Principle and Foundation

For Lent this year, I decided to switch it up.  As I was wondering around in my head about what I could "give up" or "work on" I realized that, though a spend a lot of time at church, I'm experiencing a distance of faith that irks me a little.  It's been a long time since I focused on actually looking inward and not just turning inward.  So I thought I good spring cleaning in there could be helpful; thus, of course, I turned to my man St. Ignatius to lead me.  Though his Spiritual Exercises, borne of boredom in a hospital, are done as a total retreat, the modern adaptation of these is called the 19th Annotated Spiritual Exercise or Spiritual Exercises in Everyday Life (leave it to the Jesuits to annotate something 19x before it's to their liking).  Nevertheless, I need to reflect verbally, quietly, to the hum of my typing and so this is where I'm going to do it.

And, nothing like jumping right in.  I forgot how hard this is.

The first step is the Principle and Foundation.  What is that in my life?

[crickets. Jeopardy music. more crickets].

I'm going to write it down today although I think it'll evolve and grow the more I think about it.  I think my life is about knowing.  Knowing for the sake of discerning.  Knowing for the sake of seeing change that has to happen and acting to evoke that change.  But this is really to find beauty and truth.  And wisdom.  My principle, where I start, I think is truth.  And seeking it to bring everybody to it, whatever it might be.

This is Ignatius' statement:

Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God, our Lord, and by this means to save his soul. Alright.  Not exactly the same.  He's more Lord-y about his.  But the essence is there, I think.  Although I'm maybe more communally focused.  And maybe not so heaven-bound.  How about some soul-saving right here...and not, like, in the huge "end of days" sense?  C'mon Ignatius. Although this is the one that requires significant reflection, I think: The great turning point in life comes when I realize and fully accept the fact that God loves me unconditionally with a love I cannot earn or ever be worthy of, not for my possessions or for my accomplishments, but for myself, for myself not as I could be or should be but as I really am with all of the physical warts, psychological quirks and spiritual infidelities.  I think this is an incredibly hard truth to get a hold of because it's not a human thing.  As much as people (or a person) might say this at some point and you might believe them at some point, they are limited by their humanness, and humans are somewhat hardwired to be conditional (probably for literal survival).  We take things one step at a time.  We embrace rules.  We look for the familiar and normal. We work within the parameters of our lives.  So, unconditional to me is completely foreign.  I don't know what this looks like.  I cannot promise this to anyone else because I cannot imagine every condition that could exist that would render, no less guarantee, my same reaction to it.  So unconditional is a cosmic thing.  Which obviously requires faith.  Reasonably, the only way to respond to this, to accept it as true, is to suspend reason and go with faith.  I feel very iffy about this. The look on his face is the look on my face.  He clutches his heart, I clutch mine. This is not a revolutionary idea but what this requires is very hard. Complicating this even further is that you can't earn it or ever be worthy of it.  There's no blood, sweat, and tears in this.  You can't put a nose to the grindstone.  Frankly, this is an un-American kind of love.  I can't boostrap my way into this.  Even worse, I don't have to.  It's there for my taking. What kind of deal is this?!?  If I'm going to be honest about it, this is exactly the start of all of my struggles.  I don't know where or when (and likely it involves Sociology) that I lost the ability to trust in things, in people, but I just don't.  I anticipate disappointment. I forecast exactly where people will hurt me.  And I'm usually right.  But what if I didn't do that?  And what if I thought more about this in terms of God?  What if I reflected more on the fact of this?  Suspended my reason and actually dug into what this is and what it looks and feels like? It wouldn't kill me.  In fact, it might just let me unfurl a little bit.  Sometimes I forget that I'm not done growing.  I think I just need to figure out what that path looks like.  This could be it. And it could be just invisible to me now as that walkway was to Indie.