Tag: Spiritual Life

As Georgetown SCS and the entire University prepare for a resumption of in-person activities in the fall semester, community members are experiencing a range of emotions about this change. Some are overwhelmed with excitement about the prospect of being back together, or “returning to one another” as one of Georgetown’s Jesuits described it recently. Others are filled with trepidation and worry, concerned about the continuing unpredictability of the global pandemic and how it might interfere with plans for “return.” This last year and a half has been a challenge, with the pain and suffering of the coronavirus disproportionately burdening the most vulnerable in our society. Mindful that the pain of the pandemic has been uneven and it continues to cause hardships throughout the world, all of us at Georgetown have journeyed in some way through significant uncertainty since spring of last year. This current moment calls for flexibility, creativity, community, and a sense of realistic hope about how we might transition to something new in the weeks ahead. 

With SCS’s official return of the building to full-time operations next week (which was announced by Dean Otter in July), I want to share a special examen crafted by Catherine Heinhold, pastoral associate for Ignatian spirituality & prayer at Holy Trinity Church, the Jesuit parish just beyond the gates of Georgetown’s Hilltop campus. Catherine’s examen, which invites participants to use whatever language is comfortable to them, is titled “An Examen for Transition From the Pandemic Year.” You can reflect and pray through the 20-minute guided examen in one sitting or space out how you proceed through the stages.  

The beauty and the brilliance of this examen prayer is that it helps us name our strongest pandemic-related feelings and pay attention to how these feelings are stirring us, moving us, and challenging us to consider some changes for the better in our daily actions. The examen is especially helpful for working against the inclination to be controlled by the most negative, desolating emotions that we are experiencing in the continuing pandemic. By naming challenging emotions and getting in touch with how they are influencing us, we begin to find more balance and more reflective distance so as not to be overwhelmed. By naming the positive emotions, those that console us, we make it possible to discover gratitude in our lives, even in difficult and uncertain circumstances. The examen is a helpful opportunity to pause, especially when it feels like the world around us is moving too quickly. 

The pandemic continues to surface tensions in ourselves and in our communities. How to make sense of the reality that for many, but not all, this has been a time for healthy slowing down and getting into closer touch with the things in our lives that give us greater joy and fulfillment? I have heard many people describing how new work- and study-from-home routines have simplified their lives and led to more family time and more time for prayer, meditation, and silent reflection. It is important to remember that the journey has been unique for each of us. As we prepare for something new at Georgetown in the coming weeks, I invite you, with the help of this transition examen, to notice whatever has awakened anew in you, both consoling and desolating, in this pandemic year. 

Last summer, I offered a suggestion for “spiritual reading” as a way to grow in self-discovery during months of public health restrictions. My intention was to provide some insights about how the act of slow, sacred reading – both literal texts and the texts of our experience (like nature) – can be spiritually rejuvenating in a context that limited travel and social interaction. 

In a similar spirit, this summer, as the easing of pandemic limitations continue, I invite you to consider the practice of prayer as an opportunity to grow interiorly. Summertime, typically filled with pockets of rest and relaxation, is an opportune setting to develop healthy interior practices. I am aided in this effort by a new book from popular Jesuit spiritual writer Fr. James Martin, S.J., whose Learning to Pray: A Guide for Everyone presents valuable insights about a concept and a practice that is too often misunderstood. 

Given the variance in understanding of this topic, Fr. Martin has to first define the subject matter and articulate the intended audience for his writing. Thankfully, Martin’s conclusions to these points, which are largely steeped in his Catholic understanding as a Jesuit priest and spiritual director, affirm that persons of diverse spiritualities and faith understandings can benefit from his practical, experience-oriented approach to praying. In terms of audience, Fr. Martin has a large community in mind: 

“Learning to Pray is written for everyone from the doubter to the devout, from the seeker to the believer. It’s an invitation for people who have never prayed. It’s designed for people who would like to pray, but are worried they’ll do it the wrong way. It’s meant for people who have prayed and haven’t found it [as] satisfying as they had hoped. It’s also aimed at people who might be afraid of prayer (9).”

Martin goes on to say that the book is “meant for people of all faith traditions and none” and uses language purposefully familiar to the general public for this reason. This is an important point because it anticipates skepticism about prayer from people who might be agnostic in their theological beliefs or who might object to the project in the first place because of bad prayer experiences or their own resistance to religious traditions. 

Another challenge for the book and for any effort to encourage a practice of prayer is definition. Fr. Martin brings together multiple strands of spiritual history from different thinkers in defining prayer through these common elements: 

• A Raising of the Mind and Heart to God
• A Surge of the Heart
• A Sharing Between Friends
• A Long, Loving Look at the Real
• A Personal Relationship 
• Conscious Conversation 

In this effort at definition, there is a recognition of a multiplicity of approaches and language differences, but Fr. Martin emphasizes that what matters more than precise language is the actual, personal experience during prayer: “As with love, learning to practice it is more important than knowing the right definition.” The book goes on to describe in accessible details various ways of praying, including the examen, the well-known Jesuit practice of prayer offered each Friday at 12:00 p.m. ET as part of the SCS Digital Daily Meditations (sign up here). 

The book offers a wealth of helpful suggestions about developing a regular prayer habit. Along the way, Fr. Martin relies on his own experience as a spiritual director to point out some of the more common misgivings, challenges, and misunderstandings about how to pray that he has heard from persons attempting to pray. As a spiritual director, I identified with several of these points, including a confusion about what is supposed to “happen” in prayer and the common reason that people do not pray because they “consider prayer something reserved for holy people, not them.” If you find yourself in these categories and do not believe that a practice of prayer is worth considering, you might find consolation in Fr. Martin’s point that “God’s love does not rely on us and what we do.” 

As we continue to move through summer and transition into more and more “regular” social activities, I encourage you to take a look at this book. In addition to specific spirituality programs offered at SCS, like daily meditation and regular retreats, Georgetown’s Campus Ministry programs a diverse range of activities intended to foster a deeper life of personal and communal prayer. If you are a member of the SCS community and would like to explore your life of prayer, please reach out to me, Jamie Kralovec, SCS Associate Director for Mission Integration, at pjk34@georgetown.edu. 

For more on Fr. James Martin, S.J., please check out his Facebook and Twitter pages. Some of Fr. Martin’s recent events at Georgetown might be of interest, including: “Writing As Spiritual Practice” and “Building a Bridge: Welcoming the LGBT Catholic with Justice.” 

Early in the pandemic, Mission in Motion published a post about a widely read article in the Harvard Business Review entitled, “That Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief.” That piece provided a common vocabulary early in the shared experience of lockdown and identified the need to acknowledge and name our emotions in order to avoid becoming overcome by them. In response to that article, I offered the Ignatian practice of the Examen as a way of getting in touch with our temporary emotions and reflecting on how we might face the challenges of each uncertain day early in the pandemic. More than a year into COVID-19, another widely circulated article has provided an opportunity to explore the Examen as a possible response to a somewhat newly articulated concept of “languishing.” 

Adam Grant in the New York Times recently published “There’s a Name for the Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing” about the phenomenon of languishing, which falls on the mental health spectrum between depression and flourishing. Depression, on the one hand, Grant calls “the valley of ill-being: You feel despondent, drained, and worthless,” and flourishing, on the other hand, Grant calls “the peak of well-being: You have a strong sense of meaning, mastery, and mattering to others.” Languishing, a term first articulated by the sociologist Corey Keyes, falls somewhere in between and receives less attention in mental health literature and it refers to the absence of well-being: 

“Languishing is the neglected middle child of mental health: It’s the void between depression and flourishing – the absence of well-being. You don’t have symptoms of mental illness, but you’re not the picture of mental health either. You’re not functioning at full capacity. Languishing dulls your motivation, disrupts your ability to focus, and triples the odds that you’ll cut back on work. It appears to be more common than major depression – and in some ways it may be a bigger risk factor for mental illness.”

Some of the hallmarks of languishing, which has been exacerbated by the pandemic, include constant distractibility, an inability to focus, and feeling let down by regular experiences that may have once delighted you, like an afternoon walk. And, Grants says, you may not seek help or even try to help yourself because you do not realize that you are suffering. So what, if anything, can be done in response to this common and shared experience of languishing? 

The antidote to languishing offered by Grant is the concept of “flow,” a term from the school of positive psychology that means an “elusive state of absorption in a meaningful challenge or a momentary bond, where your sense of time, place and self melts away.” Mindful that many barriers exist to flow experiences because of the demands of work, childcare, and other obligations, Grant outlines a few suggestions for entering into periods of flow, like giving yourself some uninterrupted time each day, focusing on small goals with a “just-manageable difficulty,” and carving out time to focus on a challenge that matters most to you. 

The notion of flow as an antidote to languishing has a clear and relevant link to Ignatian spirituality and the practice of the Examen. In his article “Towards an Ignatian Spirituality of Study” in Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits,  the Jesuit Nicholas Austin makes an explicit connection between the Ignatian idea of consolation and the flow concept: 

“I would claim that there is indeed an ‘affinity’ between flow and consolation. Most of the essential elements of flow equally characterize experiences of consolation: the sense of effortlessness yet full engagement, a loss of any anxiety or preoccupations, self-forgetfulness during the experience, growth in a sense of self following the experience, a concentrated attentiveness and so on.” 

Austin goes on to note that the compatibility between these two ideas is not a perfect match since flow experiences do not necessarily relate to God but Austin concludes that Ignatian spirituality, and the practice of the Examen, welcomes the relationship. Any time an individual increases their awareness of their flow experiences, a possibility arises of noticing at a deeper level, either explicitly or implicitly, the work of the Spirit in one’s life. 

Interested in exploring the Examen as a possible response to feelings of languishing that you’ve experienced? Here are two suggestions: 

• Check out this piece in Mission in Motion about the Examen and how it can be practiced in daily life: “The Examen: A Resource for Understanding Your Feelings” 

• Please consider participating in the SCS Daily Digital Meditation offered Monday through Friday at 12:00 p.m. ET over Zoom (click here to participate). The final meditation of each week, on Friday, is a guided Examen for 10-15 minutes inviting participants in silence to review their experiences of the past week. Please join us! 

Last week, the chaplains and staff of Campus Ministry held an interfaith prayer service, “Renewing Our Community,” to help raise our community up to the work of truth, justice, and service for the common good (you can watch a recording of the service here). The gathering reflected Georgetown’s commitment to Interreligious Understanding, with chaplaincy directors offering reflections and wisdom from across a diversity of religious traditions.

In addition to supporting the community as it embarks on a new semester, the interfaith service challenged and inspired a renewed commitment to the shared work of justice in response to recent events. In the face of the insurrectionist violence at the U.S. Capitol and a climate of disinformation that inspired it, the reverberating reality of racial injustice in our community and society, and the continued distress caused by the global pandemic, our interfaith chaplains summoned us to answer these challenges with hopefulness, humility, perseverance, and a spirit of mutual support.

Fr. Greg Schenden, S.J., director of Campus Ministry, led off the service with an invitation to take to heart the presupposition of St. Ignatius to assume the best of each other’s intentions. Sometimes this requires, in a spirit of humility, that we correct one another’s errors. This is a difficult invitation but it is required if we desire to realize the deepest aspirations of our university mission.

Brahmachari Vrajvihari Sharan, director for Dharmic Life and Hindu spiritual advisor, reminded us that words have power and we need to be intentional about choosing words that reflect the path of harmony and light, not division and darkness. Rabbi Rachel Gartner, director for Jewish Life, challenged the community to connect with those with whom we disagree. While honest conversations are not always easy, reflected Rabbi Gartner, generative disagreements lead to a culture of authentic encounter.

Imam Yahya Hendi, director for Muslim Life, called for healing in the nation, especially for those harmed by bigotry and injustice. We all have a role to play, prayed Imam Hendi, in uniting the nation around the values of peace, justice, and love, but it takes courage to tell the truth to those in power. Rev. Ebony Grisom, interim director of Protestant Christian Ministry, picked up on this theme in her stirring invitation to reform our hearts and minds in order to renew our community. With so much in need of repair in our university community and in our nation, we can be tempted, reflected Rev. Grisom, to continue using the old forms and patterns. New patterns are possible and we are challenged to take on “big work” to affirm our commitment to the Magis, the choice that leads to more generosity, more justice. Changing our community requires changing our behavior and renewing our minds, Rev. Grisom shared.

Please take a little time to experience this moving service. As you do, I invite you to reflect on how you desire to renew community in this new semester. How can you answer the call to justice, truth, and the common good? And if you are interested in exploring the resources of Georgetown’s interfaith chaplaincies, please visit the Campus Ministry homepage.