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One on One - Vinita Wright
285 Plays2 years ago
In this episode, Gretchen Crowder interviews Vinita Wright.
Vinita Wright recently retired from a three-decade career as book editor, the last 22 years at Loyola Press, a Jesuit ministry in Chicago. She has worked with authors such as Kevin O’Brien, Mark Thibodeaux, James Martin, and the late William Barry. She is the author of three novels and various works of nonfiction, including Small Simple Ways: An Ignatian Daybook for Healthy Spiritual Living, The Art of Spiritual Writing, and most recently Set the World on Fire: a 4-Week Personal Retreat with the Female Doctors of the Church.
Vinita and her husband, Jim, now reside in northwest Arkansas, where she continues to write, facilitate retreats on writing, creativity, and prayer, and serves her newest vocation as a spiritual director. She has written numerous articles for the website ignatianspirituality.com.
You can find her books here.
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If this episode hits home and you feel you have your own story to share, email Gretchen at lovedasyouarepod@gmail.com.
Follow along and contribute to the conversation @lovedasyouarepod on Instagram.
Find more from Gretchen Crowder @gdcrowder as well as at gretchencrowder.com.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Background
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome back, everyone, to Loved As You Are, an Ignatian podcast with me, Gretchen Crowder. It's finally fall in DFW. Thank God. At the recording of this podcast episode, we were experiencing a bout of the Texas version of fall with a high of 75 and a low of 60. I can only appreciate the colors of fall from social media pictures, however, because the trees and the occupants down here in Texas never stop being confused about the weather.
00:00:30
Speaker
My guest today, however, is in Northwest Arkansas, where the fall colors are on full display for her to enjoy. Today I bring you my conversation with Vanita Wright. Vanita Wright recently retired from a three decade career as a book editor, the last 22 years at Loyola Press, a Jesuit ministry in Chicago. She has worked with authors such as Kevin O'Brien, Mark Thibodeau, James Martin, and the late William Berry.
00:00:57
Speaker
She is the author of three novels and various works of nonfiction, including Small Simple Ways, an Ignatian Day book for healthy spiritual living, The Art of Spiritual Writing, and most recently Set the World on Fire, a four-week personal retreat with female doctors of the church. Vanita and her husband Jim now reside in Northwest Arkansas, where she continues to write, facilitate retreats on writing, creativity, and prayer, and serves her newest vocation as a spiritual director.
00:01:26
Speaker
She has written numerous articles for the website ignatianspirituality.com. I first met Vanita through the Into the Deep blog, which is now officially hosted on ignatianministries.com. I soon realized our mutual connection to loyal oppress, where I also write for Ignatian Spirituality. I know Vanita as an editor, as a spiritual director, as a fellow writer, and as a friend.
Evolving Perception of God
00:01:52
Speaker
Vanita has decades of experience with Ignatian spirituality and a real concrete connection to how humanity and God fit together. I think you're going to love this conversation. I know I did.
00:02:35
Speaker
So welcome, Vanita, to the Loved As You Are podcast. I'm so glad to have you here today. I was just telling my guests that it is finally fall in Texas, at least for today. The temperature is like a high of 75 today. It might change to 80 again or 90 tomorrow, but today it's fall. But I also told them I don't get to see the fall colors. And I'm just curious, does Arkansas have good fall colors? Oh, we do. We do.
00:03:02
Speaker
And it's later October, toward the end of October, when we'll get that. But already, as I'm driving in the area, I'm seeing things begin to turn. And yeah, the Ozarks are a lovely place in the autumn. And we also have a cool spill. And I dared to put on a flannel shirt today. We'll see if I have to change by afternoon.
00:03:27
Speaker
Yeah, I looked up your weather and it was like low in the thirties and high in the seventies. It didn't hit phrasing anywhere they're phrasing, but yeah, no, I love the autumn weather. Yeah, I have to look on social media for all of the fall pictures because Texas leaves are very confused. They don't know what temperature it is. Well, I usually start these conversations with asking people who is God to you and how did you come to that understanding?
00:03:57
Speaker
Okay, well, nothing like starting with the biggest, most fundamental question in the universe. You know, I believe it's in the Gospel of John, where, or it may be in the little letters of John, where it says that God is love. And, you know, that can sound kind of trite, because you grow up in Sunday school, God is love, God is love. But if you think of what that really means, you know, love is not just this affection we have for people, or even doing good towards others.
00:04:27
Speaker
But as the foundational energy of all that is, you know, love is what generated the creation of you and me, the universe.
00:04:40
Speaker
wherever love moves, it gives life, it heals, it moves people forward, it makes us more whole. And so I, you know, my thinking of God, of course, I still think of God as person because that's just a human way. I think we need that.
00:04:59
Speaker
You know, I think of God in terms of father, mother. I also think of God in terms of, you know, you are this elemental, wonderful, life-giving energy in all things, including me.
00:05:16
Speaker
Now, I didn't grow up that way. I grew up in a very, you know, Midwestern, small town, you know, religious environment where God was definitely this stern, you know, father who lived up from where we were. And, you know, I grew up with that image. But as you know, we often see our Heavenly Father.
Faith Crisis and Spiritual Transformation
00:05:37
Speaker
We kind of project what our own experience of father is.
00:05:41
Speaker
And I had a father who loved me very much, but you could never please him. I mean, he was a very critical man. And so for much of my early life, God was this, you know, heavenly father that also I would never actually please. And it was just impossible. And so I always was carrying this sort of, you know, cloud around me of guilt and shame that I just was never enough. I would never be enough. I would never learn enough.
00:06:07
Speaker
pray enough, know enough, just that whole not enough story. But over the years, you begin to see that that image of God is really inadequate, and it's not healthy either. And in my 30s, when I turned 30, I hit a real crisis of faith. And I really had to leave the faith for a while in order to kind of deconstruct it and come back to it, which I think a lot of people do.
00:06:32
Speaker
It's usually, you know, it looks horrible at the time, but it's a very healthy process because at some point you have to let go of the God of your childhood and the God of your local culture. And you have to let go of that in order to begin to perceive, okay, there's a God who is, and I'm not really that, I'm not really that well acquainted with the God who is.
00:06:58
Speaker
because of a lot of things. And I remember a moment that was really, it was transformational for me in terms of how God sees me. Because I think often the church, whether it's Catholic, Baptist, what have you, I think especially in Western culture, we have sort of absorbed this way of looking at ourselves in which we always start. The starting point is sin.
00:07:26
Speaker
And that just puts us in a really bad place. If that's our starting point, if that's the center of all of everything, then we're in really bad shape. And whereas the starting point should always be God who is love, that's the starting point of everything. And then when you see sin up against that, it just it changes the way you see everything. And you realize, oh, yeah, there is sin, there's evil.
00:07:50
Speaker
But the larger reality, the ultimate reality is that God's loving energy is moving through everything. And it relentlessly seeks to permeate all of us until we are all healed and able to love and all of that. But there was a point at which, and this is after I had left the faith, but ironically, I was attending grad school at Wheaton College, which is, you know, an evangelical school. So, but I was trying to,
00:08:18
Speaker
changed careers at the time. I needed to change from music because I had vocal problems and I couldn't have a career teaching. So I was moving over to a career that would involve words and books, which had always been my love. So I'm going to Wheaton College and one day I made the mile or so walk
00:08:37
Speaker
to Glen Elland to an Episcopal Church, because I thought, you know, I've never tried an Episcopal Church. A couple of my professors belong to Episcopal Church, and I thought, I'm just going to go, because I still want to worship. I don't want the God I used to have, but I still feel this. I just wanted to be in a place of sacred space and worship. So I went to this Episcopal Church, and there came the moment when people began to walk forward to receive the Eucharist.
00:09:07
Speaker
In the church of my upbringing, the only time you walk forward down the aisle is to confess your sins, become a Christian, or rededicate your life to Christ because you've fallen away. I mean, it's always like this statement of guilt, to walk the aisle, which is what we called it. But what I notice is that everyone in this congregation is walking down the aisle to receive the Eucharist.
00:09:35
Speaker
And it just hit me. I thought, of course, we all need to walk up to God all the time. This is a process. I'm not expected to be perfect. I'm not expected to be sinless. I'm expected to always be coming to God. And I was so comforted in that moment. It really, I mean, it changed. It really shifted the way I thought about, you know, guilt, need of God.
Perceptions of God and Spiritual Direction
00:10:02
Speaker
And, you know, as a turn, I eventually became an Episcopalian, which is what I am today. And I actually didn't begin going to that church. It was too difficult. It was a long walk and all of that. But that image of realizing that, yeah, not only do I need to partake of the Eucharist as often as I can, because this is a sacrament, this is some form of grace, but also it's totally fine that I walk forward and say, I need you, Lord.
00:10:32
Speaker
I need you rather than, okay, let me tell you what, I've screwed up this time and I hope you'll forgive me again. And it's just a completely different posture toward life. And that just helped me relax in so many ways and that, you know, I can be who I am. I can celebrate who I am, but I can also be honest about who I am because it's safe to do that. You know, I can safely say, okay, I did screw up today, Lord. But it's not like, oh,
00:11:02
Speaker
the world is ending because I've sinned again. It's like, yeah, Lord, here I am. I'm on a continuum. The process is still happening, but it's just a whole different way of going about it. And it's very freeing. And it actually frees you more, I think, for transformation when you feel this safety of God's love. So that's kind of a long answer to an initial question, but
00:11:27
Speaker
There you have it. Well, I started with a big one, but there are two things that stuck out to me. One in the beginning when you said that you have thought of God as father, as mother, but also something like love permeating everything that you do. And then you equate it, the image of father to
00:11:46
Speaker
seeing your own father in that role because you put father label on God and therefore you had a person inserted into that image. And that really struck me because when we personify God to, you know, obviously God, Jesus, Jesus was human, but when we, we say God, the father, we, we put some kind of label on him, then yeah, we insert our own human understanding of what that label means. And then that changes maybe who God is.
00:12:13
Speaker
and we kind of construct who God is in our mind. In one of my classes a few weeks ago, one person was talking and they were constantly referring to God as He, as Father, and the professor just typed in the chat box, how would it change your perspective if you changed the pronoun with which you are referring to God? And it was such a simple question, not a like,
00:12:36
Speaker
You have to change, you know, but how, what would it look like if you didn't refer to God as father, but just God, you know, what, what would that look like? So I, I resonate it with that part of your description. And then also when you said in the Episcopal church, you know, people were all going up to receive communion immediately. I thought in the Catholic church, they always say, if you're in a state of mortal sin,
00:13:01
Speaker
don't come up before you receive the sacrament of reconciliation. And so it struck me because there's this, yes, I need to be forgiven by God in this other sacrament, but also I really need Jesus when I'm in a state of sin. So there's this paradox there of like, when I can't go up is also maybe when I need to go up the most. And so that resonated in your story as well, the different ways that we approach
00:13:29
Speaker
the Eucharist, depending on the denomination, depending on the church. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm going to speak first to what you said about father. You know, when I was still an adolescent, I made a new friend. She was new to our town and she became best friends and we're still friends today. And she still lives in my hometown. And I was trying to evangelize her like any good Baptist kid.
00:13:51
Speaker
And so at one point, she actually went through a conversion experience. I'm not saying it's because of me. I think she was just ready and God was there and met her, you know? But I remember being adamant about calling God Father because that's just what I had learned. Well, this friend's father had died by suicide like two years before. And she just flat out told me, she says, I can't see God as father because of what my dad did.
00:14:20
Speaker
I mean, I'm paraphrasing, I don't remember how she explained it. Basically, you know, to her father meant pain and abandonment. And, and that was a real wake up call to me. And I'm glad it happened so early in my life, because, you know, I was maybe 13 at the time. And I thought, Whoa,
00:14:37
Speaker
I need to pay attention to this. I mean, I don't want to keep this friend from approaching Jesus or approaching God because she can't call God Father. And of course, since then, you know, I've gone through so many different iterations of, you know, it does really change when you use feminine pronouns for God. And God, the feminine imagery is used in the Bible in various places for God.
00:15:02
Speaker
I mean, Jesus even said, you know, I long to gather Jerusalem as a mother gathers her chicks, you know, under her wings. And so, you know, that feminine imagery was always there, but I, you know, for various reasons, I'm not going to go into, it's kind of tedious. You know, we've used the male image for God, and that has kept a lot of, especially a lot of women
00:15:27
Speaker
away from approaching God because of the rates of domestic violence, the high rates of sexual abuse, of rape. For a lot of women, a male figure is not at all safe, and we have to really pay attention to that.
00:15:45
Speaker
And just knowing that, you know, God is so beyond gender. I mean, God is all gender, no gender. To get tangled up in that language is just, I think, well, it's just foolish. I think it's foolish to get so attached to certain language for God because we know that God is beyond all language even. You know, we use what we have the best way we can, but to be able to adapt that language is really important.
00:16:15
Speaker
And,
Integrating Spirituality into Life
00:16:16
Speaker
you know, the whole thing about, you know, having to go through one sacrament before you receive the other, you know, well, I mean, that's part of the reason, I guess, that I'm not Catholic.
00:16:30
Speaker
And even in the Episcopal Church, there are some churches where you have to at least be a professing Christian. There are more and more churches in that denomination who say you're welcome no matter what. And I kind of go for that because I think, you know, I'm not about keeping Jesus away from anybody.
00:16:52
Speaker
But, you know, that gets tricky because you've got centuries of tradition and doctrine. And, you know, I never wanted to be flippant about it. I do think it's possible to confess your sin and receive the Lord Jesus who's a Eucharist, you know, simultaneously, I think. But it's not for me to, you know, tell the Catholic Church, you're wrong about this. You need to change that.
00:17:18
Speaker
But I think still, you know, if you perceive God as all loving, all merciful, compassionate, then that makes it easier to even go to confession. Because you know that I am a work in progress and God is ultimately patient. And so wherever I am today, that is fine with God because I am still turning to God.
00:17:48
Speaker
I want to keep going on this path. I want to keep letting go of things that are harmful. I want to stop hurting people. I want to stop hurting myself. But I know that this isn't going to happen overnight, Lord. And thank goodness you know that you understand that better than I do. You're more patient with me than I am with myself. So even to go to confession, if you have a damaging image of God,
00:18:17
Speaker
I don't know how much good going to confession even does. You may go through the sacrament and the priest may say, I absolved you, but can you receive that absolution? See, that's the question. Does the priest absolve you? Can I receive it? And if I still see God, it's just waiting for me to screw up in this perfectionist who just thinks that I should have straightened up a long time ago.
00:18:44
Speaker
and why am I still so screwed up, then that absolution, that doesn't mean anything to me really if I can't receive it, if I don't really believe it.
00:18:56
Speaker
Yeah, I keep getting images of how I thought when I was going to my first confession many, many years ago, of how like my little soul inside had all these marks on it and it got, you know, God was erasing the marks. And before I even left the church, there was another one getting marked on. Yeah, it is kind of
00:19:19
Speaker
It feeds all of our desires to be perfect and our desires to have good records and great grades and all of those things when we also put God in that image of how is God grading me today on my, you know, being a good human. Yeah. Well, you know, what comes to mind is someone like the Samaritan woman, you know, that Jesus talked with. Well, she had a pattern of relationships
00:19:49
Speaker
And there could be a lot of reasons for that. You know, some of them may have been her own doing, but some of it may have been, you know, she may have had a really rough beginning. You don't know. She may have been abused a lot early in life because we know that that one outcome of childhood sexual abuse is often promiscuity. And like, I mean, that's their patterns that develop. So we don't know. We don't know her backstory.
00:20:17
Speaker
We do know that she became a convert and she went back and told her whole village. But I keep thinking, okay, what was the rest of her life like? How long was it before she unlearned these emotional patterns of relying on a male for some kind of affirmation or, you know, she still had work to do.
00:20:42
Speaker
And, you know, I don't think Jesus expected her to just boom, oh, my whole outlook is different and everything is all new. Well, in a sense it is, you know, in a metaphysical sense, we are new at the moment Christ enters our lives. You know, I'm guessing that she had quite a bit of work to do in terms of understanding, okay, now that I know that God loves me and I'm forgiven,
00:21:07
Speaker
How does that change the way I relate to myself, the way I relate to men, the way I relate to my community? You know, these stories, we don't know the details of how they work themselves out later. But just looking at people who are in recovery, people of faith, people who have been faithful Christians for many years,
00:21:27
Speaker
you recognize there is always this continuum of development, you know, of becoming different than you were before. And sometimes we have an almost miraculous liberation from, say, addiction to alcohol. I mean, you do hear about that. There are people being almost spontaneous healing.
00:21:49
Speaker
that kind of gets them down the road pretty far before they begin doing their own work. But there's always a process that follows that. And when I understand that, then I'm also able to accept myself as I am today because I know that God doesn't expect me to suddenly become perfect just because I'm making a decision. God knows that there are deeply rooted patterns in my life that I spent 20 years learning how to think like this.
00:22:18
Speaker
I'm not going to unlearn that in 10 minutes of prayer. And I think often we forget that Jesus being human like us means that Jesus understood.
00:22:30
Speaker
A process of becoming a person is complex and it involves habits of thinking, habits of believing, even emotional habits we get used to. And so understanding that God receives me as I am today, again, that gives me the freedom to say, okay, I'm going to work on this some more today.
00:22:49
Speaker
how far I get. It's very freeing and you realize that you have the freedom to grow. The shame and guilt really put a cramp on that freedom that makes it hard.
00:23:05
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, if we think of Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman as the opportunity for her to be told, I love you as you are, no matter what, right here in this moment, no matter what you do when you leave this well, this is what is true. That kind of changes and shifts the perspective, right, of it wasn't that
00:23:29
Speaker
Jesus, and we aren't in the mind of Jesus necessarily, but then he was like, okay, she's gonna go be perfect now. It was more just, I see everything about you and I still am here talking to you and I still accept you and love you as you are.
Connection to Ignatian Spirituality
00:23:44
Speaker
Use that to go and figure out what the rest of your life will look like, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And you know, you see this in the way we treat one another,
00:23:57
Speaker
And you as a parent, I'm sure you've seen this over and over again. When a child feels secure in the parent's love, that child can develop the kind of emotional courage to just learn about life and try things and make mistakes or not do real well at something or have a bad day and get over it.
00:24:25
Speaker
because that child is in the safety of the parent's love. But if you have that same child and the parent is always withholding love in order to try to manipulate that child to be good or do something, it's a whole different scenario. And that child does not have the emotional freedom to just grow naturally. I mean, we grow by trial and error, by trying things, by
00:24:51
Speaker
You know, it's an ongoing experiment, this growth called human life. And so when we see how that has an impact on children, it should just be kind of a short little leap to see, well, it's the same with me. It's same with people in my life. I mean, I'm a spiritual director and my primary, the primary thing I need to do when I speak with someone, when I sit with someone in a spiritual direction,
00:25:20
Speaker
is that I must create a safe, sacred, expansive space for that person in which that person can be exactly who he or she is, regardless of what they're going through, regardless of how they are emotionally, what's going on in their lives, what they're struggling with. I must create that safe space. And when they realize that they are in that safe space, then they can exhale
00:25:51
Speaker
they can begin to tell the truth about what's going on. And that's the only way that can happen. And whether I am with a client in spiritual direction, or if I'm just in a relationship with people that I meet daily, if I create that space for them that's safe, then they actually are more free to ask questions, to face the truth,
00:26:21
Speaker
maybe even make a change in their lives. But coming at them with condemnation and judgment, I mean, that's just worthless. It does no good whatsoever. It makes it harder for them to move. So I just, I tell people I would rather err on the side of mercy and compassion always than I'd rather give people too much room
00:26:44
Speaker
Maybe a little too loosey goosey with rules or what? I'd much rather err on that side of it than be the one who carried condemnation or judgment to the point where people just, they couldn't do the work they needed to do. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I love the Ignatian phrase of meeting people where they are and not carrying them one step further in your direction.
00:27:14
Speaker
meeting people where they are, and then journeying one step forward together, right, wherever that is. But it's always in a direction towards God, right? And that's gonna look different for every person. And I also, because of that meeting people where they are, and some of the other tenants of a nation spirituality, it's really what taught me
00:27:34
Speaker
the phrase, loved as I am, you know, it really had put that into my mind and into my heart. How did you first come to know not only the phrase, you know, loved as I am, but also about Ignatian spirituality? Because clearly, you're not Catholic. It's a Catholic spirituality, but it's also universal. Like there's a lot of non-Catholic, sub-pactic Ignatian spirituality. So how did that come into your life?
00:27:59
Speaker
Well, it's kind of a fun story because, you know, I worked as a book editor in publishing for 32 years. And the last 22 of those years was at Loyola Press in Chicago. It's a Jesuit ministry and it's a publisher. I had never heard of Ignatius of Loyola. You know, I just hadn't. I had nothing against saints. You know, I thought that was kind of interesting because as a Protestant fundamental, you know, I didn't grow up with the saints. But I'd always been interested and open to it. But anyway,
00:28:29
Speaker
at oil press shortly after I came on board there, they decided to really the leadership there decided we need to look into our roots and see what our real niche as a publisher should be because their trade department, their general spirituality books for adults department was just forming and they were trying to do a little bit of everything. They were trying to compete with New York publishers and evangelical, you know,
00:28:57
Speaker
And it was all over the place and they decided we need to figure out, you know, let's look into our roots. So that meant that we began a movement toward much more ignacious, ignition spirituality centered books. And as it turned out, yeah, that was our niche. That's what we needed to really be focusing on. And loyal oppressors also, their bread and butter really is producing faith formation materials for Catholic schools and parishes.
00:29:26
Speaker
So they even took the Ignatian part into that and they developed a whole new faith formation program, which really I thought was very honoring of children and their own relationship with God and just a tremendous faith formation program. Well, also in trade books, which is where I worked, so I ended up working with Jesuits, you know, Jesuit writers. I'm editing books on the spiritual exercises.
00:29:56
Speaker
As an employee, I went through sort of a form of the exercises just so that I could be more familiar with it. And what I discovered was Ignatius, you know, five centuries ago had discovered some principles of life and growth and understanding that I had actually tapped into as a writer of fiction.
00:30:24
Speaker
What the creative process had taught me about just growth and becoming and growing understanding, such as paying attention to your emotions, respecting your deep intuition, being more connected to your body and what your five senses are telling you. All of that, as a fiction writer, I had learned to tap into and pay attention to.
00:30:47
Speaker
But then I'm kind of hearing these same principles, but in a more specifically spiritual format. And I thought, okay, for one thing, Ignatius was like the original Catholic evangelical, because he was talking about having a relationship with Jesus. Evangelicals, that's the thing you hear all the time, relationship with Jesus. Well, Ignatius, he was saying that 500 years ago. And the Catholic faith has always had that.
00:31:16
Speaker
You know, it's not like he discovered something new, but he really brought a new emphasis to the fact that we are to be in friendship with God. We are to walk as friends with Jesus. And, you know, it was just ringing all of these bells for me and I thought, okay, okay.
00:31:33
Speaker
Not only does he understand some of these deeper things that my creative work has revealed to me, but this is just a very refreshing take on spiritual growth. And so I became a fan right away and eventually discovered that, oh, you know, these principles help us help one another grow spiritually. And, you know, it led to me getting trained as a spiritual director and
00:32:00
Speaker
Now I'm retired from book publishing, but you know, I have a growing spiritual direction practice and it's like, it all fits really well. But it was kind of funny the way it happened because having never heard of Saint Ignatius and then discovering that actually, well, he and I actually figured out a lot of the same things in just using different kinds of language. And, um, so it's been a very, a very satisfying kind of spirituality to really
00:32:29
Speaker
to really immerse myself in. And especially, you know, all that he figured out about discernment.
00:32:39
Speaker
And as a kind of a macho Spaniard guy, you know, he was quite open to what we now call sort of the feminine part, the feminine functions in the human personality. I actually have a book that kind of compares, it talks about how Carl Jung, the great psychologist,
00:33:05
Speaker
Um, how he talks, he mentioned Ignatius, you know, various times. And so even, I mean, it's like Ignatius was tapping into what we would now call in some ways union psychology. I mean, not completely, it's not a perfect match, but, but he was figuring out some things that they didn't really have names for back then, but that now we say, yeah, he's talking about the masculine and feminine. Yeah.
00:33:34
Speaker
part of the human personality. And all of it has to come to bear on the way we understand God and also on the way we go about discerning. You have to allow your body to talk to you, your emotions to talk to you, your intuition to talk to you, your dreams and desires and fears, all of that needs to figure in. And it becomes kind of a very holistic way of looking at your life, of discerning where God, where the Holy Spirit is leading you.
Holistic Reflection and Personal Growth
00:34:05
Speaker
And it's just, you know, he was ahead of his time. And I just see it resonating in so many ways with what we have since discovered, you know, in a scientific way. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm a fan. I'm still a fan. It's interesting you mentioned
00:34:26
Speaker
Carl Jung, because I bring it up in a Christian Relationships class that I teach. And his philosophy also includes like the shadow self versus the self that you, you know, show to the world, things that you have to discover about yourself to really be your unique and real person. And that's something that Ignatius talks about a lot, you know, through the spiritual exercises, you're really trying to find out who is the real you and bring everything to the surface.
00:34:56
Speaker
The other thing is that I didn't know about Ignatius either before I worked in a Jesuit school. And what really resonated with me was always that Ignatius cared about my real life, cared about what was actually happening in the day-to-day.
00:35:14
Speaker
cared about whether or not I made a pro-con list about something or talked to mentors and guides about it. In fact, that's part of the discernment process. And so it really was able to take what human beings are really experiencing and put it in the context of faith, even down to imaginative prayer, where you don't have to know
00:35:34
Speaker
everything about a scripture passage, or even be a character that's possible to be in that scripture passage. You know, we're not that many passages with women as a named character. So when you think about trying to put yourself in a scripture passage,
00:35:50
Speaker
Most of the time when it's described, you're like, well, I can't be there. But when Ignatius describes contemplation and when kind of going through Ignatius spirituality in that way, well, yeah, I can be there because it's not about whether or not I was in the original scene. It's about what is Jesus talking to me about right now in that scene in the present day.
00:36:11
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, well, and of course, as a writer, you know, the imagination is really important to me. And I recognize imagination as a very spiritual function. You could really pray if you didn't have imagination. You know, you wouldn't know what to pray for. You wouldn't be able to name your desires if you had no imagination. And yeah, the real life, well, and see the thing is,
00:36:40
Speaker
is if you begin to recognize that you can find God in any place in any person, because again, God, this love that permeates the universe and belongs to just permeate us so completely that we're in union with that love. And I mean, Jesus talks so much about union in one of his long final prayer before he was taken and crucified. When you realize that
00:37:11
Speaker
that this is the reality, then there's no secular versus sacred. You're not dividing your life into, well, this is spiritual and this is not spiritual. And so yeah, normal life is your life in God. Well, that's a completely liberating way to see your life. And you're able to be more honest about things too, I think.
00:37:38
Speaker
You know, one thing about the whole Ignatian form of discernment and reflection, you know, in the spiritual exercises, you're constantly reflecting on, well, what was that prayer like for me? How did this day go? And one thing that helps us do is that I'm not just looking at, okay, what bad thing that did I do today that I need to confess?
00:38:01
Speaker
I'm not minimizing sin or evil. All you have to do is look at the news or just your neighborhood and you see those things are very real.
00:38:13
Speaker
They're very real. But what the ignition path of discernment and reflection helps me do is not just recognize, okay, I did this thing that I shouldn't have done, or I said this thing that I shouldn't have said. It helps me begin to reflect and say, okay, what is the deeper pattern here? You know, why did I say that thing that I said? Why have I developed this habit in the way I relate to this person?
00:38:41
Speaker
In other words, I'm digging deeper and I'm looking at, okay, what's the root of this? Because it's, you know, I mean, it's fine to like go to confession and said, well, I did this and I said that, but the real progress happens when the Holy Spirit helps me look deeper and say, okay, where is this coming from? You know, what am I afraid of that I keep jumping into this way of relating to this person or what to, you know,
00:39:08
Speaker
What am I really angry about, Lord? I snapped at my husband today for absolutely no reason. So that wasn't just about him doing that thing that irritated me. There's something deeper going on here. And that's what I need to deal with. It's not all this sin or that sin. And when you begin to work with your interior life in that way, then you can really begin to see progress and that you say,
Spiritual Direction and Church's Future
00:39:37
Speaker
Oh, okay, this is where that comes from. Okay, Lord, let's pray about this. I'm not gonna pray so much about the fact that I snapped at my husband. We both know where that came from. Help me figure out, okay, why did I feel that compulsion to do it? Let's talk about that. And God says, okay, fine, like the native. This is a real issue. And that is just, oh, it,
00:40:05
Speaker
It really enables you to not only progress and become more evolved, more mature spiritually, but you can also see your progress, you know, because you're reflecting on your activity and the way you are, you can begin to see, Oh, you know what? It's been two weeks since I snapped at my husband. Yeah. And therefore this must be working.
00:40:34
Speaker
Because this habit is abating. I'm managing to actually change this habit. And that's so encouraging to be able to say, oh, okay, yeah, I'm getting better here. I'm learning. I'm learning. I'm developing.
00:40:50
Speaker
You know, how many times did I do this? Let me confess it to the priest. And I'm not minimizing, you know, using a professor. I think that's really healthy to have another person in on this. Sometimes it can really help. But just the nature of the confession is a big, big difference in how you see yourself and, you know, in how you progress.
00:41:13
Speaker
Yeah, it's a both and, right? Asking for forgiveness for what you've done, but then also asking for help into how to figure out how to not do that again. And also looking at, I think Ignatian spirituality helped me to look at sin as damaging relationship as opposed to sin as like black marks on my soul. And I think that really
00:41:39
Speaker
That's the thing that makes you want to work on the root cause when you really think, how am I damaging this relationship with God? And then in turn, damaging relationships with others because I'm not figuring out why this is happening over and over again. And I'm glad that you mentioned spiritual direction earlier because I think that's often a foreign term to people. It's been around forever, but to be able to really know what that is and know that that's something that
00:42:08
Speaker
is available to you as any person of any faith, but to be able to have the conversation that the main purpose is just two people talking about faith, where the focus is on one person's development in their relationship, right? And where did I harm this relationship and how can I be better at it?
00:42:29
Speaker
we often don't know that that's an option necessarily, or we've heard it, or we don't really know what it is. So I kind of want to keep bringing it up to people as find somebody to do that with. I think you said in a conversation a week or two ago that that's really the future of churches is having that conversation, having people continue to develop their relationship through spiritual direction that kind of leads them back then to the community.
00:42:56
Speaker
Reconcils them with the community, gives them an opportunity to be a part of something bigger. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, the church is going through some very difficult. I just use the word evolution. I think the world is constantly moving toward something better, I think. Again, that foundational, that fundamental love
00:43:23
Speaker
that gives everything life is always moving us toward that next phase of who we are. And the church is in that too, and it's very painful. It means that sometimes things kind of get taken apart before they can be put back together again. But regardless of where a person is in terms of belief or unbelief or church or churched or unchurched or whatever, they continue to have an interior world.
00:43:53
Speaker
that continue to have a spiritual life, even if they don't use spiritual terms to describe. And so in spiritual direction, you're simply, you're sitting with someone who's listening to you try to describe what's going on in your interior world. And, you know, as a spiritual director, it doesn't matter to me what vocabulary you use, it doesn't matter to me what religious tradition you're from,
00:44:21
Speaker
because I do believe that God is constantly inviting every single person into communion. And depending on your culture, depending on where in the world you are, you may have different language for that, but God is no respecter of persons. And so I believe that that holy love is always inviting you into some kind of conversation.
00:44:50
Speaker
And again, I'm just trying to create a nice, safe, expansive place for that to happen. And I think a lot of people, especially those who have been wounded by church life, regardless of which church it is, there are a lot of people who are never going to walk in a church door, maybe not in their whole lifetime, because of what they think about the church or what people in church have done to them or whatever.
00:45:17
Speaker
And so in spiritual direction, it's like you're creating a place for them to still talk about their spirituality and explore it. And, you know, I would love to see people end up in faith community because I think we're built for community. We're designed, we're created to live in community. And I think it's healthy if you have one. Nevertheless, a spiritual director will sit with you and be with you wherever you are.
00:45:48
Speaker
you know, in that process.
Societal Challenges to Spiritual Understanding
00:45:50
Speaker
And I do think that a lot of the spiritual work within people may happen outside of church, you know, in the not so near future, or maybe in the near future, I think, especially with younger people, you know, people in their 20s and 30s, they're just a growing number of them, they have no interest in church, they don't know what it means, they don't have any language for it.
00:46:13
Speaker
They don't see any need for it. And so, you know, I'm not going to demand that they come inside my church building and sit and listen to us talk about our spirituality in a certain vocabulary. I am willing to go out and, you know, be with that person where they are and trust that the Holy Spirit is at work. You know, either the Holy Spirit is at work or we're all in really bad shape.
00:46:40
Speaker
Either I believe it or I don't. And I just used to believe that the Holy Spirit is at work and we're all in process. Yeah, I feel like I want to add on to the Ignatian phrase of meet a person where they are. Meet a person where they are so they can understand their belovedness and then go out and
00:47:05
Speaker
see that belovedness and other people and help other people understand their belovedness. Because sometimes, you know, I can go to a spirit. Well, now I'm trained to be a spiritual director. So I guess it's that moving on. But like you go to spiritual direction to develop your relationship with God. But there's a next step. Once you've figured out once you've kind of figured out and it's not like a
00:47:27
Speaker
next step that happens in a certain amount of time, and it's not like a requirement that you develop your relationship with God, but it's kind of something that naturally happens that you don't put your relationship with God, you understand that you're loved as you are, and then you want to help other people do the same thing. And that's the kind of thing that will lead people back to community, right? If we start there,
00:47:52
Speaker
because I think one of the things that gets in the way so much of community is our own inability to know that we're loved, because then we can't see others in that light as well. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I agree with everything you just said. You know, when Jesus began his public ministry, he essentially is saying to people,
00:48:19
Speaker
rejoice because the kingdom of heaven is here. In other words, in my translation of that is you are already loved. It's already a fact. And so I'm here to show you how to live as if you're loved. You know, Jesus was confident in his heavenly father's love, and that enabled him to do all that he did. And he was able to work in collaboration
00:48:46
Speaker
And, you know, what we're called to do is to collaborate with God at the universe to help this love continue to permeate and energize everything, you know, every person, everything that happens. I know I'm speaking kind of mystical, you know, really large general terms, but if we can kind of keep that in the back of our mind that, you know, I am I'm invited to
00:49:15
Speaker
collaborate with God, do whatever I can to help people know that before they do anything or change their mind or anything else, God already helps them. And when they begin to believe that, then, you know, that's the liberation I think that Jesus was talking about, you know, set the prisoners free.
00:49:42
Speaker
you know, free from the prison of our weird belief systems, free from the prison of our shame, our guilt, our fear, you know, we're all afraid. And how many times did Jesus say, don't be afraid, don't be afraid. So it's a different way of going about life. And I think you're right, you know, just naturally,
00:50:09
Speaker
It's like once I understand, okay, I am loved, I am the beloved, then I think it's so, I'm so much more sensitive to see other people and understand that, you know, he doesn't know the beloved. Oh my gosh, I want him to know what I'm, what I am. And I want him to begin to experience some of the freedom I have because I know I'm loved. I'm free to grow and change.
00:50:37
Speaker
become more of who I was created to be. And so when you see people, I think you become much more sensitive to recognizing the kind of prisons that people live in. And you just want to see them free of that. I think that's evangelism. It's not getting people to recite certain theological facts.
00:51:03
Speaker
It's nice to have those theological frameworks to use, but it's not about, okay, I confess I'm a sinner in Jesus and I want Jesus to save me from my sin. I grew up with this evangelical culture that is basically, you do these five steps and you're good to go. Some of that is inherent in the conversion process. You have to have certain things that you understand, of course.
00:51:33
Speaker
But I think the real impetus of evangelism is that you look out at the world and you say, I see all of these people, they're imprisoned in their shame, in their woundedness. And to me, when I think of sin, what I'm really thinking of is the systems of this world that damage people. And the first thing Jesus did when he encountered a person was he healed them. He didn't talk to them about their sin.
00:52:02
Speaker
I can't find a single place except two or three places where he's really confronting the Pharisees. But in terms of encountering people, the first thing he did was heal them. And then maybe, you know, he would say, and your sins are forgiven. It's almost like, you know, the real thing we need to do here is I need to heal this person. And I think most of the time our sinfulness is wrapped up in our woundedness.
00:52:31
Speaker
You know, we have been damaged by various systems in this world. And that is where Jesus wants to meet us. He says, I'm going to heal you. And then I'm going to help you see how wrapped up you've gotten in this system that is just tearing you apart. And so that you can, number one, stop participating in that system.
00:52:59
Speaker
you know, but also be healed. And, and so I just don't, I don't think it's helpful to start with people's sin. I just don't think, I don't think that's what Jesus did. You know, he starts with, okay, where do you hurt? Let, let me reach you there. Cause we don't have the ability to change when we're still hurting. Like we don't have the ability to go forth and send no more when we're still trying to recover from whatever it is.
00:53:28
Speaker
Yeah, and you might've just answered this, but I usually ask, is there anything in this, well, there's lots of things in 2023 that anyone could point to that makes it difficult to understand your belovedness, but is there anything in particular that you think stands out right now that kind of keeps people from understanding this concept of being loved as they are? One thing that comes to mind is, especially in the United States, I think,
00:53:58
Speaker
We've just so much bought into an individualistic way of getting through life. And we're so, we have so bought into this meritocracy. Like, if I'm smart enough, if I make the right decisions, if I work hard enough, my life will be okay.
00:54:26
Speaker
And if my life is not okay, then either I've screwed it up or there's somebody else I need to blame. You know, it's, it's a really restrictive construct for getting through life. And, and yet we buy into it because we're just told all everything from the old Westerns, you know, to, um, even a lot of self help, you know, is very much about,
00:54:52
Speaker
You can be the best that you can be kind of thing. And it totally overlooks the fact that we are designed to love one another and be in community. We're designed to need one another, to depend on one another. And when we try to pull out of that and do it all on our own, and even a lot of spirituality is very, very self-focused.
00:55:18
Speaker
A lot of the spirituality kind of self-help stuff, it really is not helpful because you're still on your own trying to develop this prayer habit or do this other thing. And when you pull out of community and try to do all this on your own, it's just a losing battle because we were not designed that way.
00:55:43
Speaker
We just were not. And, and I say that as an introvert. Okay. I mean, I can be on my own for days on end and not talk to a person and be completely happy. Okay. However, I also know that I am integrated into community and I need that community and that community needs me.
00:56:06
Speaker
And when I need help, I need to speak up and go to someone and say, I need help. I need to be able to go to a person in my parish or a neighbor and say, I need your prayers. I'm having a really rough day. Or everything needs to be in the context of I belong to this community. And so I think this individualistic way of going through life
00:56:37
Speaker
It puts so much pressure on us to make sure we get it done right. Don't screw up and that we do the smartest thing and we make the very best decisions. It's self-sabotaging.
00:56:52
Speaker
It really is. And you know, that's one thing. That's just the thing that comes to mind. That's a biggie. Well, especially because there's so many prescriptive ways to live life, even for your children, they're supposed to have certain milestones at certain times. And when they don't and you failed, that's not actually true of children like there's, there's a kind of a
00:57:13
Speaker
average timeframe, but really kids grow on their own. I mean, they, they kind of come to those milestones at their own time. Um, I remember when I was potty training my kids, there was one day method, the three day method, and I was none of the, none of the methods worked for my children. And I, and I had a wise parent who also just didn't try any of those methods say to me,
00:57:38
Speaker
they're not going to go to kindergarten without being able to use the bathroom. Like they'll figure it out. And then I was like, okay, so like, I don't, you know, they'll get old enough to figure it out and you don't have to push the process. So yeah. Yeah. I think that. That also keeps us on our own and in our own individual silos is sometimes not knowing if we'll be understood and not knowing our story will be heard, not knowing if people will empathize with what they hear.
00:58:08
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it is, it's a big one for sure. We put, we put enormous pressure on ourselves and, and our culture puts enormous pressure on us too. I mean, you know, without getting political, but I mean, just look at the state of kids' sports. Tremendous pressure. It's not like you can just have a pickup game of ball with the neighbor kids anymore. It's, it's gotta be very organized. It becomes really competitive.
00:58:36
Speaker
parents have to be like 110% in with you. I mean, it's, and I'm not, I'm not denigrating, you know, group sports or even organized sports, but just the perfectionistic pressure that our culture puts on even our kids participate in sports, you know, it's, it's,
00:59:01
Speaker
really damaging. Every year we have to get better. Every year we have to do something a little bit better. We have to do it even better.
00:59:07
Speaker
which means we have to do more or we have to learn new ways of proceeding. Yeah, it can be exhausting because you should always be growing, but sometimes that doesn't mean throwing everything out and starting all over again either. Yeah. We're seeing the ramifications of this in the mental health, especially for teenagers or adolescents. Mental health issues are just skyrocketing with young people.
00:59:33
Speaker
I was on the PBS NewsHour a couple of nights ago talking about what the typical teenager has to do with the school. Hours of homework, hours of extracurricular activities, the story was about how little sleep they get.
00:59:50
Speaker
And the fact that teenagers actually need a lot of sleep for their mental processes and everything. And yet most of them don't get enough sleep. And it's because they have programmed all of this stuff so that they can succeed.
01:00:05
Speaker
get into the right college, you know, get all the right points. So we're seeing the results of this perfectionistic culture and also the individualistic way of going about life. We're seeing the bad fruit of all of that in our kids, and it's just heartbreaking.
01:00:24
Speaker
Yeah.
Latest Book and Future Discussions
01:00:25
Speaker
Well, that's why this message is so important. I think not only, you know, for me to say it and put it on a podcast label, but for every guest that comes on to share their own perspective so that hopefully somebody will hear a perspective that resonates with them and like they can start to really understand that belovedness about themselves and others. Yeah.
01:00:48
Speaker
Benita, this has been such a great conversation. I want to make sure that I mention that your latest book is a four week personal retreat with the female doctors of the church, which I think is so awesome because I don't think everybody even knows who the four female doctors of the church are. But can you tell us in just a couple words what that book is about? Well, I think Maria Perez came to me with this idea.
01:01:14
Speaker
And at first I thought they were needing an expert on the four female doctors of the church. And they are Therese of Lisieux, Therese of Avila, Hildegard of Bingen, and Catherine of Sien. And they said, well, you don't need to be an expert, because you know, there are academics that spend whole lives talking about these women. But they said, we want you to put your spiritual directors hat on. And I said, oh, I can do that. And he said, we want this to be a retreat book.
01:01:43
Speaker
And so, you know, there and you don't have to do it in just four calendar weeks. It's actually quite a bit to do because I've been doing retreat work for years. I'm very good at giving people stuff to do. So but each week focuses on one of one of these women and her particular gifts, her contributions to Christianity. And then I just I create retreat exercises, prayer practices for people to do things to reflect on.
01:02:12
Speaker
They receive words from the women themselves, which are just phenomenal. And then also little reflections, some scripture here and there. It's designed to help people do retreat and get to know each of these women a little better. And we've had, I mean, the sales are going very well. We've had really good responses to it.
01:02:37
Speaker
And it's especially good for like small group work. So if there was a group of women in a church or a group of men, I mean, anybody could do it. But that wanted to study a book together over maybe two or three months, not one month, because it's quite a bit to do. I think the feedback I'm getting is that people are really finding this a very fruitful way to look at these women and to look at their own
01:03:05
Speaker
their own prayer lives. So yeah, I'm very happy with how it's going. Yeah, that's great. I want to make sure to mention it because I know that we can look for a variety of ways to engage with retreat and we were just talking about individualism versus community and this is a great opportunity. This and many other books that you've worked on are great opportunities to grab one of those books and
01:03:31
Speaker
get a small group together and have a conversation about spirituality. Well, thank you. I know this will not be our last conversation because we have a lot of them about Ignatian spirituality, but thank you so much for being on this podcast. This is a real treat. I look forward to having conversations about being loved as you are with you in the future. Okay. Thank you so much, Gretchen. This is a great ministry.
01:04:17
Speaker
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Vanita. Maybe you noticed that I did a fair amount of listening this time. She has a lot of wisdom to share and I am always ready to learn from it. She and I have different histories, different upbringings, different ways of looking at the world, but we found connection through Ignatian spirituality. And I hope you found connection to her and her work listening to this episode as well. You can find her books linked in the show notes.
01:04:45
Speaker
Do you think you or someone you know has a story about being loved as you are that would fit with this podcast? Please reach out to me and let me know by emailing me at loved as you are pod at gmail.com. I have another exciting guest coming your way very soon. But for now, remember to be who you are because that's exactly who God wants you to be.