What’s life like with nothing to do? No lists, no plans? No
‘phones or emails? No time pressure? ‘Just do nothing’ are the soothing words
of Father Dermot O’Connor SJ, my spiritual director. ‘Look at the snowdrops;
listen to the birds. Can you observe the flow of your moods and your dreams?
Look for flashes of depth that may come to you. It’s God who’s going to do the
work.’
Have you guessed? I am on a retreat. Not just any retreat,
but a silent retreat. No talking, at breakfast, lunch or dinner. No talking at
all, except for half-an-hour a day, with Dermot. No TV, radio, or computers.
Study and secular reading are discouraged. The whole point is to listen to ‘the
still, small voice’ of God, ‘receiving rather than transmitting’ as Dermot
says. ‘The only way you can experience God is not in the past, not in the
future, but now.' Isaac de l’Etoile, the Cistercian wrote: ‘For in order that
we may be more able and accustomed to speaking with Thee, we are silent with
one another.’
So the day passes slowly, at St Beuno’s, once a Jesuit
seminary, near St Asaph in North Wales. There is no rush, no hurry. Twenty of
us, aged between 25 and 75, about half non-Catholics, are here in silence, from
Monday evening to Friday morning. This is not a sociable holiday. This is where Gerard Manley Hopkins was a Jesuit student
from 1874 to 1877. He wrote: ‘There is hardly anything in this world to beat
the beautiful valley of Clwyd’. In his poem The Wreck of the Deutschland’, he
wrote autobiographically: ‘I was under a roof here, I was at rest’.
All around are glorious walks. The big skies, with distant
views to the sea and to Snowdonia, suggest space, even eternity.
This is where Jesuit seminarians used to play golf and go otter-hunting. The
maze is still here. Walking the maze, as progress in the spiritual life, takes
patience. Sometimes you seem to be going backwards, but all the while the
journey, in reality, is leading to the centre.
I am not familiar with lectio divina, meditative reading. Dermot tells me about the phases of deep breathing; reading; entering into the scene (‘imagine the scene; put yourself in the picture’); intercessions for living and dead; and finally ‘words fade away’ in attentive listening. So we imagine being there at the healing of the paralytic, let down from the roof in front of Jesus (who ‘seeing their faith…’).
Later, I identify with the two discouraged disciples, who failed to recognize Jesus on the road to Emmaus. Jesus encourages them to express their anger and frustration, to say negative things to God. ‘That makes it real’, says Dermot. They urge Jesus to ‘stay with us’. I sense that Ignatian spirituality is one of imagination, creativity and innovation, consistent with a strong emphasis on mission and concern for the poor (‘inward and outward’, as Dermot puts it). Exactly the values demonstrated by Pope Francis.
Dermot confronts me gently with questions for which there is no ready answer: ’What do you really desire at this stage of your life? Why has God brought you to St Beuno’s? What is God telling you?’ In the Gospels, Jesus often asks, ‘what are you looking for?’
There is an irony about trying to communicate what happens in silence. To pray; to wait; to lose control; to listen. To join the plea in Song of Songs 2:14: ‘Let me see your face; let me hear your voice. For your voice is sweet and your face is beautiful’.
Geoff Bignell
12 February 2015
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