Ignatian Accompaniment Through Grief

I've had a lot of time in the past fifteen months to reflect on what it means to accompany someone through terrible loss ~ what it means in general, what it means for me as a devastated mother, what it means for me as a spiritual director, as a would-be pastor or hospital or hospice chaplain. What is good and helpful and considerate? What is not?

This post, I do believe, is going to turn into a paean to Ignatian spirituality and to those whose lives it shapes, whether Jesuits or others who do spiritual direction in the Ignatian tradition. In my case, it means two Jesuits in particular: my former director, who had the temerity to move away after helping me for two years, but has remained one of my great supporters through seminary and has been a source of wisdom and challenge via email and occasional visits during this past awful year, and my current director, who thought two-and-one-half years ago that he was signing on for a monthly hour of support and guidance for a seminary student, and had to turn into a consistent and faithful source of compassion, prayer, presence ~ and, yes, wisdom and challenge, too ~ during a year of such harsh and time-consuming need that I cannot even begin to describe it.

(And that description doesn't even take into account the many others in my life who have brought their Ignatian experience to bear upon our conversations and friendships. Maybe some other posts someday.)

What is so distinctive about this spirituality that makes it so pertinent to accompanying someone through the journey of grief?

In the Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius suggests a wide variety of types and forms of prayer. Some lend themselves more to certain situations or meditations than others, but I've never had a director suggest that I should limit my prayer in one way or another. Flexibility ("accomodation" is Ignatius' term) is key, and I have been graced by finding directors who are fearless in their willingness to venture into unfamilar territory.

Given the range of prayer in the Exercises, it is nontheless the case that imagination is a significant hallmark of the Ignatian understanding of encounter with God. When a person makes the formal Exercises, there are many opportunites to pray, or meditate (Ignatius usually uses the term contemplation here ~ not to be confused with the emptying form of prayer so popular in contemplative prayer practice today) imaginatively throught the life of Jesus. Imagine the place, imagine the sights and sounds, imagine yourself as a person among his followers or family, on the edge or in the midst of his circle. Imagine yourself watching, listening, speaking, participating. Who are you? Who might you be called to be? Imagine Jesus into the circustances of your own life. What does he say; how do you respond?

You might be able to guess where I am going here. If you're a regular reader, you know that I have often bemoaned the statement so frequently made to me after our son died: that "I can't imagine" sentence. In fact, its repetition by a few individuals has resulted in my consistent avoidance of them. (The Lovely Daughter tells me that people are trying, and that I could be more generous, but I have my own problems with imagination ~ I find it difficult to imagine either that they are or that I could.) As a statement of intended solace, "I can't imagine" is not as bad as "I know just how you feel" ~ but it's close.

This past week it suddenly dawned on me why my Jesuit and other Ignatian friends have been such a source of help to me. Steeped in the practice of imaginative prayer, it never occurs to them to say, "I can't imagine." They seem to slide into imaginative accompaniment effortlessly. They don't have to be parents or to have suffered this degree of loss or faced this kind of horror; they can imagine it, at least well enough.

It's not effortless, of course; even as a neophyte director, I know that it takes considerable intentionality and attentiveness to imagine yourself into someone else's life and concerns. It also takes great generosity of spirit: as you share the Scriptural and prayer lives of others, you begin to understand how differently we all respond to, understand, and encounter God. You seek, always, to reverence both the other person's experience and your own; to absorb the similarities and the differences, to recognize that God is reaching out to each of you, and and to know that you can listen contemplatively and imaginatively even if what you are hearing is nothing at all like what you yourself would have come up with. It's not effortless at all.

But there it is. Just as even I, with some considerable practice, can access the notes to a simple Bach composition on the piano and with them, an entire tradition of music, so someone practiced in imaginative interaction with Scripture can access a tradition of prayer that makes it possible to walk with someone through the universal and yet endlessly unique pathway through grief.

I don't think I've ever heard someone well versed in Ignatian practice say, "I can't imagine." I know that these are people whose imaginations are at work all day, who are accustomed to drawing on their interior resources in all circumstances, and to allowing them to expand whenever they seem inadequate to a particular situation. God's gift of imagination is how we find God in all things, even ~ somewhere, someday ~ in this wilderness of sorrow.

Breakfast Part II

I've been mulling over another part of the breakfast conversation.

My friend said, more than once, "All you can really do in this life is choose whether to be happy." Or something to that effect.

I don't believe that the purpose of life is to be happy. Happiness is a nice side effect, and one that probably a majority of Americans experience much of the time.

Of course, a lot depends upon how you define happiness. But I think it's safe to say that in a world filled with wars, violence, starvation, deprivation, and disease, an awful lot of people do not find happiness in any conventional sense of the word.

The Presbyterian Church teaches that our chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy God forever. The Catholic Church, that it is to know and love God. My friend St. Ignatius, that it is to praise, reverence, and serve God, or (in more contemporary language), to live with God forever.

Thus those of you who are not religious and from time to time dismiss faith as a crutch or a false source of comfort might see that the purpose of our lives, as stated in major Christian creeds and confessions, is often at odds with comfort.

I can assure you that is not much of an opiate to be told, in the face of the loss of a child, that glorifying God is the chief end of your life.

But as I see it, to say that the point of life is "to be happy" renders our existence virtually pointless, while the alternative, "to know God," offers us dignity and significance. If all that is available to me in the face of the death of my child is "to choose happiness" ~ well, that seems to me to represent the epitome of triviality. However, if knowledge of God ~ which would also mean knowledge of love, knowledge of ways to remain present to those I care for, knowledge of my life having some purpose ~ remains a possibility, then there is a point to life.

I'm not saying it's easy. And I'm not saying we should seek out misery for ourselves, or view life as a grim narrative of pointless toil or senseless suffering.

But the hard reality is that to know God in the context of Christianity is to know sorrow.

It might seem, then, that it would only make sense to choose the pursuit of happiness over the pursuit of knowledge of God.

But really ~ if the choice were placed in the stark relief drawn by the worst kind of scenario, would you choose trivia over dignity and value? And perhaps it is in choosing the latter that genuine happiness lies.

Someday.




Cross-posted at Search the Sea.

Back

I came home early, a couple of days ago.

I took Purple's much-appreciated notes about spaciousness and freedom with me, but such was not to be.

I realize I have written little about my inner religious life in this blog. Perhaps someday I will. It may be the one and only thing I have to contribute to the dialogue concerning ministry to the badly wounded.

I have read a great deal about survivors of suicide in the last year, and some about those who have contended with the loss of a child, but precious little of the material is about spiritual survival. Struggles in the mental, emotional, pyschological, practical arenas ~ those are the areas most covered. In fact, one author I read commented on how mysterious it seemed to her that suicide survivors so often mention the sense of abandonment by God as one of the most prevalent features of their newly inhabited landscape ~ and then glided blithely onto the next topic.

I'll post some pictures soon. It was beautiful, up there where I was. But the silence was too silent.

Ordinary Time

I went to mass late yesterday afternoon because, for a number of reasons, I did not want to worship in my own church on Father's Day. The priest (who happens to be my spiritual director) was wearing green vestments instead of the white of the past several weeks. Hmmm, I thought. Ordinary Time.

What does that mean, ordinary time?

I know what it means, liturgically. But what does it mean?

Here's what I've done on this very ordinary day: I've studied Hebrew vocabulary (to which I intend to return as soon as I finish procrastinating). I finished a verbatim for my spiritual direction program, which took twice the hour I had allotted to it. I took the dog for a walk. I ate some Ramen noodles and did a couple of loads of wash. I am sitting in the living room at the moment, where the Quiet Husband, the Gregarious Son, and the Lovely Daughter are all watching a soccer game on tv.

It all seems pretty ordinary.

Yesterday's readings, of which I am reminded as I skim through some blogs, were not about the ordinary. Jesus stilling the storm seems to have been the gospel reading across the board. Job's creation story made an appearance in Catholic contexts. Nothing ordinary in either of them.

I think it's really interesting that this season of Ordinary Time begins with such extraordinary encounters. What would I say, I wonder, if I were preaching?

Maybe that the ordinary conceals the storms and the mystery. Maybe that if you see a woman in olive cargo pants and a pink t-shirt walking an overly enthusiastic beagle-dachshund, you might want to consider that she is, interiorly, in that boat in the middle of the storm, saying, "How could you be asleep?" Or that she is aligned with Job in bewildered engagement with a God who seems, indeed, to sleep through storms.

Which means that the same might be true of anyone. "Be gentle," said Philo of Alexandria, "for everyone you meet is carrying a great burden."

I guess that's what I would say. That the ordinary conceals the eventful.

Mount Angel Abbey Revisited

Last fall, I posted about our visit to Mount Angel Abbey, which we more or less stumbled upon when we visited our daughter for her college's Parents' Week-End. We were in no shape to travel anywhere, but we felt that since she had somehow managed to return to college, we wanted to support her with our presence when other families might be enjoying themselves. We had, in fact, a very nice visit, and my encounter with the icon of Christ Pantocrator at the monastery probably kept me wobbling forward for another few months.

I had hoped to spend the night up there at the Abbey, my own private mini-retreat, while we were in Oregon last week, but the guesthouse was full and I concluded that I would have to find another time, another year. As it happened, though, a combination of desire and the time change propelled me out of bed and up to the Abbey for 6:30 a.m Lauds on Friday morning.

I had about half an hour to myself when I arrived, which I used to wander around both outside and in the chapel and then, finally, to settle down in front of "my" icon. Once again, I found the sense of peace and hopefulness that has been so elusive these past nine months. The sky was utterly blue, the chapel exuded a sense of the holy and the still, and the voices of the forty or so monks as they sang the psalms and prayers for half an hour offered a call to clarity for the day ahead.

My prayer in that chapel? ~ it's the only place I've found in which the turmoil and agitation of the past year subsides. Apparently I need to move to Oregon.

Paradox

The Garden of Gethesmane

The Resurrection

When we were in Oregon last week, we visited a place in Portland called The Grotto, a garden of plants and sculpture (that might have been a quiet place for meditation, had we not timed our visted to coincide with that of a wood-chipper going full blast for a couple of hours). I was quite taken by a series of sculptures by a Mary Lewis depicting Mysteries in the Life of Christ (apparently a devotional category with which I am unfamiliar, but perhaps a Catholic reader will enlighten us).

I'm posting images of the two which reflect the moment-by-moment back-and-forth in my own life, along with photos of one of the three sets of sculptures and their titles, so you can get an idea of the setting.