family stories.

I am humbled.

(And - before some snarky ha-ha retort slips into your brainpan - it actually does happen to me from time to time, thank you very much.)

So, to continue...

A most remarkable first few weeks here in Manila for tertianship. After the first weeks of acclimating, adjusting & getting over jetlag, weeks Two and Three have been onward & upward. In addition to the Five R's (see last post), these past two weeks have also included the sharing of our journeys to this point, thru the lens of a graced personal history. That is to say, to share one's journey not simply in terms of chronology & events, but to mindfully reflect on one's life... and how God has been working thru/with us... and how we've responded (and, as always, missed the boat from time to time).

Amazing... humbling... and ever-so consoling. As previously mentioned here, we're a diverse lot, coming from throughout Asia, Europe, North America. And our life experiences are ever-so more diverse - journeys through war as well as peace, supreme joys and heart-wrenching struggle & suffering, death & birth. Yet what emerged in the telling of our tales has been, quite honestly, first-hand narratives of the Principle & Foundation. Recall the concluding assertion, in which Ignatius states that

...we should not fix our desires on health or sickness, wealth or poverty, success or failure, a long life or a short one. For everything has the potential of calling forth in us a deeper response to our life in God.

It's that final sentence that continues to unfold for me again & again - that everything, absolutely everything in life holds the capacity for eliciting within us a response to God. Not to inundate with Ignatianspeak, but that truly is what finding God in all things is all about. And what is so wondrous about each of our accounts is that each (in the midst of such incredible variance) is rooted in the same simple (but so profound) grace:

Gratitude. Plain & simple.

And so it has been these past weeks with our shared stories... family stories. For these twelve stories - from childhoods to entrance to the Society, thru to the various stages of Jesuit formation, up to this point at which the twelve of us have converged - these chronicles are added to the countless others, the famous, the infamous, the forgotten (by human history, that is) that make up the Society of Jesus.

Egide van Broekhoven, SJ

And therein has been yet another unexpected grace - the placement of our twelve graced tales within the context of the larger family story of the Society of Jesus. As previously mentioned, part of these first weeks has been spending time revisiting our larger family history - rereading Ignatius' Autobiography, the histories of the founding of the Society. Personally, I've returned to some of my favorite family stories - both famous (Don Pedro) and not-so well know (Egide van Broekhoven). To place our stories in the same canon with them and so many others is... well, where I started this all off. Humbling.

Lest ye think that tertianship is all reading & reflection, tomorrow we're off to Navotas for the first of our tertianship "experiments" - our Filipino Life Experience. I'll surely have much more to say upon returning, but a brief word as to its purpose. Again, this comes from Ignatius and his companions' experience in Venice & Vicenza from 1535-1537 where they lived & worked amongst the people. This is precisely what we'll be doing for the next week or so. I'll be living with two families over the course of that time... in the words of our tertian director,

You are going to those people... not as teachers or preachers.  Let the people minister to you and not you minister to them. It is their life you wish to share, not your life that you want them to share.

Wise words, to be sure. To just be with people... and to be ministered to. Humbling, yet again.

Surely more new graced tales to tell in a week's time. Until then, keep us in your thoughts & prayers - and be assured of ours for you. Until then - PAX.

wild orchids... growing like dandelions here!

 

room.

So, seeing that their hope of sailing was far off, (Ignatius & his companions) dispersed throughout the Venetian territory, with the intention of waiting the year they had agreed upon; after it was finished, if there was no passage, they would go to Rome. 

(from The Autobiography of St. Ignatius of Loyola)

Oh happy accident... so, having completed their studies in Paris, Ignatius & the companions discerned that they would make way to Jerusalem via Venice so as to spend their lives there "in the service of souls". Always good with a backup plan (Ignatius - the Patron Saint of Plan B), they agreed that if they were not given the green light to head to Jerusalem they would return to the Eternal City and place themselves at the disposal of the pope.

Long & short: Ignatius & the boys end up staying in Venice from late 1535 thru late 1537... a period of much-neeed spiritual space & room for them - a break between the busy-ness of their studies in Paris & the awaiting busy-ness that would unfold in Rome.

The experiential foundations for Jesuit tertianship.

A break from the busy-ness.
Room.

It was about three years ago that one of my spiritual directees making the 19th Annotation Retreat used that very term - room - to describe her journey in the midst of the Spiritual Exercises... that the Exercises were providing her the much-needed space in her life to pray, reflect so as to enter more deeply into her personal, unique relationship with Christ. 

Room.

Clinging to that word, I found my desire to return to the Exercises not as director but as directee emerging - a desire to enter to step away from my own busy-ness and find that explicit room the Exercises provide. Along with additional factors, it was this was this desire that led me to tertianship here in the Philippines.

As our tertian directors Pri & Mon stated on our first day together, tertianship is to provide that very room. Pri aptly said that "where there is space & room, much formation can & will occur." So true! To foster this, they provided us "the five R's" as guidelines for entering such room: rest, read*, reflect, relate (with God, one another & self), and reconcile (ibid). This is not to say that there is no apostolic component to tertianship - we'll be departing on our first "experiment" in just under two weeks (more on this later).

So for now... room**. 

*Regarding reading - allow me to betray the literature geek that is me... as part of the tertianship program, each of us has been provided an individual library of books on Jesuit history and Ignatian spirituality. Our former General, Fr. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, SJ, stressed in his document on Jesuit formation that a necessary part of tertianship is sapiential reading  - that is, reading on the topics of  Ignatius, the Society of Jesus and the Church not in a purely academic way, but reading with both head and heart. Room to read in such a way... as good as it gets! Current read - Dalmases' Ignatius of Loyola, Founder of the Jesuits. Haven't looked at this since novitiate... pure gift to be spending such time again!

**Lest ye think I am neglecting my personal soul food that is music, I offer a sixth R for fostering the aforementioned room: RPMs. On heavy rotation these days is the newly-released collaboration between Elvis Costello & The Roots - Wise Up Ghost. Brilliant stuff. Tune in, turn on... groove out.

class picture.

Scola Affectus Manila, 2013-2014.
front row: Ramon Bautista (assistant tertian director, Philippines),
O-myun Kwan (Korea), Alis Prasetya (Indonesia),
Chanh Nguyen (California), Norlan Julia (Philippines)
top row: Suyt Trinh (Vietnam), Michael Bugeja (Malta), Priyono Marwan (tertian director, Indonesia), Tu Pham (Vietnam), Johan Park (Korea),
Greg Schenden (Maryland), Dalibor Renic (Croatia)

arrivals.

Well the roosters were crowing, heralding dawn here on my second full day in Quezon City... heralding also the fact that despite my valiant effort yesterday to push through with no napping, jet lag still has the last laugh.

So, I've arrived. Home base for this time of tertianship is Loyola House of Studies, situated on the campus of the Ateneo de Manila. All ten of us (tertians, that is) have now arrived, representing the diversity of the Society of Jesus - Croatia, Indonesia, Korea, Malta, Philippines, Vietnam, and the U.S. Always consoling is that even with such diversity, how quickly the common bonds of life in the Society emerge: mutual friends, shared locales.

Yet at the heart of these outward commonalities is something far deeper, far more moving. It is our common Jesuit identity, rooted in a love of Christ known & experienced through the lens of St. Ignatius and the Society, our formation, our shared experience of Christ via the Spiritual Exercises. Enough to inspire a good dose of... well, without sounding too trite and hackneyed, wonder & awe.

Wonder & awe. It is these two words with which I keep describing the past month of journey - from DC to Detroit, from San Francisco here to the Philippines. To state it more concisely (in the words of my wise & dear friend Frank in SF), WOW. To find myself so consistently in  Christ's midst in seemingly limitless ways... astounding. And it's always experienced abiding in relationship - with Christ and with those around me. As Hopkins so exquisitely phrased it,

...for Christ plays in ten thousand places.
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.

So it goes. I find myself dog-paddling in this unanticipated astonishment rooted in gratitude beginning this new chapter of my journey... I've already been privileged & buoyed by so great a cloud of witnesses (Heb 12:1). What's next?

God & tomorrow know. The Tertianship Program of the Jesuit Conference of Asia Pacific in Manila begins at 9:00 a.m. Tune in.