Printer Friendly Version:  Week 2

Our Story's Depth.

One powerful way to go deeper is to ask, and explore the answers to, key questions.   We are still going to be doing this in the midst of our busy lives this week, and will keep utilizing the background (see the Getting Started link for this week).  These questions are easy to remember and are important in preparing for the weeks to come.  We were all "knit together in our mother's womb" (Ps. 139).  Various events and experiences have shaped us into the people we are today.  Let's listen for the answers that will reveal the depths of God's movement in us this week.

What graces, insights, special or painful memories
were given to me last week?

Did I like doing these exercises last week,
and did they nurture some new desires in me?

After last week's review of my photo album,
I'm attracted to ….

Where, in my life story, did I feel most
totally known by God?

Is there a part of me, my story,
I have a hard time imagining God knowing?
Because I have a hard time imagining God
accepting me there?

Where in my story were there crossroads?
It could have gone this way or that:
how was God present in the way my story
continued from there?

Am I accepting of who I am today?
If not, can I hold those areas up to God?
If yes, can I hold my whole self up to God,
in gratitude?

Are there areas I feel God is wanting to
love in me?
change in me?
make use of for others?

Each week, there will be some practical help to prepare for this week's retreat and for getting the most from it.
 

• Notice what the questions are about this week.  That will make them memorable.  They ask us to focus on images, memories, crossroads, specific painful memories.   We could say, "I already did that!"  This week we are asked to re-collect those special memories that came to the surface and to re-visit them, so that we can use them to go deeper.

• Is there a desire coming out of last week?  We'll see this question often.  It asks us to be attentive, to notice, even the most subtle of new attractions, even new curiosities within me.  For example, I might recognize a desire in me to spend more time reflecting on a particular time in my life I didn't have much time to reflect on last week.  Or, I might just remember several important people in my life I haven't contacted in a while and feel a desire to write them.

• Stay where you find fruit.  This direction from Ignatius is very wise.  If I've experienced fruit - consolation, some wonderful insight, a closeness to God, even a new awareness - I can trust that that gift is a signal from God: "Look deeper here, my dear friend, for I have so much more I want to give you."  Another way of looking at this is to imagine receiving a gift, all wrapped in paper and ribbon and a big bow.  I can know it's a gift, and even know who the giver is, and even say "thank you," without opening it.  This direction from Ignatius invites us to explore the gift and discover what it really is.

• Panning for gold.  This will be a helpful image, throughout our retreat.  Imagine a stream, with water rushing by all the time - a pretty good image of our busy lives.  Imagine putting my pan - a sieve or screen - into the water.  What happens?  I get a pan full of stuff.  As I shake it a bit, some of the smaller debris falls through the screen and I can look at larger stones that were in the water.  And there in my pan, I discover a piece of gold.  The message:  I won't get that piece of treasure, just sitting by the edge of the stream peering into the water.  I have to pan for it - sort out some portion of my experience and go deeper into it.  And remember, if I discover some kernel of gold, it would be very important to weigh it - write it down and perhaps share the grace with others on the sharing page.

• How NASA handles an image from space.  Another image is that this is like the way NASA receives an image from space.  When it is first received, it is fuzzy and one piece of a whole series of images.  Then NASA gets to work to clean up the images - getting rid of the distortions that come from the long transmission.  They then digitally enhance the image - basically by filling in what is missing, making the image sharper.  And finally, they put the various images together, and before our eyes, there is a spectacular martian landscape.

• It's still about background.  Doing this retreat in everyday life will challenge us to keep using that space in the background.  There's lots of debris and noise and distortion in our busy lives.  If we can purify the background and let this week's questions flow in and out of that background all week, we will notice a tremendous difference.  Again, writing my answers down, or even saying them out loud, even in my head, will help preserve the grace.

• By the end of the week we will want to be holding our whole life up to God.  Especially, the parts that are least attractive, which might seem unacceptable.  It's all about gratitude.  I don't have to be together to be grateful.

Enjoy the journey.  We are just beginning.  Starting to let God work in us.  God can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.  Let's trust it and enjoy it.

Our prayer during the Spiritual Exercises centers our attention upon a loving God Who centers affectionate attention upon us.  Two simple points of the nature of love help us pray during these weeks of praying with and about creation.

Love urges being revealed.  If we love someone, sooner or later, we will want that person to know that.  We might send a valentine and then a box of candy and then perhaps a phone call and then a meeting.  All the time there is a creative on-going revelation which presents the beloved with the opportunity to receive the affection or not.  The lover wants his or her love to be experienced and received.

Love must be expressed in words and gestures which the beloved can understand.  The lover must reverence the beloved so much that he or she adapts the expression of love to the way the beloved can receive it.  If I love a blind person I do not speak to them in sign language.  If I love a German-speaking person, I don't speak any other language to them except German.  The lover adapts to the person and personality of the beloved.

In praying these next weeks, we watch how the loving God reveals that love through gestures of revelation.  We also consider how this God adapts that same love to our ways of reception.  We pray with God's courtship of us, constantly attracting us through acts of gentle yet persistent love.

We begin by considering that each of us has been and actually, is now being, created.  God does not create us and then set us on the earth as so many abandoned milk jugs or degenerating cars.  God tends to us as the beloved and labors upon and around us for our soul's purpose.  God wants only this then, that we experience infinite love being revealed within our finite experiences, and our reception of that love in our lives.

Our having been created tells each of us how important we are in the eyes of God and our prayer these next weeks helps us to see our value and significance in our own eyes.  In so many ways God says, "Look around and see who I have said and I say that you are."  We are in the presence of a God Who can not keep love hidden and we are God's best work of art.

Dear Lord,

Last week brought powerful, unexpected memories.  When I prayed with the photo of the mother holding the child, I thought of the love you have for me, and the way you hold me close, protecting me from harm.  It’s an image I sometimes struggle against because I like to be free and independent, not needy.

Now as I pray with this week’s photo, I think of your individual care for me, me as an individual.  I look at the young girl listening to the child in her mother’s womb and I am flooded with a sense of  the love and care you had for me even before I was born.  The words in the Psalm move me: “You created every part of me, knitting me in my mother’s womb.”  How can it be possible for you to have that much love for me - then and now?

I go back to places in my photo album that I looked at last week, places where I really felt you so strongly in my life.  Isn’t it funny but most of those times really are the difficult, painful ones.  Why is it that I don’t turn to you in the joy and the triumphs?  Is it then that I delude myself into thinking I’m in control of my life?  I don’t need to rely on you – or anyone else?

When everything is going well, I have this vision in my head that I have to be perfect for you – and I’m not perfect.  So I wait to really turn to you, thinking I will somehow correct all my flaws, by myself, before I come before you to speak.

But I look again at the photo album.  When I’m in pain or in trouble, I fly to you for help. Later, when the pain eases, I don’t always go running back to you.  You are there waiting patiently, but somehow I keep thinking I need to be a better person before I turn to you with my life.  If I can just fix this one thing about myself… If I can just make this part of me better…  that’s when I will turn this all over to God.  Suddenly I am aware, dear Lord, that now, in all of the things that are wrong in my life, in all of the things I want to make better, now is when I need to turn to you.

Please hold my hand and go with me to the places inside me where I am afraid.  Be with me as I look at myself with all of my flaws.  Stay with me when I am afraid of my anger, my sadness and my grieving over the pain in my life.  It’s the part I want to avoid the most and yet it’s where I need your love the most.

Thank you, thank you for being with me today, this week and always.  I am so grateful for your love and care.  Help me to know how to repay your love.