Schmidt: Ignatius, Examen

Guest Writer Frederick W. Schmidt

“The Examen builds on the insight that it’s easier to see God in retrospect rather than in the moment.” —James Martin in The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life (HarperOne, 2010), p. 97.

“Rummaging for God” in our lives.

One of the central practices in Jesuit devotion—the one that Ignatius of Loyola considered indispensable—was the prayer of Examen. Ignatius felt that the key to spiritual growth was to cultivate an awareness of when and where God had been present for us in the course of the day. It was so important, in fact, that he urged his followers to do the Examen even if it cost them the little time that they might have for prayer.

One writer calls this “rummaging for God” in our lives. Rummaging is a wonderful, commonplace activity we have all often resorted to when we have lost something: car keys, phones, and umbrellas being among my personal favorites over the years.

The Examen is a practice that tells us something important about the spiritual life: Spiritual practice is preeminently about cultivating a sense of God’s presence. It isn’t about devotional piety or about the number of hours we spend in overtly religious activity. It isn’t an anxious, endless effort to earn the love of God. The spiritual life is about cultivating an habitual awareness of God’s presence that shapes and informs our lives.

Ignatius recommends two questions:

One: What were the events in your life today—the moments, conversations, and choices—that drew you closer to God and to others in love?

Two: What were the events in your life today—the moments, conversations, and choices—that drove you away from God and others?

The answers to those simple questions invite us to evaluate our lives from a spiritual center. They are not about what feels good and what doesn’t feel good. Some things—such as addiction—feel good at first, but they invariably isolate us from God and others; and, by contrast, some things that don’t feel good, like asking for forgiveness, can actually draw us closer to God and to those around us.

Instead these questions raise our awareness of the ways in which patterns, habits, and choices shape our lives and how, armed with that knowledge, we can learn to be more readily available both to God and to others.

Rummaging around in our lives for God can be the source of inspiration, encouragement, strength, gratitude, and a renewed sense of spiritual purpose. That’s not a bad result for an activity that usually leads to the discovery of dust bunnies and lost umbrellas.

—The Rev’d Dr. Frederick W. Schmidt.

Serenity Prayer

“God, Grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can,

And Wisdom to know the difference.” —Reinhold Niebuhr.

My grandmother kept a copy of the Serenity Prayer on her bathroom mirror. Today I honor her by doing the same. I can remember visiting her as a young girl and reading the prayer in her bathroom every morning. What I especially remember is that I thought, “This is the most ridiculous prayer! If there is a problem, I know if I try hard enough, I will be able to solve or fix it!”

Many years later, many trials later, I have learned the hard way the truth of the Serenity Prayer. There are so many things I cannot change. In fact, the only thing I can change is myself and my reactions to other people and situations. I cannot change others. I try to share my firsthand experience with spiritual friends; but so often others like myself need a firsthand rather than a secondhand experience to see this truth.

I wonder if it took my adoring grandmother as long as it did me to discover and learn to live the truth.

I wonder if she had as many setbacks as I so often do—thinking I can change situations and others.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

The Trinity

“ Trinitarian theology says that true power is circular or spiral, not so much hierarchical. If the Father does not dominate the Son, and the Son does not dominate the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit does not dominate the Father or the Son, then there’s no domination in God. All divine power is shared power.” —Richard Rohr in The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation (Whitaker House), pp. 95-96.

Robert Farrar Capon says that when humans try to describe God, we are like a bunch of oysters trying to describe a ballerina. But we can’t help but try, especially as we strive to understand the doctrine of the Trinity, perhaps one of the greatest mysteries of the Christian faith.

A Greek Orthodox bishop, Timothy Kallistos, at a lecture at a summer course at Oxford University, introduced us to Andrei Rublev’s 15th-century icon, The Trinity, or The Hospitality of Abraham. It pictures the three angels who visited Abraham at the Oak of Mamre (Gen. 18:1-8) to announce the coming birth of his son, Isaac. It has been interpreted as a symbol to help visualize the mystery of the interrelationship in the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each of the figures is in a circular harmony with the other, humbly pointing to each of the others with mutual love. If we relate only to the Trinity in its separate parts, we miss the mark. The Persons are in community, transparent to each other, indwelling one another, in love with each other. They have no secrets from one another, no jealousy, no rivalry. They are teaching us how to live in community. Barbara Brown Taylor describes their relationship as the sound of “three hands clapping.”

The doctrine of the Trinity calls us to a radical reorientation in our way of seeing and living in the world. We are what we are in relationship with. The God of the Trinity is not an I, but a we; not mine, but ours. Our belief in and understanding of the Trinity can definitely make a difference in how we drive our cars; how we fill out our tax returns; how we relate to others of different faiths, colors, and political views; how we stand in relation to war; how we treat the person sitting across the aisle from us, as well as those living across the Interstate and outside our country’s borders.

Richard Rohr’s and Barbara Brown Taylor’s thoughts are excellent to mediate on when we are having a conflict with another person, when the Christ within us is having difficulty seeing the Christ in another.

[See Barbara Brown Taylor, “Three Hands Clapping” in Home By Another Way (Cowley), pp. 151-154.]

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com