Who am I? Hard to say, but in this setting I should note that I am, by the grace of God, neither theologian nor philosopher. As you have heard, I am a psychologist, a role with both strengths and limitations. Whatever else it means, it does give you insight into my perspective on life. I am a lay man, who has come to Ignatian spirituality in a grace-filled story of conversion, like so many of you. Ignatian spirituality has become a very important part of my life, and I am greatly honored to be here sharing something of that journey with you.

Let me tell you another thing. Marian [Cowan] and I have teamed up on many occasions, so you can be sure that she has some insights into my presentation habits. With that in mind, I should tell you that she had some "not too well disguised" anxiety about when I would have a draft of this talk done for her to use in preparing her response and a stern warning that I should not elaborate too much on the text I gave her. Let me tell you a story. I received this tale from my music teacher of times past, who swears it is true.

Bela Bartok fled from the Nazis, coming to this country penniless in 1940. His genius as a composer was already recognized, and he was quickly offered academic work. Despite his impoverished condition, he turned down the chair of composition at Curtiss Institute because he was not yet ready to give away his method. He did accept a position at Columbia. Now it happens that Bartok was also a virtuoso concert pianist, so his friend, Dimitri Metropolis, arranged an opportunity for him to perform his Second Piano Concerto with the New York Philharmonic. In that performance, things went swimmingly until the third and final movement. To anyone able to recognize the signs, it was obvious that Metropolis was struggling to keep orchestra and soloist together. Bartok had, in the development section, departed entirely from what he had written. They worked it out, but after the bows Metropolis fumed at Bartok, "Bela, what were you doing out there?" Bartok replied, "I am so sorry, Dimitri, but at the beginning of the third movement the timpanist played an A-natural instead of an A-flat, and I could not resist the implications."

So, I promised Marian that I would resist the implications, at least in this part of the presentation. However, you are free, and I urge you to focus on what you hear more than on what I say, and to go where it leads you. In this way, we let the Spirit speak in many tongues. Afterward, we can bring out your thoughts in discussion here and throughout the conference.

One other thing--although I have been an academic for many years, I am primarily a clinician. As such, I am a man who speaks best from the heart, not from the head. I am used to small settings, to listening and responding as the Spirit moves. It is a hard thing for me to prepare a long input like this for such a large group. You can't imagine how many drafts this talk went through; each time, upon re-reading, seeming so overblown. Can anyone say anything meaningful about a subject so profound?

I kept returning to Twila McDonell's first summary of the discussion that led to my invitation to speak and to the focus of this conference. "Iggy Spirit Dreaming" she entitled it. Now I know that Joe Tetlow often uses "Inigo" as a familiar name for Ignatius, but "Iggy" sounds even better to me. There is a personal connection. Iggy was the name that my father-in-law and mother-in-law (her a great fan of the Jesuits) gave to the little dog, of undetermined pedigree, that they took in and cared for over the last years of their lives. I think now of Ignatius' characterization of himself as a little dog led by the Lord: simple, radically dependent on the mercy of God, but willing. If that is not always who I am, it is who I want to be.

So then, the answer to the next question, "why am I here?" follows from that. I am here because I was asked, because I said yes, because you came. And perhaps that is as good a foundation for this talk as any other.

So, then, why are you here?

We begin the second gathering as we ended the first, with great hopes. There is excitement in the room. Those of us who were here three years ago remember the richness of the event-the sharing among colleagues, the authority and the power we felt to continue our works in Mission. Today we wake having prayed well last night. We have made plans for the workshops we will attend, the people we will meet again or for the first time.

Yet, in between these two gatherings, I dare say most of us went back to our lives as we had lived them, lives full of issues, most not truly earth-shaking in nature, but shaking our worlds nonetheless. And so it will be when we leave this gathering.

A favorite saying of mine, from Zen Buddhism, runs, "before enlightenment-chopping wood, carrying water; ah, but after enlightenment-chopping wood, carrying water.

Life is hard. We fail often. Any mountain top experience worth its salt must take into account life in the desert below. But in our daily life we feel so small and incapable of making things right. The persistence of social injustice weighs us down. Our own persistent failings cut us deeply.

In many ways we rebel against our sense of powerlessness and imperfection. We want to believe that with a little more effort we can get it right. We cling to illusions of control and competence. Sometimes we really believe that we have it figured out, that we know the right answers, and only struggle with why others cannot understand us.

"How I wish," says the Lord in the 81st Psalm, "my people would listen to me and follow my way … In short order would I resolve their problems and overcome their distress … I would feed them with bread made of finest wheat and cover it with honey drawn from the rock." If only we could give over in trust, life would be easy and light.

I think we want that lightness of spirit. We hope to realize it in mission, as companions. Perhaps that is why we are here. But, it is so hard for us to believe that we are given authority, just as we are, and that trustful surrender, in full awareness of our sinfulness, is the way to peace. Only in trustful surrender are we able finally to see what is really happening in our ordinary lives, to appreciate the epic, heroic story that is being played out even now around us and in us.

In this spirit, in her presentation to our gathering three years ago, Marian sent us forth full of excitement about how God is already working in, and inviting us to collaborate in the great paradigm shift underway in our time. In our era, a great many cycles of change do seem to be coming to fruition together.

In science we have come to the place of Mystery to which all good science should lead. After many years of greater certainty born of the scientific method's emphasis on explanation, prediction, and control, we now find ourselves unable to explain, predict or control all that we are able to measure and observe. We see more clearly now than 100 years ago that we cannot hope to know everything or "fix" everything by way of science, no matter how strong our commitment to "progress."

In social culture we see the same constructive destruction. Marian spoke in particular to the crumbling of patriarchy as a dominant social organizing principle. This crumbling marks an incredibly important paradigm shift from a world controlled by power to a world guided by consensus. However slowly and erratically, it is happening.

In our church, this shift has its corollary in the crumbling of hierarchical organization and control. This shift is not about priests or priestly ministry as much as it is about a culture, what some have called "clerical culture." As the Jesuit community saw and stated clearly in GC34, we enter now a time in which the non-clerical members of Church, religious and laity, women and men alike, will take their place in collaborative works and communal leadership.

Do you sense the implications? In such a church, with ministry and leadership (to borrow Lincoln's phrase) of the people, by the people, and for the people, we will recognize what is holiness in a whole new way. Ironically, this great paradigm shift will be reflected first, I suggest, in a renewed focus on the small. These are not the grand changes that seem fitting for a paradigm shift. They are not the stuff of which revolutions seem to emerge, much less Apocalypse.

• In ordinary people,
• Doing ordinary things,
• In the ordinary places,
• As best we can.

• In holding in tension what seem to be contradictions
• In loving our opponents as well as our supporters
• In honoring our experience, but seeking its fullness in conversation with the worshipping community and in tension with tradition and authority.

But all this is easier to say than to do. In any great period of change, there are obstacles and even counter-forces. No great change occurs without great disturbance. Like the smallness of the changes, the more important obstacles also will be small, insidious. Not the stuff of great battles, though such battles do take place, but little and pervasive termite-like action. These are the things that do us humans in!

It is one thing to say that ordinary people are given authority to lead, to speak, but do we-as laity, women, ethnic minorities, poor-do we feel that authority? In Church, broadly speaking, there are still few structures to support a real sense of authority and empowerment among those who are not of the clerical state. Certainly, many of us feel as a deficit our lack of education in theology and are baffled by the complex organization of the institutional church.

It is one thing to say that holiness will be found in the ordinary activities and places of our lives, but do we sense that path to holiness? Daily life lived does not feel very holy. When we think of our days and nights, away from special times like this one, we recall our struggles with spouse and children and companions. We recall our worries over money and safety.

When we think of our jobs it is no better. We remember the compromises and outright failures. We know the petty struggles of ego for power or recognition. It is hard to believe that we are on the path to holiness, moving for peace and justice, in corporations or government jobs, the very places where we might do real good, if we can find the courage, and where we can learn so much if we can work through differences.

With all the best intentions, our minds drift to greater feats, anything to get us out of the kitchen or the cubicle. If only we had time to pray, we say! If only we could leave this job and work in the missions. We rapidly lose faith that holiness might be found in our everyday living.

As a society we have many flaws as well. Our human nature and the conditions of our lives work against interior peace.

We are busy. Everything is so fast. We find ourselves valuing multi-tasking and functionality. It is hard to see the people in the cars that go too slow or the human being behind the register in the "slow line" we always seem to find. We get frustrated with each other. We are rude.

We know too much, as Eliot said. We are burdened with information overload. We have news when we want it and when we don't. Suffering is everywhere and nowhere. We see so much that is awful without ready tears, or at least tears that last.

And yet, when we find a cause, we seem to see nothing else. We have our little vision and everything and everyone that comes into conflict with it is vilified. We too often believe the worst about each other. We form groups so that we know who is not in them. We create the "big tent" not for "us" but for those others who are "part of the problem." So much judging we do.

We value our causes, our explanations, and our solutions over preservation of the social contract. And the solutions we value are too often simplistic and one-sided, rather than compromises that incorporate the complexity of the situation.

Even when we eschew physical violence, we find ourselves employing a kind of social violence, in our words and our actions. There is a lack of faith in our ability to work things out together. We find ourselves polarizing positions and impugning the motives of those who see things differently.

Anxiety and anger run high. The social fabric is torn, and we are not sure how to mend it. Paradoxically, the bigger we make our individual selves or our little group, no matter how "good" the cause for which we stand, the smaller we feel, because the less connected to the larger social network we see ourselves to be. Less connected, we are less able to work out consensual solutions.

Now what? It does seem to be an extraordinary time for ordinary people, ordinary people like us-laity, clergy, religious, in ecclesial ministry or in ordinary everyday jobs in our government institutions or businesses. We must work it out. We must answer the call to collaborate in this paradigm shift. But how will we do it, in light of such problems?

We ordinary people need a new vision to carry us in this new time. The old vision condemns us in our failings and our imperfections. We need a vision that speaks to what we can be as ordinary people, in ordinary places, doing our best. We need a vision that that frees us to keep on trying even in the face of our obvious failures and imperfections. We need a vision that brings us together, and together brings us to God.

We need a spirituality that speaks to ordinary people in this extraordinary time. We need a spirituality that speaks

• About authority and empowerment that make manifest the authority and power and glory of God-in, not in spite of, our weakness and failing,
• About discernment, and valuing questions above answers,
• About holiness in doing the ordinary things of life, but in faith and awareness,
• About the energy that rises from embracing Mystery, holding opposites in tension and working through conflict, and
• About Love as the beginning and the end of the journey, and about mutual, respectful, honest, faithful relationship as the Means above all other Means to get us there

Again, the answer is small in appearance and in nature. Staying in relationship-with our complex selves, with each other, with the way of the world, with our God-is the way to work out our collaboration with the great changes underway and to work through all of these problems. This is the dance.

Does this sound familiar? We are indeed blessed to have been given the charism of Ignatius, of Inigo, of Iggy. Our spiritual path, in its deepest places, brings us precisely to Love, to Love realized in relationship. This is the coming to love God in all things, in all people. This is the coming to love what God has made and is making. It will serve us well in recognizing, articulating and living out the change in paradigm that is before us.

Of all that has been written and spoken about Ignatian spirituality, nothing is more eloquent than the experience of the Spiritual Exercises. The text, of course, is nothing more than the finger. In the experience of the Exercises we are called to that toward which the finger points. We are called to meet God, and to be part of the family. We are called to invite others. We are called to Love.

In the experience that Ignatius modeled and outlined for us, the path to Love, the answer to everything, every adjustment, in every time, is relationship, mutual relationship among equals in dignity, even with our Creator. This is, as Marian likes to say, the "kin-dom" of God. It is the reign of Love. It is eternal life in our Lord, Jesus the Christ.

The movement to relationship is shot through the Exercises.

We come to them because we are called in one way or another, first in our own sense of hunger and thirst, and second through some good service of another who makes them available or invites us to come and see.

In the First Week, we come to tell our story, seeing first our fault, intentional and unintentional. It moves us to a place of integrity, but equally important, opens us to the gratitude and security of being loved in our failing.

In the Call we find our desire articulated, and then in the Second Week we begin to learn what Jesus says to us and what we say in return.

In the foundational meditations of the Second Week, we begin to understand the lie that is deeply imbedded within us, the lie that we really can be in control, and the fear that keeps us from letting go of that lie. We begin to consider what it would mean, how we would be, if we really did trust.

We see how difficult is this way, especially when we face failure, futility, humiliation, contempt, dishonor-the Third Time of Humility. How difficult it is to live this Way when we are considered useless fools, despised and reproached for our weakness and ineffectiveness in the face of injustice and suffering.

And so we are propelled into the never-ending cycle of the Third and the Fourth Weeks, into the experience of Divinity Hidden and Divinity Made Manifest. We see how the internalized deceit that we came to know in the Meditations holds us back from trustful surrender, and how trustful surrender is the Way the Lord shows us.

But we are brought to see also that in our trustful surrendering, and in our failure, God's presence and power and loving are made most clear, shine forth most brilliantly. As our "un-God-like-ness" is made plain, and as we humbly surrender to our sin, then comes forth like a great shining our "God-like-ness." It is God's answer to the temptation of the Evil One and the "second sin," as Ignatius calls it, the sin of our first parents that lives still in us.

And so we come in this experience of the Spiritual Exercises, to the realization of Love in the Contemplatio.

A model for this Love realized in relationship is the simple but powerful metaphor of conversation. Insert here the example of J. and his father.

In good conversation, we begin in vulnerability. We share humbly what we feel and think. We listen to understand. In good conversation, conflict is meant to be worked out. We seek to make whole more than to convince or to win. We scrutinize the beam in our own eye.

We move, patiently and perseveringly, to reconciliation. Not with the illusion that the work is done perfectly, or once and for all, but with the faith that the result is nonetheless sure and satisfying.

We understand, with Julianne, the truth of her vision: "All will be well; all manner of thing will be well."

In love, and with the courage of this faith, we may face our smallness, our powerlessness. We may humbly be who we are and do what we can. We may stay in relationship with failures as well as successes, with those who oppose us as much as those who support.

We may be faithful to the End that we profess, even when it seems to lead us to failure and futility. We may eschew the temptations of all things that seem powerful and effective but move us away from loving.

With the courage of this faith, we may tolerate, perhaps even come to welcome, being thought weak, beneath contempt, a "useless fool" as we work out the complex response of our lives to the complex problems that face us.

With the courage of this faith, we may grow old and tired, giving over the mantle in our time, though the work is not nearly done.

With the courage of this faith, realizing our weakness and our imperfection, we can all be people at least "coming to" Love, in relationship, through conversation, to reconciliation with all that is.

We need a new vision for a new time. Great changes are afoot. The old vision is failing. We need a vision that speaks to what we can be as a people, as a Church, in a time of great change. Christianity needs a new vision for ordinary people in an extraordinary time. We need a vision in which ordinary people of all walks of life can indeed be confident of the God-given authority and ability to lead. We need a vision in which ordinary people experience that authority in living lives of generous service and honest dealing, which is done for the most part on the small stages of our family lives, our work places, our neighborhoods, and in the democratic governing of our towns and cities. We need a vision that allows us to work out that path a little at a time, with the halting gait of a person made lame by sinfulness.

In Rilke's musings with the spirit of a deceased friend he wrote, "For somewhere there is an ancient enmity between our daily life and the great work." We need a vision that encourages us then to answer that enmity. I love the words that T.H. White gives to the young Arthur as he admires his mentor, Merlyn, a man, he begins to understand, who embodies an "ancient courage" that allows him to "go on believing and trying, with undaunted crankiness, in spite of ages of experience." Could we be such people? Could we be peace-makers in all aspects of our life? Could be we free people, always guilty but not driven by our guilt, daring to be just who we are, and knowing "it is enough"?

So, why are we here? Because we were asked. Because we said yes. Because we feel the movement in our lives. Because we are seeking something to give in response.

It is true that in this gathering we come as diverse people, not because of the way we look, but because of our very different experiences. We face different challenges. We see different worlds.

We are living out our Ignatian spirituality in quite different ways. We come as Jesuit and non-Jesuit, as lay and religious, as clergy and non-clergy. We come as men and women, and as young and old and everywhere in-between.

But in other respects we are the same. We are children of the same Divine family. We are moved by the same charism. Each of us wishes to drink from the same inexhaustible Well.

So we come to articulate for each other the visions that are being born in us, to share the works that grow from them and toward them, and, just as importantly, to reflect on and share how we are living the vision, in relationship, where it counts most of all-in our families and communities, in our work places and our governings.

In the sharing of these various works and relationships, if we tell our stories well and in the relational spirit of the Exercises, the stories of our failures as much as our successes, and if we listen in the same way, we will hear what we need to hear to move forward. We will see what we need to see to know what God is doing, and we will find the courage to join in.

After these few days, my hope is that we will take what we are given here and carry it home, to Galilee, where the Lord will meet us. I trust that in the living of the Exercises, we will "pass it on." And we will pass them on, in our own way, so crazily hopeful, one person at a time-in our homes, in our work places, in our churches-all the ordinary places in which we live.

We believe, after all, as Jesus believed, in the presence and the power and loving-kindness of our God, who charges our short lives with meaning, makes up whatever is lacking, and brings to fruition any work begun in faith and hope and love.

The implications, it seems to me, are irresistible!

© 2002, Paul N. Duckro, Ph.D.

Talks '02: Duckro | Cowan | Fleming '99: Cowan | Hellwig | Padberg