Dearest monks and artists,
Today is the feast day of St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order.
The spirituality of Ignatius has played a huge role in my own unfolding. When I started undergraduate studies at Fordham University in philosophy I was at best agnostic (and the daughter of two agnostics raised in a completely non-religious household).
My required course in Liberation Theology amazed me that I had not heard of this deep commitment to justice in the Catholic Church before. My service work in the South Bronx with at-risk youth and also in environmental restoration led me to want to do a year of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. The four tenets of JVC are community, simplicity, social justice, and spirituality. I laugh because I walked into the Campus Ministry office telling Sister Jean that I felt confident about the first three, but wasn’t so sure about spirituality. “You should come on a retreat” and with that invitation my path into the rich spiritual traditions of Christianity was forged.
After graduating with my philosophy degree I moved from NYC to Sacramento, California to participate in a year of JVC living with 5 other women. And while my work with “emotionally disturbed youth” was definitely not my calling, JVC’s motto of “ruined for life” held true. The gatherings integrating spirituality and social justice, living a radically simple life in community, these all shaped who I longed to be.
After JVC I worked in a shelter for homeless women and children for a year before starting work at a Catholic high school where I taught theology and was co-campus minister. This was when I started my graduate studies at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley (JSTB as it was known then) and took courses from many fine Jesuits. After my Masters John and I decided to move from Sacramento to the Bay Area so I could pursue my doctorate in Christian Spirituality (a long journey from the 20-year old woman who wasn’t sure spirituality had a place in her life!)
We moved to San Francisco and John and I participated in the Spiritual Exercises in Daily Life at the Mercy Center in Burlingame. Ignatius had designed it to be a four-week experience but recognized that due to life commitments, some might need to extend it over time. Over nine months we journeyed through Ignatius’ call to intimate prayer with the scriptures. It was a powerful practice to weave through the early days of my doctoral studies.
I fell in love with Ignatius even more during that year of prayer, especially his deep trust of the power of our imagination and our senses to reveal profound truths to us. He developed this form of prayer out his experience of disability, months spent healing in bed from a war wound. He transformed his suffering into beauty and grace.
After graduate school we moved to Seattle because we had fallen in love with the Pacific Northwest on vacation. I was teaching theology at Seattle University but also developing my work as a spiritual director and retreat facilitator. There I entered into a discernment year for the Spiritual Exercises in Everyday Life (SEEL) to be a spiritual director for others, however ultimately discerned it wasn’t my calling. Ignatius cultivated many gifts for learning how to discern, to listen to one’s consolation and desolation, and to make wise choices.
I also worked for two years in the Ignatian Spirituality Center in Seattle and had the joy of implementing many rich programs, perhaps most rewarding was to create a program bringing together ecological care with Ignatian practices.
And yes, during all of this time, the heart of a monk beat loudly inside of me as well, and I followed the Benedictine and desert pathways too, weaving a rich tapestry of prayer.
I celebrate this man, who began his life as a warrior and was transformed into a lover through an experience of profound physical suffering. So much of what I teach about imagination in prayer, discernment, and social justice has been molded by his vision.
With great and growing love,
Christine
Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE
Dancing Monk icon by Marcy Hall
