This year at Manresa was both the most unusual and the most rewarding of the eighteen retreats I’ve attended there. In the past, all Ignatian retreats have had in common the fact that a theme was assigned. In a typical retreat that lasts about 40 hours, there are seven conferences over the course of the three days , each of which explores some aspect of the theme. The silence, which begins immediately following the first night’s orientation meeting, is an invaluable tool for focusing on these themes and receiving insights that would not be otherwise possible. At our sharing meeting on the last day, the comments are always the same – everyone receives some new perspective on their lives that they did not have before. I always say the same thing – I always come kicking and screaming -- this weekend could not have come at a worst time, I have work to do, I’m just counting the hours until it’s over so I can get back to the chores at hand. But, every year, by the time Sunday morning rolls around, I am refreshed and recharged and ready to take on the world with a new vigor – and wishing I could stay a few more days.
This retreat began and ended the same way but the middle part was unique. Our Ignatian director, for the first time, told us there would be no theme at this retreat. Instead, he would spend the conferences relating anecdotes from his Jesuit career and we would each find our own theme. This is as St. Ignatius had originally intended. I doubt many of us in all these years have actually read it, but all Ignatian retreats are based on The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, a diary that St. Ignatius kept during the 16th century as he struggled with his own demons and invented these prayerful exercises to help him cope with these crises. But as Father informed us Friday night, The Spiritual Exercises do not contain a theme. Rather, they are a road map for finding your own theme. So he was going to give us our first authentic Ignatian retreat in which we would be using the exercises to find our own theme.
Personally, I didn’t need a theme. I came to the retreat already armed with one. Fatigue! I was so terribly tired. I was looking forward to spending the entire weekend sleeping. I’ve been so terribly tired ever since Mom died; the last five months of the beginnings of all the estate dissolution issues have taken their toll. The silence is really very conducive to achieving that kind of rest. I also knew I was bringing some issues of anger to the weekend, anger over how much more difficult the last seven years have been than I ever imagined possible, anger that managing Mom’s affairs was a thousand times more taxing than I thought it would be, anger that I was not only the only one in a position to tackle these monstrous challenges, but also the only one qualified, anger that in the middle of this seven year period with all the other problems I’m dealing with, and now saddled with this unprecedented economic downturn, anger that on the very day that Mom dies we are again slapped in the face with another major economic crisis, and anger that for seven years I’ve at least been able to go to Lourdes and find solace spending time with Mom, and now I don’t even have that little bit anymore.
By Saturday afternoon, the benefits of the silence and exercises had begun to take hold and I was feeling rested for the first time in a long time. As serendipity would have it, I was browsing through the bookstore and suddenly this title was staring me in the face, "Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames." Authored by a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize during the war, he writes about anger from the point of view of Buddhist philosophy but heavily tempered with a Christian perspective. The title is really a misnomer. It should have been titled, "Happiness (and what keeps us from it)" since the whole theme of the book is how we are all trying to find happiness and inner peace but always allow anger about injustices to get in the way. His message: use the Buddhist philosophy of harmony combined with the Christian ethic of unconditional love and forgiveness and we can get rid of the anger, thereby illuminating the pathways to personal happiness that had been so very much in the dark.
He begins with this powerful story of a New York City college professor who is about to commit suicide as she is so angry with her alienated husband and has given up hope of ever finding happiness and peace. She calls a girlfriend who is a Buddhist to inform her of the decision to end her life and say goodbye. Her Buddhist compatriot now gets very strict with her. "You have called me several times now to complain about your miserable situation and each time I have given you exercises to do to help alleviate your suffering. And each time you have refused, using the excuse that your Catholic upbringing would not allow you to indulge in Buddhist practices. Now you are calling me to tell me you are about to end your life, and all this without even having tried any of the solutions I have put before you. You are being foolish, my friend. You must come over to my apartment immediately and we will spend the afternoon doing some spiritual exercises. If after that you still feel you wish to end it, I will not stand in your way."
So the professor went to her friend’s place and spent three hours listening to Buddhist tapes and doing some exercises. A small miracle occurred. It took only these three hours for her to realize that her unhappiness was rooted not in her husband’s recalcitrant behavior but in her own inability to forgive him. By the end of the three hours, she had renewed hope. She knew now that the way out was to find a way to forgive, and she even had a small idea of how to do this. A week later, she went on her first Buddhist retreat, this time for a full week. By the end of the week, she had found some degree of peace and had figured out how to find the place in her soul to forgive her husband. When she went home and told her husband, he broke down and started sobbing. Two weeks later, he accompanied her on her second retreat, this time two weeks long. By the end of that, neither was any longer considering either divorce or suicide. They had in fact identified the path to happiness that had so long eluded them and had begun the long journey home.
What an inspiring story. What an inspiring book. Between that and the conferences, I already had a new perspective on my own anger. I could turn it around. Instead of feeling like the victim of this gross injustice from this mountain of challenges that was thrust upon me, I could instead view it as a wonderful opportunity to condition myself to return to my career and now have tools for pursuing my life goals that I’ve never had before, that I’ve never even dreamed of having before. Instead of feeling overwhelmed and hostile, instead feel energized and strengthened. The last seven years have been like one big Olympic training camp. Because of it, I’m so much stronger now. I’m ready to compete in the big leagues now. If I could get through the last seven years, I can do anything. My new career is going to be a cakewalk compared to all this. This is not something to be angry about, it’s something to be grateful for.
But most important – if not for the last seven years, I would not have experienced what has been the biggest breakthrough of my life. This ordeal wore me down enough so that the doctors were finally able to diagnose the sleep apnea. For the first time in my life, I’m actually sleeping. I am stronger now and have more energy than when I was twenty. For the first time in my life, I may actually have the strength and energy that I’ll need to achieve my goals.
So in the space of 40 hours, I learned to be grateful rather than resentful. I learned I have a lot to be thankful for, not the least of which is that I at least know what I want out of life. I know what my definition of happiness is. Thich Nhat Hanh emphasizes in his book that one of the biggest constraints keeping people from happiness is that they don’t know what they want. I’ve always been blessed in that, since I was five years old, I’ve always known exactly what I want. My frustration has always been an inability to figure out how to get it. During the last seven years, I think I’ve figured it out. That alone makes the entire ordeal worthwhile.
Finally, probably the most crucial lesson I’ve learned is as follows: I’ve been beating myself up so much not so much because I’m angry but because I’m angry about being angry. Christianity teaches you not to be angry. (Obviously Buddhism does too.) So it has really been bothering me that I feel this way and have been struggling in vain to find a way to stop feeling this way. So I came to a critical conclusion at Manresa that had not occurred to me before: I’m allowed to be angry. It’s okay. I have been dealt a pretty sorry set of cards. And I can be proud of myself for having played them as well as I have but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being upset over having been thrust into this miserable situation to begin with. I realize now that a large part of my healing begins with giving myself permission to have these feelings. I have earned the right to be angry.
I had come to these conclusions before I consulted with the various Jesuit priests about it (one Filipino priest on staff there was particularly helpful) and did not share my conclusions with them. Simply presented my case to them and then sat and listened. I expected them to say that anger is not good, can grow into a cancer, and that I need to put it behind me. That’s what I expected, and hoped that they would follow up with some pearls of wisdom as to how to accomplish this. Instead, each one of them confirmed all the conclusions I had already reached in my 40 hours of prayer and meditation. They each said – you’re entitled to your anger, now leave it be, turn it into a positive, and move on with your dreams. I’ve earned it. It was very gratifying to hear them say that. They were very gratified to hear me say that I had already come to those very conclusions on my own and, with this retreat, had begun my own long journey home.
As always, I left Manresa feeling completely reborn. These 40 hour weekends make better vacations than any trip to Europe. Because of its nature, this is the one and only posting each year that I devote to matters of my personal spiritual growth. Father related many inspiring anecdotes to us from his own career and the life of Christ and the saints. I made notes of them and then regretfully misplaced the notes. But there was one particularly touching story he shared with us on Sunday morning that really brought this whole anger/resentment/happiness issue full circle.
Fr. Steve had spent a good part of his Jesuit career as a missionary, and did a healthy part of his missionary stint ministering on a Native American reservation in Alaska. First thing: only the rest of us call the native peoples here Native Americans. They do not call themselves that, as it is considered a European name for them. After all, it was the white man, not them, who named the continent America. They simply always called it "the land." Fr. Steve said they actually call themselves by the old term "Indian," something I find just as strange as Native American since Indian is also a white man’s word, stemming from the fact that Columbus initially believed he had landed in the East Indies and therefore dubbed the native peoples "Indians." In my own limited studies of the native tribes, I have consistently found that their ancestors never referred to themselves either as Indians or as Native Americans. There doesn’t seem to be a precise translation of their word for themselves, but the closest thing to English is considered to be simply "the people" or "human beings."
Be that as it is, Fr. Steve said that in his missionary work on the reservations, they referred to themselves as Indians. Not even as American Indians, simply as Indians. This particularly story involved a young Indian widow and new mother who had just recently lost her husband. Because of some legal technicality, she was not eligible for the substantial monetary compensation that Native Americans usually receive from the federal government when they lose their husbands and, thus, their source of livelihood. She was left with nothing except her baby and the clothes she owned. The parish priest pulled some strings with the government and managed to secure for her a basic domicile and a low-level job at a nearby lumber yard to help with the bills.
When Fr. Steve said "basic domicile," he was being charitable in the extreme. What the government gave her could not be considered anything more than a shack in his opinion. It was a structure consisting of a cement floor, four walls, a couple windows and a door, a structure about the size of an average garage. No electricity, no plumbing, and only a wood burning stove for heat and cooking. Though she owned the domicile, she had nothing else to live on, her job paying so little it could not even cover groceries.
By any standard, this woman was living in an extreme state of deprivation. She used her wages to buy baby food and supplies and kind neighbors brought over groceries for her. The lumber yard allowed her all the wood she needed for cooking and heat. Between job and taking care of baby, she took advantage of the reservation’s school and was working on her GED at night, even dreaming of attending community college after graduation. There was a nearby stream from which she could haul all the clean safe water she needed.
Still, by any standard, she was well below the poverty line, in fact among the poorest of the poor. Which is why Fr. Steve was so shocked when she came to him with her special request. She had heard that there were many orphaned babies in China and she wanted to share what she had with one of them. She wanted to know how she would go about adopting a baby from China.
Fr. Steve was aghast. "How can you even consider such a thing? You’re barely getting by with your own baby, how do you propose to support another."
But the young mother didn’t see it that way at all. Fr. Steve looked at her domicile and saw only a barely habitable shack that had no running water, no bathroom, no electricity, no kitchen to speak of, no furnace. But the young lady looked at the same domicile and saw a perfectly livable house that provided adequate protection from the elements, was clean and had plenty of heat and a stove for all the cooking she needed.
Fr. Steve looked at her financial situation and saw an impoverished woman who could not even buy enough food for both her and her baby. She considered herself so blessed that she had a job that would at least keep her baby fed and even more blessed to have such kind neighbors to donate food for her until she earned her diploma and got on her feet.
So how could she consider adopting a baby from China in her situation? He thought she was impoverished. She thought she was so rich because she had her own home, heat, food, a job, and an opportunity for an education. So she told him, "Father, I have been so blessed. I have so much more than those babies in China. I want to share what I have with one of them."
Fr. Steve said it was a very humbling experience. This was truly a remarkable woman who could only see the glass as half-full. It was something he would never forget as he dealt with his own financial crises and counseled others on the same. It was a particular poignant finale to a retreat where so many of us have been dealing with our own financial problems during the Great Recession.
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Two weekends later, last weekend actually, I was in North Carolina, the first time I had flown since before 9/11. Except for the fact that they now make you take off your shoes at security, I saw little difference to what air travel was like before 9/11. It was a whirlwind two days with the Howard/Dooling clan (turned into three days when our flight was canceled Saturday night) but they certainly gave Uncle Don a beautiful sendoff. Mark was understandbly stressed out and relayed the sentiment to me a number of times that he could not wait for it all to be over Monday morning (as it turned out for him, it was really all over Saturday night.) But being the 24/7 caregiver for his dad the last two years, he was understandbly more impacted by Uncle Don’s death than were other members of the family. It didn’t help that he had painstakingly planned the entire weekend for weeks and then all the plans got tossed aside in the last few days. But I had talked to him several times during the week to try to comfort him and then spent half the afternoon with him privately after the funeral before heading to the Dooling reception in Winterville and the airport. I will say he seemed perfectly fine and coping quite adequately during the hours I spent with him and his behavior certainly did not mesh with the reports I had received that he was taking the whole thing very hard. Under the circumstances, he did exceptionally well.
Ann delivered one of the most beautiful eulogies I’ve ever heard, full of humor and pathos, about our dear Uncle Don. Joey Howard (Jim’s son), a newly minted Air Force Staff Sergeant, then stole Ann’s thunder by giving an even more touching eulogy following hers. He was the reason the funeral had to be January 21st instead of in early December when Uncle Don passed. He was in a special training program from which he could not get leave until graduation. He graduated the day before the funeral, received his promotion, and arrived late Friday night sporting his newly earned stripes.
I have a humorous story about Joey. Late Friday night, I was in the Dooling living room watching TV with Joey and Ann’s daughter Amy, both in their mid-twenties. They both impress me as pretty together young people. I wondered if they considered me a pretty together old guy. A commercial for a new movie came on, a popular title I recognized (can’t remember it now), and Joey commented that he was really looking forward to seeing it. I told him I was too, that and "The Iron Lady" are at the top of my list. The Iron Lady? Haven’t heard of that one, he said. Really? It’s one of the biggest films out right now. Meryl Streep? Playing Margaret Thatcher? She just won the Golden Golden for Best Actress? What? Who? Who? I could understand that Joey may not have heard of Margaret Thatcher. She was Prime Minister before he was born. But it was rather shocking that he did not know who Meryl Streep was. Just because she’s over 50, these kids under 30 haven’t heard of her? Generation Gap!!! Boy, did he ever make me feel old!
So Mark and the rest of the Howard clan has some healing to do. Mark has to find his own peace and happiness. But he has been promised the house when Aunt Helen passes away, and that should help a lot with his peace of mind. He has two small pensions and assures me that, between those and the house, he will be fine. I don’t have anything quite that concrete yet, but I do have one thing that a lot of people don’t have. I have hope. I have lots of hope.
In closing, there seems to have been a common theme to these two weekends of change and challenge, security and peace. And above all, happiness. Wouldn’t it be great if we could all look at life through the same prism as that young Indian mother? Where everyone else could only see poverty and despair, she could only see riches and opportunities. She had so little yet she considered herself so rich and was burning to share what she had. That story certainly gave me a whole new perspective on my situation. We are all rich, we all have much to be thankful for, we all have resources to share.
In light of this and our continuing struggles with the economy, I will soon be doing a posting on the topic of being rich – and how very relative this term can be. Several weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal had a fascinating article about the new definitions of what it takes to be rich. I will be writing about The New Rich soon. I think the conclusions the article came to will surprise everyone. And here’s a hint: these conclusions would not surprise the Indian woman, nor Fr. Steve.
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