he used to describe his story with a man with AIDS, caused me to weep for 20 minutes after my one midnight meditation following Week I.

It planted the seeds for a possible experiment I am discerning about, which is serving in an AIDS hospice. We'll see... (this hasn't happened, 3 years since I posted this)

I find Gary's book so inspiring because he doesn't just theorize and make statistics of these marginalized people that he's encountered. He tells their stories because he's been with them. And they are painful. But, it burns me with desire for service for the least of our brothers and sisters among us, to tend to the deep wounds they have experienced. As I have often found in my service, though, they unexpectedly give me so much in return.

(to be continued)

30 day retreat e-mail reflection: Week 2

Week 2

Man, this e-mail is getting long. A breather maybe? I might as well write a book while I'm at it...

The Life of Christ. This was the longest Week of the retreat, and the most peaceful and joyful one for me. For me, this is where Ignatius' "contemplation of place" really kicks in. The use of the imagination. We are invited by Ignatius to place ourselves in these gospel scenes, from the time the Angel appears to Mary up to the time where Jesus is betrayed. Moreover, it is not just watching a movie. We are invited to bring ourselves into the scene, to authentically interact with it. This is the power of the imagination for Ignatius, and this is why God can "directly deal with his creatures."

So, at every prayer period, I was placing myself at a scene, bringing all of my senses into the imagination, talking with the people involved. Essentially, I experienced the Gospels like this for the rest of the retreat.

Let me tell you that this is utterly exhausting and can be very difficult. Physical exercise is no different, however. I know, since I was experiencing this with all the exercise I was doing this past month. At first, it was so difficult, and I was getting tired of it although I hadn't been doing it very long. But, the more you do it, the more the body adjusts and the easier it comes. The same with prayer and composing myself at these scenes. Ignatius, however, recognized that we can lose heart and not feel like we can do it and give up. For him, this was all the more reason to stay true to the hour of prayer. I definitely had my moments where I just needed to fight internally to keep that hour going. But, in the end, it is worth it.

A few insights I'd like to talk about.

This first one is perhaps theological talk, but, I think for any Christian, I have come to see it as one of the most fundamental beliefs. Jesus as God-Man; or, Jesus as fully divine and fully human.

There's something I think that is lost in the belief if Christians discard the notion that Jesus was both fully divine and fully human, holding one up over the other. For me, there is something utterly profound going on when I think about this story about how God placed Jesus in the womb of an ordinary woman, Mary, (well, not ordinary for Catholics, but at the time) who gave birth in basically a farm surrounded by animals because she was continuously rejected to be brought into any of the inns. How Jesus was placed after birth into a manger. I thought about this word manger, and realized I didn't know what it was. I looked it up in a dictionary: "a bed for the food of the animals." Basically, the birth of Jesus, whom millions of people across the globe have come to believe in, slept in the food of the pigs, as the story goes anyway.

One would think this God-Man would have more higher places he could be.

But, this image of being as the least among us continues for the rest of the gospel stories. He breaks every conceivable taboo that existed in his day.
"Um, why are you talking with that Samaritan woman?"
"How can you sit at the table of a tax collector?"
"He's healing on the Sabbath!!! Heresy!!"
"She's a prostitute for crying out loud!"
"Ahh...look! He walks with those 'unclean' people!"

If Christians believe that Jesus is fully human and fully divine, then how striking it is to reflect on about whom this God-Man associates Himself with. He is a God-Man that uplifts the poor, who shatters the invisible wall of racism, who heals the blind, the stigmatized and much much more. If you can capture the work that Jesus does, you can capture the work that we Jesuits strive to do and where we are called to be. Not to say that we do any of this perfectly, God forbid. And not to say that we only minister to the poor, because we obviously don't. It's difficult to serve the poor if you can't turn the hearts of the rich. But, essentially, the Jesuit Order, an Apostolic Order, seeks to be like Jesus by serving as best we can as Jesus in the world. And, it takes actual discernment about who Jesus actually is before true discernment of service can be done.

It shakes up the system. Jesus shook things up, frankly. This is a difficult call to discern because it makes people angry. Angry enough to plot about his death.

In all of these scenes, I continued to foster my own relationship with Jesus, to grow in love of Him as a child, and to want to follow in his footsteps as a child. A growing desire to do service in the world. That is me, of course, becoming idealistic in my hopes for being able to be of service to others. I think we all need, however, a dose of idealism now and then to burn our hearts anew.

I wanted to end this week about Jesus' entrance into the city where he is crucified. I loved being in this scene just because I was looking at Jesus ride "majestically" on an ass into Jerusalem. Quite the procession of a King.


(to be continued)

30-day retreat e-mail reflection: Week I

Week I: Meditation on Sin

Now, I would have to hands down say that this week was the most difficult week
for me. This was the week where I had to deal with myself. If any of you are
like me, there's something about this word "sin" that totally turns me off.
Imbedded in this week were meditations on Satan, hell, my sin, and the sin of
Adam and Eve.

My spiritual director, Paul, had an extremely difficult
time when he did the exercises with the Adam and Eve story, and I did too. "You
mean to tell me that because of this one sin, we had to put up with all this
crap??!!!"

I was reading a book during the retreat in which I came
across a passage about this. Forgive its possible offensive language, but it has
a point. It read something like this: "We forgave the Jews for killing Jesus.
Yet we can't forgive Eve for eating an apple??"

Food for thought.

In my prayer, for me, Adam and Eve's sin wasn't the eating of the apple.
It was the hiding, being ashamed of themselves before God, who sees them anyway
because of this knowledge attained. I was relating to them by thinking about how
often I "hide" and feel ashamed in God's presence.

Anyway, I really
really struggled in this week. Here's some inner dialogue that took place within
me during one prayer period, which I'm kind of portraying in dramatic fashion. I
don't know if it's all that dramatic though because my emotions were as intense
as what is going on here. This was probably about the fourth or fifth day into
the retreat. The language maybe isn't exactly what I was thinking, but it gets
the point across.

"What the hell is sin?"
"Why am I even meditating
on this?"
"Argghhh!!! I hate this week!"
"God, You are soooo selfish!!"

I was really angry and confused. I remember talking about it with Paul
and I just remember him laughing about it. I was laughing about it too when I
was thinking back to it, but at the time I was really serious.

As I look
back, it was very necessary for me to struggle, to wrestle like that; kind of
like Jacob in the book of Genesis who wrestles with "God" (kind of ambiguous)
but in so doing, he is renamed Israel which roughly translates I think into "one
who wrestles with God." In the struggle, I began to delve more deeply into the
areas of my faith that I had questions about, that I needed to wrestle with. In
the end, strengthening my relationship with God and being thankful that God
allowed me to struggle with him.

The hardest part for me of this week
was to name "my sin." Paul kept harping me about it. I created the best laundry
list I could...well, I do that, and I do that, and I do that. And, in talking
about it, I still hadn't found "it." This caused me great frustration and
wondered whether there was even an "it" at all.

In writing this, I
realize how difficult it is to truly explain without going into massive detail
about how I worked my way into finding "it." It took me about 8 days. It was
triggered in one of my sessions with Paul when he said, "Ryan, you beat yourself
up too much."

His saying that to me really caught me off guard. I
brought it to prayer for a day and meditated on this, because he struck a chord
with me. As I began reflecting on it, I couldn't believe how true his statement
was.

"Man, I'm not praying very well."
"I wish I looked better."
"I could be a better brother to my brother novices."
"I don't sing very
well."
"I'm not fit to be a Jesuit."
"I don't know how to meditate on
this Week. It must be me."

Why do I do this?? This came to my "core sin"
-- perfection. It's not that having high standards for what I do is not
necessarily a bad thing. It's the way I react when these standards are not met,
and I often fall short of my own expectations. Coupled with my standards with
perfection was the inclination to inwardly beat myself up. I had just named two
nasty demons that reside within me. I would say that these demons have been the
source of what I call my inner hell.

In my sociology classes at Seattle
U, we often talked about built-in inequalities in our society. How, inherent in
a Capitalistic society, for example, is the drive to make money at the expense
of others. Arguably a demon/sin built into the system. I began turning my
sociology eye inward, and couldn't believe what I saw. Built in to me, this
demon of perfection was fed at an early age, fostered by parents who only wanted
the best for their children, which in turn fed the demon which kept telling me
that I wasn't good enough. Growing up, that was a source of intense resentment
and anger. This is my history, a story that I will always have with me. This sin
business also gave me a different lens of what I had learned through my classes.

Meditating on this showed me, though, that I cannot ignore this, as if
it doesn't exist. I would imagine that for all of us, unnamed demons reside in
us who have been with us ever since our childhood. They are sins in the sense
that they are extreme burdens for us that prevent us from being free. The naming
of it, though, has proven to be one of the most profoundly liberating
experiences I have ever had in my life. In the course of the remaining weeks and
even today, I have been able to recognize these behaviors in me that are so
prevalent. The challenge in the naming it is how to deal with it. For me, it is
a matter of faith and surrender. Sins that I daily need to offer to God, whom I
believe is only more than willing to take these burdens off of me. That is God's
unconditional love given to me. A grace daily received. Also, the naming of it
has been profound in my being able to reconcile myself with my family.

In talking to some of my brothers, their "core sins" are different than
mine; Ignatius' own "core sin" I learned today was vainglory. But I think it
says something to our authenticity of experience. If we deal authentically with
ourselves before God, we will authentically begin the healing process. The
silence was fertile ground to achieve this, which is why I believe having some
semblance of silence in our lives is so necessary.

(to be continued)

30-day retreat e-mail reflection: Introduction

(this is the beginning of an e-mail that I wrote following my 30-day retreat)

First, let me say that when people first heard that I was going into this retreat, one of the immediate responses was: "Oh my God. Thirty days???!!! I don't know if I can even do one day." Keeping in mindespecially two of my brothers, I would have to say that if they can do it, anyone can. Hahaha

But, on a more serious note, there truly is something that frightens people in having to be silent for this long. In my own experience, it meant that I actually had to seriously spend time with myself, deal with myself, and just be with myself. I had to listen to myself. To listen to my surroundings. To quiet down, to slow down. If you can thus imagine the personal empowerment that happens in doing so, you will understand how, on some level, this retreat changed my life. Not drastically in that I had a complete conversion experience but rather that I have been given, gifted, graced with new lenses, new ways of looking both at myself as well as the world that I never had before. More importantly for me, new ways in seeing how God works in my life.

Just an aside. Ignatius believed that it is possible for everyone to have direct experiences with God. This caused him to be heavily scrutinized by the Church leaders at his time. Was seen as almost heretical, being in line with people like the alumbrados. I think that was like a mystic sect or something. Perhaps a link on the right will appear about them if you use Gmail. Anyway, on a number of occasions, he was brought under questioning by the Spanish Inquisition, and it's quite a wonder how he stood his ground against their accusations upon him, but he believed he was in the right. He never wavered against them but probably grew strength from it as a result from gaining positive sentences from them.

I write that aside because I truly believe I was having direct experiences with God in this past month. And that belief probably makes me appear foolish or crazy. But, I stand my ground. Some may say: "it was just your imagination." Maybe so. But I believe, in my case, God worked strongly with my imagination. In fact, the imagination is an essential part of Ignatius' exercises. A faculty we grow up having as kids but is stifled as we grow older. As I've been with the Jesuits, I have been reclaiming that aspect of myself that was lost many years ago; it has been profoundly liberating.

I've given some thought as to how much information I should actually be sharing. Listening to my heart, though, I think it's important for me to be as open as I need to be in my experience since I think that maybe something may be gained from your reading it. Who knows? Maybe not. Wishful thinking

So now, a little explanation about the Exercises and what my day
looked like.

My days


I was required to pray four hours a day, or pray four times a day an hour each, sometimes five if I did the midnight meditations. I stopped doing those because they took a toll on me and would have affected the other four prayer periods. Besides that, I had my daily meetings with my spiritual director, Paul Fitterer, in the morning for 45 minutes, the normal meal periods, and then Mass daily at 5:00 PM. So, in the meantime...let's just say I got a lot of exercise in and a lot of reading, with a few days here and there where I would take the bus to downtown. For someone who rarely exercises (ask my family and former roommates, there's something striking about being able to jog on the treadmill 2 to 2 and a half miles almost everyday towards the end of the retreat.

Just a note about Paul. There's something wonderful when I think about how great it was that Paul, who is in his seventies, still is filled with energy to guide four of us in these exercises. A work that gives him, in his age, renewed life and strength. And this is new work for him, since he is as new to the novitiate as we first year novices are.

Anyway, being in silence isn't a matter of cloistering yourself; rather, it is a mode of being. So, I could be somewhere like the mall yet still retain my being of silence. But, for the most part, I spent my time in the novitiate.

What I was doing during those prayer periods were the Spiritual Exercises, the fountain of Jesuit formation. During this past month, writing in my journals was my primary form of praying. This becomes most apparent because I filled a journal and a half worth of my prayer experiences. So, I think I may have prayed approximately 175-200 pages worth in this past month. Took a toll on the $50 dollars I receive every month ( I decided to buy the fancy journals just for this month, knowing this would be a special time for me). But, for me, it was worth the price.

The Spiritual Exercises

Let me begin by saying that if you understand what is going on in the Spiritual Exercises, you will understand, at least in my perspective, what makes the largest Catholic order of men tick -- what inspires us to be "Contemplatives in Action."

I'll try my best to explain them. But please know that this is my perception of the Exercises, and I know that my other novice brothers had different experiences of them.

The Exercises are broken up
into Four Weeks.
Week I: Meditation on Sin
Week II: Meditation on
the Life of Christ
Week III: Meditation on the Death of Christ
Week IV:
Meditation on the Resurrection of Christ

There is a reason the name of the Jesuits is "The Society of Jesus." Our lives are grounded in our understanding and relationship with Jesus. If you are able to understand how we understand Jesus and His role in our lives, you will grasp the essence of the Jesuit (of course, this is an ideal for us, to follow in the path of Jesus, but we fail countless times. But that, in part, is the beauty of
it)

(to be continued)