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This very
meaningful, very powerful piece is the beginning of an edifice of
witness that will stand for all time for all the world to see. It will
be part of the chorus of voices across the ages now rising up to cry
unjust to would-be preachers of justice.
—Joan Chittister, OSB (click
to see all endorsers)
During a
sabbatical in India, I was fortunate to have as my retreat director a
Jesuit who had been a close friend of author Anthony de Mello, as well
as a spiritual director for Mother Teresa during much of her life.
Why poems? Letting the flow of words, images, and metaphors out through
our fingertips—or in through our eyes—creates a holistic and primal way
of praying.
I hope my reflections prepare the fertile soil for the seeds of your own
faith, hope, and love to break open—praying and studying alone or with
others, on retreat in silence or at a workplace in stress.
The effect may take the form of a spontaneous poem of your own, a
surprising act of love, or a serendipitous moment of joy. Think of
poetry as a museum that sharpens your eye for some unexpected beauty in
the world’s grit.
—Rev. Dr. Kent
Ira Groff, the author, see
Excerpt below
Excerpt from Facing East, Praying West
Orientation
Journey into The Spiritual Exercises
Ignatius of Loyola designed the Spiritual Exercises for use
over four weeks or over periods in a thirty-day retreat (or as a
retreat in daily life over several months). The exercises were
designed to be used in consultation with a spiritual guide.
Whether you have little or lots of knowledge about Ignatius, I
offer this brief sketch to clear the path so you can freely follow
the Love that leads to life.
Use of imagination is a key feature of the Exercises, which
emerged from Ignatius’s traumatic leg injury in battle at age
twenty-six. During his long recovery, he couldn’t find any war
and love stories of knightly valor to alleviate his boredom. So he
began reading lives of saints and gospel stories of Christ. It’s as if
Ignatius created his own imaginary stage, visualizing scenes and
conversing with characters. In contrast to fleeting impressions
from chivalrous stories, he experienced lasting effects of consolations
from his own imaginative re-creations of gospel scenes.
Each weekly grouping of the Exercises involves praying
with scriptures using imagination, intellect, will, and emotions, as
we become participants in the Christ-life. We follow the four
“movements” or weeks of the biblical story and of our human
experience of creation, living, dying, and rising to new life:
Creation: Beautiful Yet Broken. The Word of Love creates the
universe and humans, with each of us beautiful and unique, yet
alienated and homesick.
Incarnation: Embodying Love. The Word of Love is embodied in the birth, life, and ministry of Jesus’ teaching and healing,serving and celebrating.
Crucifixion: Dying to New Life. The Word of Love dies rejected,
broken, and forsaken, at one with our own human struggles.
Resurrection: Resilient Love. The Word of Love rises and
explodes into new life in us and in the cosmos as we join God’s
purpose.
In this way the Exercises provides an integrative method for
many learning modes and varied traditions. It’s like a book on
how to swim. Some benefit will come from reading it, but far
more from practicing in the water.
Poetry encourages such imaginative integration through
conversing with self, life, and God—which Ignatius calls colloquies.
I recount my own journey into Ignatian spirituality as you
prepare for this prayerful poetic adaptation.
My Odyssey
into the Exercises
Most of my theological education focused on learning about
rather than on experiencing God—with no courses in prayer or
the spiritual life in my five years at two theological seminaries in
the 1960s. After two decades as a pastor, I left parish ministry
disheartened. My burnt-out soul was ripe for a way of prayer
that would integrate mind and heart, scripture and life, contemplation
and action.
During a transitional period as a hospital chaplain, I met a
Jesuit priest who became my first spiritual director and introduced
me to the Exercises. Learning that a person in active occupation
could make the retreat over several months, this format
fit with my many involvements. I had begun training for ministries
in retreat and spiritual direction at Shalem Institute in
Bethesda, Maryland. During the same period I founded Oasis
Ministries for Spiritual Development, a nonprofit organization to
train others in contemplative active life. Later I participated in
eight-day and four-day versions of the Exercises to renew my
soul. Then I designed and directed one-day introductory sessions
by dividing a day into four periods. At this point I had not
still participated in the traditional thirty-day retreat.
My retreat exercises began to resonate with my travel experiences
and concerns for the world. During a “traveling” peace
seminar in the Middle East, I sensed Jesus’ continued sufferings
amid the destructive and constructive forces of human life.
Receiving hospitality with an extended family in a traditional
Kenyan village felt like being hosted by Christ. On pilgrimages
to the Iona community in Scotland and the Taizé community in
France, I sensed connections to the birth, death, and resurrection
of civilizations. Walking muddy hills with K’echi’ people in
Guatemala and eating the women’s fresh-baked tortillas seemed
like supper in the Upper Room. In such “traveling classrooms” a
prayer poem would emerge in my journal to focus my impressions
of hope or the impact of despair.
How did this poetic form of the Exercises come about? In
1999 I finally got a long awaited sabbatical to make the thirty-day
retreat in a country I longed to see—India. I was fortunate
to find as my director a Jesuit who, I would learn, had been a
close friend of Jesuit author Anthony de Mello, as well as the
spiritual director for Mother Teresa during much of her life.
After a time in Calcutta, I arrived at Jesu Bhavan (House of
Jesus) in Jamshedpur to begin my retreat during the Hindu feast
of Saraswati, goddess of wisdom. I couldn’t sleep at night with the
loud music, barking dogs, chants from mosques in the wee hours,
the roar of planes and trains in the day. I got annoyed. It was anything
but contemplative; a retreat meant rest, but I couldn’t.
An avalanche of poems began cascading within my head.
What to do? Just be still, I told myself. Sometimes I would crawl
out of bed through my mosquito net in the dark (there was no
electricity during the night) and scribble a poem—maybe then
I’d be rid of its addictive phrases so I could sleep. Then another
poem would occur, like this one:
At 4 a.m.
I am not sure
if the blare I hear
is the sound of a mosque
or a fierce mosquito
near my ear.
But I am sure
it is a call to prayer.
I met with my spiritual director and complained about the
noise and these poems that kept my mind abuzz when I should
have been emptying the mind. He told how English Jesuit
Gerard Manley Hopkins burned his poetry for pride’s sake, but
new poems gushed forth, which were published after Hopkins
died. My guide reminded me of his late friend Anthony de
Mello’s phrase to describe the first week of the Exercises: “Let the
child in you come forth.”
We concluded that one of the ways I “play” is to play with
words. I mentioned a rabbinic saying that the Sabbath is to play
and to pray. Since Ignatius encourages the retreatant to use one’s
imagination while praying with scriptures, here I was playing
and praying at the same time! With that, my guide got up and
placed his 1950s manual typewriter in my hands, blessing my
word-playing as prayer.
Everywhere I prayed I got caught in a web of poems: on
dusty streets as children kissed my feet, in a park praying with
the text of the wedding at Cana (John 4) and meeting a newly
married Hindu couple, on a Muslim’s porch by the Subarnarekha
River having tea at sunset. I had written prayer-poems before
and have written many since, but India was the fountain.
Why Poetry?
And Ways to Use This Book
Poetry has a way of drawing on intuitive, imaginative, and
intellectual dimensions of our response to God’s grace, often hidden
in undercurrents of desolations and consolations. Letting
the flow of words, images, and metaphors out through our fingertips—
or in through our eyes—creates a holistic and primal
way of praying.
The Book of Psalms is the Bible’s prayerbook, and the
psalms are poetry. Rabbi Jesus often concluded a story with a
Zen-like “take away” line: “The first shall be last and the last shall
be first.…Leave the dead to bury the dead.” Such paradoxical
riddles are called “ko-ans” in Zen tradition. They take you inside
yourself. East meets West, intuition greets reason.
In these poems I have not done the work for you; rather, I
hope my reflections prepare the fertile soil for the seeds of your
own faith, hope, and love to break open—praying and studying
alone or with others, on retreat in silence or at a workplace in
stress. Their effect may take the form of a spontaneous poem of
your own, a surprising act of love, or a serendipitous moment of
joy. Think of poetry as a museum that sharpens your eye for
some unexpected beauty in the world’s grit. You might use this
collection:
• For personal prayer and meditation. For example, a
poem each morning and evening one day a week for a
year.
• With a short-term study, prayer, or support group in
Advent, Lent, or Ordinary Time. For example, as a
devotional meditation for committees.
• As a resource for praying the Exercises with a spiritual
director in any format—eight days, thirty days, or a
period of months.
• For two persons sharing a spiritual friendship in
person, by e-mail, or by phone.
• As a Bible study focused on renewing baptism and
commitment to Christ.
A few particulars may assist your reading. Each prayer poem
is a unique meditation on a scripture or on Ignatius’s
words. Before each poem I give a related quotation from scripture.
After each poem, I give a reference for reflection on the full
scripture passage, usually notated as “Scripture reflection.” However,
this is notated as “Ignatian reflection” in cases where the
poem is my meditation on Ignatius’s own words in the Exercises.
Sometimes a scripture also relates to a title in the Exercises,
notated by an asterisk. If parallel synoptic Gospel texts are cited,
usually I list them in order (Matthew, Mark and/or Luke). As is
customary, the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius are referred to
simply as the Exercises.
Baptismal Renewal: Christ in You
To pray the Exercises is to renew our baptism into the company
of Christ. The essential “exercise” of the spiritual life is living
our baptism: that bedrock assurance that God’s grace claims
us as beloved before we understand it; that Christ walks with us
through our living and loving, our wounding and being
wounded, our dyings and risings to claim new life and begin
again…and again…with purpose.
Just as muscles atrophy if not used and we can build up
physical strength by adopting a regimen of exercise, the same is
true spiritually. By practicing spiritual exercises that internalize
Love, we will develop inner resiliency. In this way death opens
as a doorway to life, despair becomes an incubator of hope, and
reason takes us to the precipice of leaping into “this mystery,
which is Christ in you” (Col 1:27).
The Ignatian way seeks to unite action and contemplation
with imagination to discern how best to love: Is not that the way
of Christ? Is not that the goal of Benedictine, Quaker, or any
authentic spiritual path of East or West, North or South? Is it not
to practice inner and outer union, that we can say with Gandhi,
“My life is my message”? Incarnation means living our baptism.
The union of Mary’s contemplative hospitality at the feet of Jesus
and Martha’s active hospitality of service points us to “the one
thing necessary,” the principle and foundation for living into
your unique purpose:
Lord,
keep me doing the One thing
while I do the many things.
Heart of
Christ
No one has ever seen God.
It is God the only Son,
who is close to the Father’s heart,
who has made him known.
John 1:18
I will gaze through
this window into heaven,
to know as I am known:
Eyes of Christ
behold me.
Hands of Christ
enfold me.
Face of Christ
uplift me.
Lips of Christ
kiss me.
Breath of Christ
inspire me.
Heart of Christ
fire me.
Body of Christ
fill me with compassion.
Lifeblood of Christ
fill me with your passion
more now and ever more.
Ignatian reflection: “Soul of Christ,” the Anima Christi, in the
Exercises (while meditating on a classic icon of Christ)
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