Ah. I received a book of spiritual exercises from a Jesuit guidence counselor in high school.
It’s always the ones you least expect; he was the one who used to lean against the locker banks, shouting cheerfully at the seniors, his collar in his pocket, who always looked at you with half-shut eyes, a skeptical air, if you brought up the concept of the supernatural Jesus, one of those “Well, really, was Jesus was THE Christ?” kinda Jesuits, the especially-philosophical, especially no-prisoners especially all-questioning Jesuits…
But one day I was in his office, kinda grimacing over how weird Catechesim is to a non-Catholic and he shook his head at me, and said something like if I was focusing on the dogma I was missing the point, and if I thought the questioning was a path to dismissing it all, I was missing the point; the point was really exploring faith, my faith. And he gave me that book, which I left in my locker at the end of the year, along with my lab goggles and I suspect my missing-ever-since RBF cd. And he never brought it up again, having said once that I could talk to him about it in my own time. Which I never did.
Now, though, now that I’m older, it’s been itching my brain, this matter of the Spiritual Exercises. I don’t know why. One morning, I woke up with Ignatius of Loyola in my head, and I’ve been puzzling over him and his teachings ever since, as best as I can with no desire to become truly Catholic and no guidence.
So, I’m going to go pick up another copy of the exercises at the Pauline Media center down the street. And I’m going to read it this weekend. And I’m going to call the Charis Ministires, the Jesuit outreach, in my city and see if I can schedule a meeting to talk about this with one of their S.J.s.
Maybe they’ll give me my old guidence counselor. He was a character, and not at all pushy, I did adore him.
