Month: April 2019

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Imaginative Prayer (Spiritual Practice of the Month)

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Some of the most powerful prayer times I’ve had personally or guided others through have been through the Ignatian practice of Imaginative Prayer. Imaginative Prayer – not surprisingly – refers to the experience of bringing your imagination into the process of reading and praying with Scripture. 

While I was in spiritual direction training, my instructor, Jared, led us through an imaginative prayer on the Gospel story of Jesus silencing the wind and waves. In imaginative prayer, you can picture yourself as a person already in the story, add yourself to the scene as a bystander – even imagine yourself as an inanimate object or a natural force, like the boat or like the storm. There are no limits to how you can interact with the scene in your mind and emotions.

As Jared read through the passage to us, he encouraged us to place ourselves in the scene we were hearing. We were to imagine the feeling of the boat heaving beneath us, feel the gusts of wind and the icy rain pelting down on us, smell and taste the salt air, feel the panic clenching in our stomachs, hear the frenzied shouting of the disciples as they tried to keep the boat from capsizing or breaking apart. 

In my own prayer, I didn’t take on another persona. I was simply me, witnessing the unfolding interaction between Jesus and his disciples. As Jared read the passage again, I watched and heard the scene unfold the second time, I was struck by the disciples’  question to Jesus: “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?” Suddenly, that question became my own, and I found myself saying to Jesus, without planning it in the least, “Lord, don’t you care if I drown?”

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As I spoke those words, I think I realized in a new way how overwhelmed and tired I had been, how I felt pushed and pulled in different directions. I felt like I was drowning amidst the competing demands of my life. In my prayer, I was, like the disciples, reaching out to Jesus for rescue.

And what was Jesus’ response? In my prayer, he did something different than he did in the original Gospel story. Instead of quieting the storm, he took off his cloak, folded it into a pillow, and gestured to me that I should lie down and rest. He was letting me know that, whatever was going on around me, I could be at peace. He would watch over and take care of me.

That interaction with Jesus affected me profoundly at the time and still continues to shape me. That tangible sense of Jesus’s care and provision for me led me to the leap of faith that was leaving my job and unknowingly prepared me for an intense season of parenting a child in crisis. I remember that prayer often and it reminds me to trust and rest. It reminds me that I am safe with the Lord.

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How can you experience Imaginative Prayer for yourself? First, it’s helpful to know that the Gospels and other narrative sections are often the most fruitful places in Scripture to pray imaginatively because they have stories you can enter into. (If you are poetically inclined and respond well to language and imagery, the Psalms and other poetic or prophetic books like Isaiah would also work.)

Once you have your Scripture passage chosen, follow these steps:

  1. Find a comfortable, quiet place. Invite God to be with you and to guide your prayer time.
  2. Read the passage aloud or quietly to yourself.
  3. Read it again. This time, imagine yourself within the scene  – as one of the main people, as a bystander, even as an object or element.
  4. Use all five senses: try to taste, touch, hear, see, smell what is going on. What are you doing? What are others doing?
  5. Bring to your awareness: What emotions or thoughts are coming up?  What do you feel happening in your body? How is God speaking to you through the unfolding scene and your inner and bodily responses?
  6. Is there any action God is inviting you to take or commitment he is inviting you to make?

I hope imaginative prayer becomes another invaluable way for you to connect with God and learn more of his heart for you!

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Find me on instagram! @ravishedbylight

Photo credits:

Stormy sea: GEORGE DESIPRIS from Pexels

Woman underwater: Life Of Pix from Pexels

 Man praying: Matheus Bertelli from Pexels

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Responding to the Sex Abuse Crisis in the Catholic Church (Workshop Notes)

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Against the background of the still-unfolding sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic church, the Ignatian Spirituality Network offered a workshop last month called Hope Does Not Disappoint: Spiritual Direction in Challenging Times for the Church. This workshop did not – as did a recent missive by former Pope Benedict – address causes and remedies – but rather was aimed to help spiritual directors as they both reflect on their own vocation in light of the crisis and create space for directees to respond during direction sessions.

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The two main questions wrestled with in the Ignatian Spirituality’s workshop were these: What is our calling as spiritual directors in the midst of the sex abuse crisis? How do we accompany people who are rightly suspicious, hurt, angry, and grieving by the shocking failure of their beloved church — people who are betrayed by leaders they literally trusted with their souls? The workshop was not necessarily focused on directing either survivors or perpetrators of abuse, although those subjects did come up, but more on how we as directors can understand and carry out our vocation in light of everything that has and continues to happen.

Although I am not Catholic, as someone trained in the Ignatian tradition, I consider myself “Catholic adjacent.” I also have seen firsthand that abuse, willful ignorance, and systemic corruption and institutional failure are not limited to the Catholic church. I won’t go into details here, but it doesn’t take much beyond curiosity and a search engine to confirm that the Protestant church has got plenty of its own problems.

During the workshop several themes emerged:

  • Each one of us has a basic calling as a Christian to discipleship. That calling exists within the larger “Christ project” – the redemption of all people and all creation. For directors, our calling as disciples is primarily lived out within the space of direction. We may or may not have a voice within the larger power structure of our institutions, but each of us can live every opportunity we have to take part in Christ’s work to the fullest.
  • It’s important to keep our eyes on the risen Christ and the presence and action of God in our lives. Ignatian practices help us continue to discern and stay attuned in the moment.
  • One of the speakers explained a revelation he came to, in contemplative prayer, of the sex abuse crisis as a continuation of the crucifixion today. We are standing as witnesses, much as Mary and John did at the foot of the cross, to the suffering of Christ in our time. The abuse crisis, like the crucifixion, is a deliberate rejection of God’s love. This is an especially poignant thought to reflect on at Easter time. It neither minimizes the pain experienced by those victimized – pain that, as both speakers affirmed, will be with them for all of their lives – nor leaves all in desolation. We are journeying, slowly and surely, with God towards the full restoration of all humanity.
  • The “bloodletting” among the ranks of priests and bishops is a right and necessary purification of the church.
  • As we offer spiritual companionship to those who are rightly struggling with the institution of the church, and who may leave or already have left in response, we can ask a few questions:
    • What are the ways you are nurtured by the institutional church and what are the ways that you’re not? Where you are not, where can you go to find nurture? Where can you discern an invitation to deepen your relationship with God even during these times?
    • What are you feeling? What is it like for you to feel those emotions?
    • What are your interactions with God like? Who is God to you at this moment?

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As we accompany those who are hurting and also deal with our own emotions in the space of direction, we continue to look, listen, and pray for the presence, love, and healing of God in our lives and in the life of the Body of Christ.

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*On a much lighter note, while I was writing this blog post — blissfully sipping my warm cocoa oolong bubble milk tea — I overheard the following statement from a black-leather-clad woman talking loudly on her phone:

“Oh, I am much more evil than his exes. He just doesn’t know that yet. He’s about to find out.”

She looked like she could flatten that boy with her hands tied behind her back, using only her pinkie toe and the force of her malice. I hope he’s a better runner than he is a boyfriend.

Find me on Instagram! @ravishedbylight. 

Image credits:

Christ Image

All Saints