https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0vo43hu_HQ Virtual Choir, FAPCinNYC, Sept. 27, 2020 There's an image in Gary Snyder's "How Poetry Comes to Me" that I like very much. He compares poetry, the creative impulse, to a wild animal that comes up to his campfire, but stays just out of range at the edge of the darkness. So, says the poet, … Continue reading ‘I will arise and go to Jesus’: Seeking a personal God for a dark February twilight of the soul in Ilia Delio’s christology
12-step wisdom and a terrible, horrible, kinda good, maybe not-so-bad day halfway through chemotherapy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YOQbE692s8&t=266s Fr. Brendan McManus SJ, Gardiner Street Parish Dublin, recorded Oct. 25, 2020 As I reach the halfway point in chemotherapy this week, I'm making a special effort to take things one day at a time. So let me tell you about a terrible, horrible, maybe kinda good, not-so-bad-after-all day I had last week. As … Continue reading 12-step wisdom and a terrible, horrible, kinda good, maybe not-so-bad day halfway through chemotherapy
Praying only for the knowledge of God’s will and the strength to carry it out amid the ‘paradoxical tragedy-wonder of life’
Roman arch over the Via Dolorosa, Jerusalem, November 2012 Overheard the other day in the infusion center at Southern Illinois University while I was headed toward the bathroom for the umpteenth time: NURSE 1: “He took his Lasix before he came in.” NURSE 2: “So he’s going to go wee, wee, wee all the way home?” I had a snappy comeback, but … Continue reading Praying only for the knowledge of God’s will and the strength to carry it out amid the ‘paradoxical tragedy-wonder of life’
A Jesuit, a Protestant reformer and a spiritual mutt walk into an ER (instead of a bar): How I’m learning to trust God
Pilgrims entering Garden of Gethsemane, Jerusalem, November 2012. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight.In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. -- Proverbs 3:5-6 (NRSV): Our prayer doesn’t change God’s mind, it changes us. It helps us change our own minds and hearts. It … Continue reading A Jesuit, a Protestant reformer and a spiritual mutt walk into an ER (instead of a bar): How I’m learning to trust God
Pilgrims: Reading about a pilgrimage on Spain’s Camino de Santiago as I set out on my chemotherapy journey
Pilgrims on the Camino del Norte, Spain (Wikimedia Commons) After my first round of chemotherapy Tuesday at Southern Illinois University's Simmons Cancer Center, I was asked how it went. I think my answer surprised us both (I know it did me), and the conversation went a little bit like this. "I liked it," I blurted … Continue reading Pilgrims: Reading about a pilgrimage on Spain’s Camino de Santiago as I set out on my chemotherapy journey
Ringing in the new (church) year on St. Andrew’s Day with the daily prayer and meditation on an Irish Jesuit website
Pietro da Cortona, 'Calling of St. Peter and St. Andrew,' ca. 1626-30 (Wikimedia Commons) One of the few things I remember clearly from my confirmation classes 50-plus years ago in an Episcopal church is the date of St. Andrew's Day. Somehow it lodged in my preadolescent brain, when I wasn't wisecracking about the wives of … Continue reading Ringing in the new (church) year on St. Andrew’s Day with the daily prayer and meditation on an Irish Jesuit website
Practical ways on a Jesuit website in Ireland to ‘face into the storm’ of cancer diagnosis and treatment
Peter Paul Rubens, Miracle of St. Ignatius of Loyola (Wikimedia Commons) There's a story I really like in James Martin's Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life. An editor-at-large of America magazine who has written several New York Times best-sellers, Martin sets it up the by saying the Jesuits pride themselves on … Continue reading Practical ways on a Jesuit website in Ireland to ‘face into the storm’ of cancer diagnosis and treatment
Luther and the indwelling ‘Christ present in faith’ — Finnish theologians, Irish Jesuit offer a way of coping with a scary diagnosis
Matthias Stom, St. Peter at Prayer, ca. 1633-40 (Wikimedia Commons) One thing about getting a cancer diagnosis -- it tends to focus your mind, especially if you've been working on your prayer life already. Increasingly since I was diagnosed toward the end of October, I've been falling back on what's sometimes called the Prayer of … Continue reading Luther and the indwelling ‘Christ present in faith’ — Finnish theologians, Irish Jesuit offer a way of coping with a scary diagnosis
Spiritual direction, August 2022
Editor’s note. Lightly edited copy of an email I sent to my spiritual director in advance of our monthly meeting for August. I email her every month, mostly to focus my mind before we meet, and I archive them here so I have a record of issues I’ve dealt with over time. Being able to consult them … Continue reading Spiritual direction, August 2022
‘What am I doing for Christ?’: An Ignatian triple colloquy F2F with Jesus via Zoom
Third in an occasional series of Ignatian colloquies ... Christ Pantocrator, Haiga Sophia, Istanbul, ca. 1080-1100 (Wikimedia Commons) Editor's (admin's) note. One of a series of posts in which I journal my attempts to incorporate Jesuit imaginative prayer exercises into my own prayer life. In today's, I try what is often known as the triple … Continue reading ‘What am I doing for Christ?’: An Ignatian triple colloquy F2F with Jesus via Zoom
Ordinary Time 