Day 2: I Started the Actual Spiritual Exercises

Guess what! After I hatched the plan for my Birthday Exercises, I found out I'd have the opportunity to undertake the actual Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola! The annotation my cohort is using was designed by St. Ignatius for busy ordinary working folk who weren't able to go on retreat for 30 straight days. Instead, the reflections are interspersed through everyday life over a 30 week period. 

Today was the day I had planned for my first moment. I was looking forward to a quiet evening in the apartment and actually spent a few minutes fantasizing about which pair of fuzzy slippers I could wear for the event. When I got home, however, I found that the apartment was much more abuzz than I had expected. There were roommate-lease-renewal discussions to be had; my tortellini took much longer to cook than I had the patience for; my neighbor's frenetic progressive jazz band had chosen this night for rehearsal, and I discovered many wrinkled blouses in need of ironing in my drawer. 

As I folded up my ironing board, I listened to my roommate's animated voices as they each finished phone calls in the hall or kitchen. This definitely wasn't the cool-cotton, soft-pajamas evening I had planned. And then my roommate cried into her phone, "Yay! Come over!" and explained that our concert pianist friend and neighbor was going to come over and practice on our piano. "If that's all right," she added, and we agreed. 

What I ended up with tonight was a chance to try out the idea that peace doesn't come from fuzzy slippers, or from pants without a tight waistband, or from the complete absence of honking or bachata or jazz music bleeding through windows and walls. I grabbed my pillow, my journal, and my guide to the Exercises, and I sat next to my roommate on the couch. I chuckled at the introduction that instructed me to "select an environment that will provide you some quiet and privacy," and dove in, while the joyful sounds of Débussy and Chopin fell around us.

WHAT I LEARNED TODAY:

"Our longings and desires, though often expressed in very ordinary ways, are signals to us for our deep desire for God." I'd heard a few times, from Ignatian spirituality, that our desires give us clues about our vocation or the ways we can best use our gifts. But reading this statement reoriented that attitude. Our desires aren't just clues to our happiness, which God surely wants for us; but rather our desires indicate the paths that will bring us to know God more deeply - and through knowing God more deeply, know joy deeply, too.

"Seek the Lord while he may be found." Of all the quotations and passages for reflections in this week's reading, I kept coming back to this one. It made me remember yesterday's experience of finding God in the Torah and the moments of joy that, with luck and grace, await.

HOW I LEFT MY COMFORT ZONE:

 I carried my journal and a prayer book into a room that was currently occupied by two other people. 

I was actually scared to commit myself to 20 minutes of prayer, without using a to-do list or a noisy environment as an excuse to skip it for the night. And I'm a bit intimidated by the commitment to do this over the next 32 weeks! 

Quotations from Carol Ann Smith, SHCJ and Eugene F. Mertz, SJ, Moment by Moment: A Retreat in Everyday Life, Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 2000.

Plotting my Course, Choosing my Adventure

My birthday exercises began as a rather vague idea. The idea pricked the back of my mind with a sense of obligation and niggled at me there. I should, I reckoned, take on something momentous to commemorate my thirty years. I had an uneasy worry that I would let my birthday go by without noting it and making it noted, really living it and being present to it — and, worst of all, without live-tweeting it.

In the past month, though, just as my expectations about my birthday itself have become more positive, so have my expectations about my birthday adventure. They've also started to become more concrete. In early September, my plans for my birthday challenge were pretty simple: "Do one new thing each day." With more excited reflection, I've began to understand what I hope to gain from the challenges and to recognize some common themes.

"Doing one new thing each day" doesn't stop at having fun, while that is part of the equation. Trying something new each day will mean pushing boundaries and stepping out of my comfort zone. By doing so I'll learn new things and, perhaps more importantly, examine why my boundaries exist where they do. What experiences and relationships am I missing out on by holding back too much, and where do I need to hold fast? 

I'll also examine my opinions and assumptions. As I've made a list of the new experiences I hope to undertake, some clear themes have emerged: food, cuisines, and food justice; spirituality and religious experience; art and photography; global New York. I hope that my new experiences in these topics that are close to my heart will challenge my knee-jerk responses. 

Some of the challenges will be difficult; some time-consuming; some simple. Some will require a map and some will be accomplished at home or in my neighborhood. Best of all, some of them (many of them?) will be free!

My challenges will be revealed each day, so if you want to find out what they are, keep reading!