The Trouble Lies Within : turn around
You are mistaken in thinking that the cause of your disquiet is due to the place, or your superiors, or your brethren. This disquiet comes from within and not from without. You could change residence, superiors, and brethren, but if you do not change the interior (wo)man, you will never do good. St. Ignatius Loyola
“ Do not think I have come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother…” Jesus’ vexing words, as written in the Gospel according to Matthew (10.34–35), cut to my core and put me on notice.
Jesus brings a sword to unmask the ways I run from reality and to excise the lies I tell myself and others. Let’s face it.
Jesus brings a sword to strip away my penchant for blaming or shaming others rather than applaud our shared humanity. Let’s face it.
Jesus brings a sword to sever my hold on status quo conditions and free my heart and mind to conceive something new. Let’s face it.
I do not know about you, but I hold my breath and recoil. I recoil because I feel vulnerable. I feel vulnerable because my father and mother, brother and daughter, colleagues and friends will hate and abandon me if I dare to moan with the pain of people whom they call other. But Jesus counsels, “‘Beware of … hypocrisy. Nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known.“ (Luke 12.1a-2)
Eventually I must turn around and stop charging the apocalyptic movie set in which I live with my troubles. If I hope to bank the overflowing reservoir of world pain, it behooves me to take James Baldwin’s words to head, heart and action. “Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
Words through Debra Asis, by the grace of Infinite Generativity
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St. Ignatius Loyola’s quote is found in today’s selection in An Ignatian Book of Days by Jim Manney is a series of daily reflections from the Spiritual Wisdom of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Throughout the book we hear the voices of St. Ignatius as well as many great thinkers and writers, long gone and present day, each uniquely revealing the way of finding God in all things. And that is my intention; to find God/Divine Presence/Ultimate Reality in whatever presents itself to me each day in 2024.
Each day I read, reflect and write on the selection, hoping to articulate the ways in which I come to know God/Divine Presence/Ultimate Reality via personal experience, impelled by the leading of my inner life.
INVITATION
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All words are generated by grace and the grit of a real human being,
Debra Asis
