Ayudar a los Almas

...to help souls.

This saint--one of my favorites of all time and not just because he's Spanish!--is responsible for a spirituality that has influenced the Church (ooh, that's you and me!) and the world more profoundly than most realize. I would like to dedicate this post to this dear Saint in honor of him and his spirituality. Please accept it as my "Owed to Joy."

Ignatius' method, in my mind, is one of the spiritualities that is most attuned to body-soul unity. For anyone that has ever been through the Spiritual Exercises, and for those who have of yet not experienced its sublimitisness, every exercise is done within the context of the oft-cited phrase "ad maiorem dei gloriam" (note influence on first post). One of the merits of the exercises is that it they serve as a systematic reflection on the Life of Christ, but with all the freedom an individual can bring to them.

[ooh, ooh what does he mean?] I'm glad you asked undisclosed observer. For the sake of brevity, I will limit myself to one aspect of the exercises: meditation on Scripture. The first thing one does before meditating on a Gospel passage is to "compose the place." Lay everything out in your mind, see the sights, hear the noises, smell the smells, touch the place, touch the people. Then, and only then, allow the narrative to happen in your mind. Afterwards, interact with the characters, hold the newborn Christ child, embrace the crucified Lord, eat the leftovers from the multiplication of loaves and fishes!!!

I know. Sounds a little too "touchy-feely." But this is precisely the point. The Lord can and actually wishes to communicate to us as individuals, with our own individual ways that we have experienced what it means to sense. There's so much freedom here. No one has to feel guilty if their composition of place is not correct! Why do you think there is so much of a disconnect among those seers in the Church and the private revelations they have had. The Lord speaks in a unique way to every one of us.

And don't forget, I said "guided" earlier. The presence of a spiritual director in one's spiritual life is key. There are more or less correct ways of interpreting what the Lord is saying. But the Lord is himself not bound. We believe in a wild and untamable God, even though we have true formulations concerning who he is. Every meditation on the Lord is open to his completely free and gratuitous desire to fashion us (and our senses!) according to his purpose and for his glory!!!

Please excuse this not superfluous desire to lose myself--so as to find myself.

So, body-soul unity. Our senses are not always to be distrusted, but can be redeemed. So many times I think we hear of saints like St. John of the Cross and we hear about purgation and the need to purify ourselves of unhealthy attachments to sin and our senses. Granted. For those who have gone through week 1 of the Spiritual Exercises you may recall, it's literally Gehennish, a meditation on all of it and on our sinfulness. But that's not the whole story. Do you think the saints ever really knew they were saints? At one point, a decision has to be made to live the freedom of the children of God, to admit our weaknesses, while simultaneously trusting in the Lord to purify our desires and our senses in the very act of using them, clumsy with imperfection as the whole enterprise may be.

It is to this that I am indebted to St. Ignatius, in granting the freedom to be a saint in the way that the Lord has made me. The saints are useful as pointers and models, and yet, the Lord wishes to do a "new thing" in all of us.

ad maiorem dei gloriam!

The Venerable Bean

It always comes back to this for me.

Part of my fascination with body-soul unity is how "there is nothing in the mind that was not first in the sense." It's in the best interest for my soul to have a body that senses so that it can have something to go on. Let's take my infatuation, er...uh...appreciation for coffee. Everytime I smell it, I hear John Denver belting out at the top of his lungs, "...you fill up my senses."

And yet, the uncultured, nay the the pagans of ill-trained palates hurl ungodly castigation against our most beloved of beans - may it be brewed forever. Low brow and low brew, insipid with no top lid, through pure sophistry these attempt to dissuade others from the consumption of our ebony-roasted inamoretto because of "the inconsistency of a remote pleasure in smell coupled with the subsequent bitterness in aftertaste." Oh, would that they should bridle their tongues, those reservoirs of all things bitter! What follows is the unfounded claim that consumption of our espresso-natured bean leads to death. To death they say! Such navery knows not nor notes nimbly Nature's nobility.

Were I to experience such banality in my presence, I would not hold back, I would "speak plainly" and with more conviction than e'er was heard: Get thee to a brewery!!!

Some of you might be shaking your heads...consider this Part I.

Plight of the Humble Plea

Can I just say that starting a blog page is probably not the smartest thing to do in the middle of studying for one's comprehensive exams?

More to the point: learning how to do (er...maintaining, yeah that's it) what you want with it becomes an immediate distraction. I feel rest assured that at least one whiskey drinker knows "mein kampf." Rest assured though I may be, to the "happy few" that have mumbled through this post, something more substantial is on the horizon.

But until then...check out the link on my sidebar to "Bill Powell is Alive." He's a good friend of mine from undergrad days, who never lets down with his humor or wit.

Pace!