hold still... keep going...

Set the Wayback Machine for circa 1994 BSJ (that is, Before the Society of Jesus - I wouldn't enter the Jesuits until 1997)... I was living and working in Washington DC, having moved from Detroit a year prior. As often happens to one in their mid-twenties, I found myself mired in a bit of chaos that left me a bit spiritually, emotionally and physically undone (much of it thanks to mine own creation).

Now, I've always found a refuge in the arts - be it live music, film, or upon the walls of a museum. As chance (providence?) would have it, 1994 was the year the National Gallery of Art in DC presented the most comprehensive retrospective of photos to date by Robert Frank entitled Moving Out. I had known Frank's work as a photojournalist as well as his association with Kerouac and Ginsberg. What the exhibit introduced me to was Frank's later, more personal and introspective work from the 1970s onward.

One of the final photos in the exhibit was Hold Still Keep Going, taken by Frank in Mabou, Nova Scotia. During those months in late 1994, I found myself returning to the exhibit weekly (if not more), making my way to that sole photo and just sitting with it. Just holding still so as to keep going. 

I've returned to that mantra time and again in the years that have since passed. That very holding still so as to keep going is a consideration I find echoed by St. Ignatius in the very onset of the Spiritual Exercises where the retreatant is invited to consider what I have done for Christ? What am I doing for Christ? What ought I to do for Christ? (SpEx 53). To take the time to examine the past, present and future in terms of one's personal, unique journey with Jesus.

And so it will be in November when I make the thirty-day silent Spiritual Exercises again during my tertianship in the Philippines. Yet, in a micro kinda way, that's where I find myself these past weeks. Between my father's death and my departure from Holy Trinity parish in DC, between DC and Detroit and now San Francisco, I find myself ever-so desirous for the opportunity to slow down, to hold still with Jesus. It feels as if I've been drinking from a spiritual firehose of God's grace in all that has transpired... and I simply need the opportunity to reflect on where I've been with Christ in the past months (and years, for that matter).

To return to all of these places... all so heavily charged with so many and so much. To allow this time betwixtbetween my experience of the past years as a parish priest and my time as a tertian to just be, to just hold still, to simply relish the abundant graces... to consider the countless gifts... and those that I might have overlooked.

To hold still.

Yet as one holds still, reflecting on past, present and future, one begins to feel... well, a bit unstuck in time.

Hold still, Billy Pilgrim.