Prayerful Thoughts from the Ignatian Exercises Part 2

I’ve continued reflecting on the themes and prayers of the Ignatian exercises. There are so many memorable thoughts, so I decided to share some. May God continue to use them.

© Dale Gish 2019. All Rights Reserved.

These thoughts were inspired by the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola. If you are interested in praying the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius with me starting in September 2021, please contact me. You can also read more here, or see specifics for the coming year on my flyer.

Offering Our Failure to the Lord

In part one of this series I reflected on some of the ways we typically respond to failure and noted that the gospel is not that we never fail, but that God meets us in and through our failures. In part 2 of this series, I looked at failure as an opportunity for us to find our true identity in God and failure as an opportunity for God to free us from the shame that plagues us. In this final reflection, I will explore the invitation to abandon ourselves to the Lord as a response to failure.

When failure comes crashing down upon us, when our efforts seem to come to nothing, we are invited to abandon ourselves completely to the Lord. In times of failure, we experience our weakness and our need for God. We were not created to be heroic individuals. We were not created to be heroic communities. We were created to be humble people who give ourselves completely to God. 

Unfortunately, when we are experiencing failure, we typically don’t feel like giving ourselves to God. We believe that we should be giving ourselves to God in success. When we have failed we don’t believe that God would want us in our state of failure. Why would God want damaged goods like us? Who are we in failure that God would desire us? We would prefer to make a glorious offering of ourselves. And yet God loves us and welcomes us even in our failure. We are invited to give ourselves completely to God.

Many of us are aware that we don’t give ourselves completely to God, we may desire to, we may try to, but we know that there are significant parts of ourselves that are not given over to God. We don’t see that most of what we hold back from God are the parts of ourselves we are not proud of, the parts we try to suppress or eliminate from our lives. We don’t give our failure to God. We don’t give our fear, our doubt, our anger, our resentment to the Lord. 

What would happen if we gave these parts of ourselves completely to God? For one thing, we would be a lot more given over to God. Secondly, God would rejoice and delight to have these beloved parts of ourselves brought back and offered to him. We often underestimate how much God loves us, that God loves all of us, and that God particularly loves these parts of ourselves we have held back. 

Giving our failure to God also allows God to be at work in those areas we have so long withheld from him. God wants to redeem all parts of us, bring each part individually and together as a whole person, into the healing light of his love and grace. What freedom we receive when we offer ourselves more completely to him, allowing his love and grace to allow us to accept our own humanity, our true identity as beloved children of God. 

And so I leave you with this question… In what way is the Lord inviting you to offer your failure to him?

© Dale Gish 2019. All Rights Reserved.

Poem: God of the Gorge

God of the Gorge

God of the gorge

Broken rock, wind stripped tree

Crashing water, twisting, descending

God of power

Elemental raging 

What is flesh to you?

A home, a dwelling

Joy and laughter

Mother, brother, wedding feast

God of the gorge

broken body, whipped, stripped

Descending to darkness

In the lifting up

Rise again, alive again

Come again

Make all joy complete

© Dale Gish 2019. All Rights Reserved.

Prayerful Thoughts from the Ignatian Exercises Part 1

I’ve been reflecting recently on the themes and prayers of the Ignatian exercises. There are so many memorable thoughts, so I decided to share some.

© Dale Gish 2019. All Rights Reserved.

These thoughts were inspired by the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola. If you are interested in praying the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius with me starting in September, please contact me.

A Prayer of Adoration

“Your love, O Lord reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness stretches to the skies.”

You created everything in love. Oh the wonder and beauty that you have made.

Your love humbled itself, became one of us, and dwelled among us,

Jesus of Nazareth, Son of God, Messiah, Lord and Savior

And we know love because of this, that you loved us and gave your life for us.

In love, the Father raised you up, firstborn of the dead. 

You sent your Spirit, to dwell in your people.

We rejoice in the goodness of your salvation.

You are our good and present Lord, leading us in all your ways,

Offering us the fullness of joy.

Oh Lord, we rejoice in you. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

We love you and give ourselves to you.

Amen

© Dale Gish 2019. All Rights Reserved.

5 Prayer Resources from the Ignatian Exercises

Since doing the Ignatian Exercises a couple of years ago, Ignatian prayer continues to be central to my relationship with God. There are so many resources that are now available to me, that draw me close to the heart of God.  I'll name 5.

1. I know that God is always looking at me with a gaze of love and I get to look at him and receive it. This can take 2 seconds, or I could spend 20 minutes, and it doesn’t need to happen in my devotional time.  It can happen throughout the day.

2. I am always welcomed to have a heart to heart with Jesus. I can speak to Jesus as a friend, and tell him what is on my heart and mind and spirit.  Jesus listens with compassion. I can listen to what he may say to me in return

3. There is great value in stopping periodically in and at the end of each day (Examen) to remember God, to see God’s work and my openness to it, and to discern the spirits at work in and through me. This allows me to recognize what God is doing and is the beginning of discernment.

4. Having experienced some of how Jesus sees and responds to others I am invited to see others through Jesus' eyes. This changes how I see and how I relate to people. It also turns relationships with others into a way to connect with Jesus, as together with him, I see through his eyes.

5. The closing prayer of the Exercises (the Suscipe) is an opportunity to offer myself completely to God. I am welcomed to offer all of myself, even those parts I am not proud of. Giving myself completely to God makes me more open to his work and increases the terrain of freedom in my life. It allows me to be more dependent upon him and receive everything as gift, sustained by his love and grace.

I’m grateful for the gift of life that Jesus offers us.  Let us receive it with joy.

© Dale Gish 2019. All Rights Reserved.

These reflections were inspired by the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola. If you are interested in praying the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius with me starting in September, please contact me.

Poem: Everything and Nothing

Everything and Nothing

When you hear the Lord say "Do not be afraid for I am with you."

Cling to him as your refuge

When the Lord speaks your name

Let the words sink deep into your soul

When the Lord says you are precious, without price, and so deeply beloved

There find your rest

His presence changes everything

And nothing

But you are held by God

Enfolded in the arms of love

© Dale Gish 2019. All Rights Reserved.

This prayer was inspired by the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola. If you are interested in praying the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius with me starting in September, please contact me.

Failure as Spiritual Opportunity

This is the second in a series of posts on failure.

In my first post, The False Path of Failure, I reflected on some of the ways that fear of failure becomes an obstacle in our spiritual lives. I suggested that the good news is that though we are failures, God loves us and meets us in our failure. But let’s be honest, we have a hard time hearing that good news. Instead, when we face failure, we are devastated, discouraged, we feel hopeless. We wanted so much to feel like we are successful, but now we have failed.

Failure and identity

It’s hard to personally come to terms with our failure. We’ve fashioned a false identity of success for ourselves and now that false identity comes crashing down which has shielded us from the truth of reality. And we are terrified of the truth. What if we are a failure? What if we are worthless? How will we live with ourselves?

We may find ourselves taking on a new identity, a failure identity, one of discouragement and self flagellation, but that also is a false identity. And we may cycle from our success identity to our failure identity and then back again, never knowing our true identity.

There is a truth about our identity for us to discover. We are neither awesome successes or terrible failures. We are human beings, flawed and sinful creatures, but also beloved, gifted, children of God. That is the truth of reality; that is our true identity. God loves us and sees us just as we are, the good and the bad, the gifts and the flaws, the holy and the sinful. God always sees us as we truly are, in all our complexity, while we keep constructing false images or identities.

But when we fail, the Lord sees it as an opportunity to strip away some of our false identity and show us a glimpse of who we really are. God takes failure and turns it into an opportunity for good. In failure, we recognize our need for God. We turn to Jesus. We confess our frailty, or brokenness and our sin. When Jesus meets us he looks us straight in the eyes and pronounces us beloved. In the midst of our failure, we are invited to see ourselves through his eyes, to experience his love, his care, the truth about who we are.

What a gift! When we see ourselves truthfully, we can relax. We don’t have to strive. We can rest in being known and loved and accompanied by the living God, “for in him we live and move and have our being” -Acts 17:28

Failure and Shame

Failure is not only a personal thing, but it’s also a social thing. When we experience failure, we typically feel shame. When we fail, we want to hide from others because we don’t want them to see us as failures. Shame may be the thing we dread most about failure. Wherever failure goes, shame follows close behind

Jesus is not deterred by our shame; Jesus sees it as an opportunity. Jesus has borne the cross on our behalf, taking it’s shame upon himself, taking our same upon himself. We may want to hide in shame from him, but once again, Jesus looks us straight in the eyes and is not ashamed of us. He calls us friend. He lifts us up from the dust and restores our souls. He invites himself to our house like Zaccheaus. He touches us when we feel unclean. He smiles and welcomes us into his kingdom, where the last shall be first, where the meek shall inherit the earth, where the Lord is close to the lowly.

When we open ourselves to Jesus in the midst of our failure, Jesus takes our shame away. To be freed from shame is such joy. We may discover that through our failure we are now closer to Jesus.

Sometimes we are freed from shame and it never returns, but many times we experience it coming back upon us in the days to come. But having experienced Jesus embrace us in our failure, we now see that the shame is not from the Lord. It is a temptation, a snare of the evil one, who wants us buried in shame and back in our false identities. We begin to notice shame as it begins to work on us and we have the opportunity once again to open ourselves to Jesus, to let him meet us in the midst of failure.

If you struggle to open yourself to the Lord in the midst of failure, consider meeting with a spiritual director. In spiritual direction you can explore failure in a deeper way and find ways to let failure draw you close to Jesus.

Stay tuned for part three of this series on failure coming soon, as I explore the theme of abandoning ourselves to the Lord as a response to failure.

© Dale Gish 2019. All Rights Reserved.

Prayer for an Easter Potluck Feast

Jesus, the sky went dark when you died

And the world grew cold

What joy could the world have without you

True source of love

We felt the emptiness, the hopelessness, the despair

When you died the best part of us died as well

And then this morning you rose from the dead

With joy in your heart

Blood pumping through your veins

Eyes opened to the light once again

Death defeated

Satan conquered

Sins atoned

Forgiveness won

We are untied with you once more

We rejoice with you

overflowing with new life

Super bloom of all super blooms

Spectacular redemption

Torrent of hope

Jesus, you are alive and at work among us

We are filled with your presence

Our hearts break out into song

Rejoicing in your victory

And did you say you wanted something to eat?

You’ve come to the right place, Jesus

We welcome you to this feast

We eat it with you

Jesus Christ, living one, firstborn from the dead

We celebrate your resurrection

Amen and Amen

© Dale Gish 2019. All Rights Reserved.
This prayer was inspired by the Ignatian Exercises.

If you are interested in praying the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius with me starting in September, please contact me.

Resurrection: An Ignatian Meditation

Resurrection: an Ignatian meditation by Dale Gish

Easter Sunday morning. The Father and the Spirit come to the tomb, to raise you from the dead. They experience great loss. An angel rolls away the stone and they enter the tomb.

The Father proclaims, “Death you are defeated. Death you are broken. Death release your prey.” The Spirit breathes life into your body. They unwrap the grave clothes from your body. You open your eyes. You sit up. You feel new life in your veins. Death leaves your body. You are filled with Joy. The Trinity embraces with joy, together again, separated no more. The world is right again. All the pain and suffering and injury are healed in you, leaving only scars. And you are filled with love, love for your people, love everywhere. You have conquered death. You have won the victory.

Jesus, you turn to me and say, “you have accompanied me in my passion and death. You died with me, now receive new life with me.” I run to you and we embrace. Jesus, I love you. It is so good to see you alive. I can hardly believe it. We are together again.

And you say, “It’s good to be alive. My dying was terrible. I was abandoned and forsaken. The whole world turned against me and crushed me. Evil triumphed and destroyed me. See I still have the marks. Bitter death overcame me, but now I am raised in power to new life.”

Oh, Jesus, it has been so hard to see you suffer and walk this path. There is an ocean of grief in me. It’s hard to even take in that you are alive. Part of me still suffers with you in your passion. I begin to weep. You embrace me again and you say, “I give you my joy.”

Suddenly I am filled with and overwhelmed with joy. Your joy fills and overflows me. Everything is good; everything is right. We stand there a long time, just being together. My heart is filled with peace. Reunited with you.

© Dale Gish 2019. All Rights Reserved.

This prayer was inspired by the Ignatian Exercises. If you are interested in praying the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius with me starting in September, please contact me.