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One on One - Stephanie Clouatre Davis
137 Plays2 years ago
In this episode, Gretchen Crowder interviews Stephanie Clouatre Davis.
Stephanie, an Ignatian trained spiritual director and associate with the Dominican Sisters of Peace, enjoys both youth and adult ministry. In her 26 years of ministry for the Catholic Church, she has directed hundreds of retreats and spoken at many conferences for adults, teens, and young adults. She is a writer for the “Into the Deep” blog, is an Associate Spiritual Director with the Archdiocese of New Orleans Spirituality Center, and has taught in various elementary, high school, college, and continuing education programs. Stephanie has a Masters of Pastoral Studies from Loyola University and lives with her family in Covington, Louisiana.
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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
Starting the Podcast with Zencastr
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Introduction to Stephanie Huot-Davis
00:03:07
Speaker
Hello, and welcome back to Loved As You Are, an Ignatian podcast with me, Gretchen Crowder. I am so glad you are here. Today, I'm so excited to bring you my conversation with Stephanie Huot-Davis. Stephanie is another wonderful Ignatian writer from Becky Eldridge's Into the Deep blog, but she is also a kindred spirit who has, like me, worked with young people for decades.
00:03:31
Speaker
Stephanie is a nation-trained spiritual director and an associate with the Dominican Sisters of Peace. She enjoys both youth and adult ministry. In her 26 years of ministry for the Catholic Church, she has directed hundreds of retreats and spoken at many conferences for adults, teens, and young adults. Like I mentioned, she's a writer for the Into the Deep blog and is involved in helping Becky Eldridge bring her newest venture, Ignatian Ministries, to life very soon.
00:04:00
Speaker
Stephanie is also an associate spiritual director with the Archdiocese of New Orleans Spirituality Center and is taught in various elementary, high school, college, and continuing education programs. She is a master's of pastoral studies from Loyola University and lives with her family in Covington, Louisiana.
00:04:18
Speaker
This conversation was so life-giving for me. Stephanie has such incredible wisdom and is clearly experienced in giving talks about spirituality.
Insights on Spirituality and Ignatian Ministries
00:04:27
Speaker
I found myself fully engrossed in all she had to say about prayer, spirituality, and most importantly, coming to understand our belovedness. Believe me when I tell you, you won't want to miss a minute. So here we go.
00:05:15
Speaker
Welcome, Stephanie. I just introduced you to all of my listeners and told them that I met you through Becky Eldridge, like a few guests that I've had so far on this podcast. We met through the end to the deep log that we both write for, but then we've kind of talked a couple other times because we both work with teenagers and you've had a long experience of
00:05:35
Speaker
working with teenagers and working with spirituality. So I'm excited to have this conversation with you today. Thank you so much for coming on. Well, thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here and just talk to you. I know just to speak in real life, we do a lot of writing projects together, but to be present together is really good. Yeah. And our likeness to young people.
00:05:55
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. And you just finished a retreat with Becky, a silent retreat. Can you tell us a little bit about that? It sounded awesome. I wish I could have attended it in person. We did a silent retreat every year for the last six or seven years. We've done, of course, forgive one COVID year. We do a silent preach retreat in the Ignatian style. So it's sort of like the spiritual exercises, if you know a little bit about that, kind of takes the flow of that.
00:06:21
Speaker
But we did all women, so those women were in silence. We kind of just went through the weeks of the exercises, giving a talk here and there, and a prayer service here and there, and it was incredible. It was just, I'm always so surprised how God shows up individually to different women, the benefit and the beauty of sitting with people in spiritual direction. I'm a spiritual director as well. And we sit with them in spiritual direction. And one of my friends always describes spiritual direction as like sitting in front of the burning bush.
00:06:49
Speaker
You know, like this is that God is so alive. And that's how I felt with the retreat. I mean, of course, Becky and I said some things, right? We gave some talks, but it was not. It's always much more about what's going on with the individual person and how God is, you know, creating them, not just has created them, but is creating them through their lives and just seeing them become aware of that. It was just incredible. We had a great experience.
00:07:11
Speaker
Yeah, that is awesome that y'all offer that opportunity. I think people came in, it was in Louisiana, but people came in from other states as well. California, I think we had some Michigan, we had a couple, we had several different states, Texas. So there was people who flew, there were people who flew in all over.
00:07:27
Speaker
And they were willing to come to Louisiana in the middle of summer. That must say something so good about you and Becky that they will come to humidity. Maybe it's the jokes. I don't know. Maybe it's the funny. They do. They come in. I'm always like, it's so hot here. Surely it feels better in California right now than it does here. We were happy to have them. And the retreat house is big. And there was some cool. Anyway, we'll move it. We're moving it to August next year.
Cultural Reflections in Louisiana
00:07:50
Speaker
But that's not going to make it. No, that's just so cool. And said, hey, how about October? I was like, yeah, that's probably a good idea.
00:07:56
Speaker
We should consider the coolness, you know?
00:07:58
Speaker
The one thing I remember about my couple years in Louisiana is that it rained, especially in August, the first couple months of school year, it rained like every day at three or four o'clock. It was like humid, humid, humid, then it rained, and then it'd be humid again. It really is. In August, in the beginning of the hurricane season, really, there's a monsoon season that floods. Then we have a couple months of just waiting to not be hit, hoping and praying not to be hit by a hurricane. We had to go around that.
00:08:28
Speaker
It's a beautiful place. I mean, it's green and luscious. It's just hot. And it has wonderful food and such incredible people and community. I do remember that for my time there. A couple of the women came in early and with the cathedral, we got some good food down to the quarter in New Orleans. So that's fun. I guess to experience New Orleans is fun too, a little bit and see the culture, the rich culture of New Orleans.
00:08:58
Speaker
Well, and I remember there's so many retreat houses in Louisiana and churches in Louisiana, like you didn't have to go far to be able to host a retreat. It's a lot harder in a bigger Metroplex to find those areas. It is. And we're so culturally Catholic in a way from Louisiana. Like I always say, and this is just amazing, I think about it, I live on the North Shore and there are probably
00:09:22
Speaker
There's an abbey of Benedictines. There is like four, three or four or five different religious orders of women that are there. It's just so it's just like, you'll see them grocery shopping. Like I was grocery shopping the other day and I saw a chorizan like buying her groceries like she was like, hey, how's it going? So it's just, I don't know. And it's also in the lay people's lives, just a part of the culture of churches on every corner, etc. So it's a really, I forget to appreciate it. So thank you for bringing it up.
00:09:49
Speaker
You're welcome. I'm so glad to be able to connect with someone from Louisiana in this conversation because those were my first two years of teaching and I will always remember them fondly. Where were you? I was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana at St. Michael the Archangel. Oh yeah, what wonderful school. Yes, that's great. Yeah.
00:10:09
Speaker
Well, I'm so glad you're here.
Personal Reflection on God's Love
00:10:11
Speaker
Usually when we start the conversation, when we're talking about the theme of the podcast, I ask my guests, who is God to you? And how did you come to that understanding? I think, obviously, since you're in this Catholic culture, we just described that there's so many images of God and people just immersed in their faith around you. But how did you personally come to your understanding of who God is to you?
00:10:34
Speaker
That's a good question, and I think it's evolved so much in the decades of my life. It's hard to go back and really look at it, but I think about likely
00:10:45
Speaker
the beginning is my family, which we're all, you know, most of us were born into a family. And so seeing the love of my family and how they loved me helped me understand who God was, or the potential of God, who God was. I mean, as teenagers and young people, I think even preteen, we struggle with our image of ourself and loving ourself, which is kind of my life's work, right? Talking about that and thinking about that.
00:11:08
Speaker
But I remember feeling even at a very young age, even before I had a comparative, you know, comparing myself to others and stuff like that, just feeling the love of my, my mom and my dad and my three brothers. I'm a twin too. So I always say I don't, I don't just have like, I didn't just have like a housemate and a roommate. I had like a roommate. And so I was born with someone. And I think that that
00:11:32
Speaker
noticing the gifts that God had given me and the love of those people likely brought me to understand who God was. A lot of the voice of my mom. But there are times I can think of my early teenage years sitting in my, you know, my little country. I'm from a little Cajun town called Sanamaw. S-T period A-M-A-N-T, which is a little, but it's a little town, little white, you know, Catholic church that was just, you know, just simple. And just sitting there, I'm really,
00:12:02
Speaker
really understanding that I was created. And not even just, I mean, that's even before, by God, you know, I would just create it. That every cell of my body, that every unique part of me, you know, the way I looked, the way I think, the way I'm social, the way I laugh, all of this, I remember feeling like this overwhelming, like I was created.
00:12:26
Speaker
by God came after almost no way, right? And that means that that was done on purpose. And I remember even years later going not, and this was kind of my through my nation formation, but not just was created, but like, is being created.
00:12:41
Speaker
And that gave me even more solid grounding about being loved. Does that make sense? Yeah, that you're not just like the minute you came into the world and were born, your creation's done and therefore everything is just humanity after that. But the idea that God is continually creating you, is that what
00:13:01
Speaker
what you're saying, that's what I understood you to say. Yeah, like God is continually creating me, which I think so. So when I think about who God is, God's dynamic, I identify with the Holy Spirit. It's like, I find that people as a spiritual director, I find that people often will identify more with God, the Creator or Jesus, the Son or the Holy Spirit. And for me, it's always literally always been the Holy Spirit. And so I like like, like it's an ongoing creative act that the Holy Spirit acts upon us and on the world, everything.
00:13:31
Speaker
And I think that knowing helped me understand God's love. I think sometimes it's the intimacy, like every cell of my body on purpose, every hair on our head, you know, that kind of thing. Psalm 139, you know, he knew me and my mother's womb kind of thing, but it's also at times the vastness of creation that really helps me know that I'm loved. Like, oh, all of this was created. Oh, and me too. You know, that kind of thing.
00:13:59
Speaker
Yeah. And that idea I loved that you said you felt that intentional creation of who you were in your body, in your mind, in every part of you that is, that there was an intentionality to that and that you are different than God, even your twin, right? God created your twin differently. I have twins as well. They have the same DNA, but God still created them differently. You see it every day. It's interesting. Even amongst twins, it's like,
00:14:28
Speaker
Well, I have this person who's supposed to be just like me, but yet I'm so different. Like, that's how powerful God is, how beautiful God is, yeah. So when did Ignatian spirituality become a part of your life and a part of helping you understand who God is?
Journey into Ignatian Spirituality
00:14:42
Speaker
How were you introduced to that in particular? It's so interesting when I was thinking about this. Likely, I went to my undergrad at Loyola University. Well, I did my undergrad and my master's at Loyola University in New Orleans.
00:14:55
Speaker
But I can even go, and so I was immediately introduced to kind of Ignatian spirituality in that way. But before that, there was a St. Joseph's sister at my parish. Her name was Sister Mary John Hotard. She was a CSJ, congregation of St. Joseph's. And she asked me to give a talk on prayer in front of the whole, like in front of like at masses. And I was probably 16.
00:15:19
Speaker
And I remember talking about how my ongoing awareness that God was in all things of my life and her taking me aside and explaining to me why that was Ignatian and how that was Ignatian. That was probably my first instance of really understanding who standing gracious was.
00:15:38
Speaker
Now, to be honest, my undergrad got a little bit, but my formation and my spiritual direction was like my reintroduction to who Ignatius was and my deep dive to understand really what he's
00:15:52
Speaker
what he's done, I think, to the world. Just to retreats I've gone to, I've led retreats for about 27 years, right? So probably the first retreat I ever was a part of, it got great to be a part of. It had a nation taste to it, because retreats do in general. So I guess from the beginning, but also it's gotten deeper and deeper, like a spiral, my understanding of the nation.
00:16:16
Speaker
Yeah, and it seems like for you, since you were already talking about this Ignatian idea of finding God in all things, even before you knew that was an Ignatian idea, that perhaps there were elements of who you were and what your spirituality was that you were kind of finding a place for that already existed, but then you found this connection in a spirituality. You know, you already had elements of it, and then you found it in a actual lived spirituality of Catholicism.
00:16:46
Speaker
I felt that personally, and I still hear people say it. And I'm not talking about just young people. I hear, like, in the retreat that we just did in New Orleans, I heard people who in their 60s, 50s, 40s, say, wait, this is the way, like, if I let them, let's say we let them do an exam in prayer or an imaginative contemplation, right, where they're using their imagination or they're using their life and they're being very reflective about that.
00:17:10
Speaker
That's very nature. And they'll say, well, they will say to me in direction, this is how we've always prayed. And so they feel this connection, which is, I think, the genius of who St. Ignatius was.
00:17:25
Speaker
because he understood himself so very clearly that he allowed us to understand ourselves, our relationship with God. Does that make sense? It's just puzzling, if you look at the exercises, how much he understood what was happening inside of him so he could put it on paper to invite us to be aware of what was happening inside of ourselves.
00:17:48
Speaker
Yeah, and the fact that the spirituality is based in a real world understanding of yourself within your normal life, within your family, within your community. So you can't help but already have things to bring to prayer and bring to spirituality because it really focuses on your lived experience.
00:18:11
Speaker
Because some spiritualities can become otherworldly, right? Where you don't bring your real life experiences and your day to day and your messiness to them. You take yourself away from that in order to connect with God and heaven and another world. And so I think the appeal for me at least, and I didn't learn about Ignatian spirituality until I was 27 and starting working at a Jesuit school. I remember walking in and saying, could you tell me a little bit about
00:18:40
Speaker
The Society of Jesus, I've never really encountered them before, and what is this Ignatius thing? They were a little perplexed that it was that foreign to me, but I felt like I really was able to touch a real world, real life application, a real life encounter with God in some of the ways that I prayed.
00:19:00
Speaker
instead of feeling wrong, we're now like, oh, this is the way that it gets played. Right there. And even though it's 500 years old, more than now, right? Yeah, it feels so applicable. Like it feels so modern. And even when I say that this is a five year 500 year old prayer practice, let's try to do the exam and like I'm leading it or something like that.
00:19:22
Speaker
People are like, this can't be 500 years old. This can't be this way, right? Because it takes what's happening in your life and God and unifies it. It makes your living sacred and the children sacred.
00:19:39
Speaker
I was teaching a class on prayer and spirituality a few years ago and researching what made a great spirituality, because there's not that many, you know, Benedictine, Dominican, Ignatian. And one of the things that made a great spirituality was that it was adaptable, even a hundred, even after the founder was dead, even after, you know, hundreds of years that people could continue to bring it to a new level that was relevant to the day that we were in. And so longevity in a way.
00:20:09
Speaker
Yeah, so if we're willing to make it a living thing, as opposed to here's the rules, and here's how you've done it 500 years ago, it must apply now, but a living and breathing spirituality, that's really what makes people continue to connect to it.
00:20:25
Speaker
And that's what they, I mean, in nation's spirituality, yes. I mean, there's translations. I call them translations, no way. Like, it's not, it's translations probably from his original form. I mean, he wrote Spanish and it was in the 1500s. So maybe like in the 1800s or the 1900s, there was like these translations of what he was saying. And I think as we move into this, I got into the now, where we are now,
00:20:48
Speaker
The translations are beautiful. They just seem to be very adaptable and practical in a way that people can really pray. That's what I'm experiencing as I teach young people, as I do spiritual direction with people, as I give presentations in front of... It just seems like a place where people can really find their understanding of God in themselves and themselves, right? Both in.
00:21:14
Speaker
Yeah, and back to the retreat you just gave, every time any of us gives a retreat that is based in what we've learned from the spiritual exercises and from Ignatian spirituality, then we are giving new context to it and new language to it and moving it forward into the lives of the people around us. So I think that's wonderful.
00:21:33
Speaker
So the theme of the podcast is loved as you are. Is there a particular moment or story or some part of your life that really helped that concept of being loved as you are become real for you or become real for the people in your life?
00:21:49
Speaker
It's funny because there is this talk I was invited to give probably about 25 years ago for Notre Dame University, which I know that, you know, for a program called Indian Vision, which still happens, it's a great program. It was about understanding how you're loved, like being loved by God. I have these stories that I've told for many, many years about, as an adolescent, how I came to understand how I was loved.
00:22:14
Speaker
And so it's stories often like I had a friend who helped me understand that my body was good, right? That even though I might not look like everyone else in my mind, right? I don't have... I think my big struggle, we often struggle with numbers is weight, right? So I start with that academics, the number of like my GPA or my ACT or
00:22:36
Speaker
that I was okay and there were different people who helped me understand and come to that. I tell those stories still to people about how I came through other people to say, what you are is good. And that made me reflect on how God is good. But I think my most recent as an almost 50 year old woman is watching my kids
00:22:57
Speaker
graduate high school. So I have two wonderful, great, intelligent girls who are beautiful, who have both graduated from high school recently. So one graduate two years ago and one just graduated. And when I watched my youngest graduate this year, and as she walked across, you know, to receive her diploma, I was just dumbstruck by God's capability to love me. Like literally dumbstruck, like it just, it was like a generational moving inside of me.
00:23:26
Speaker
Like God had the wisdom and the love to create me for my mom. So I started thinking about all in this one second, right? God created me for my mom. You know, at one time she watched me cross, you know, and get my diploma.
00:23:43
Speaker
and all the ways that she loved me and God knew that I was for her and she was for me. And then how God made me strong enough through all my brokenness and I am very broken like everyone else. It almost raised tears in my eyes and that that brokenness could create a human like this could help create informal human like this with God. I mean, God created most of the forming, right? And I'm just trying to throw out wisdom to her and encourage her and in her own brokenness.
00:24:13
Speaker
that God made her so beautiful and made her for me and me for her. And just in that instance, I felt so abundantly full. I feel like I was overflowing. And that's kind of where the tears come from, I guess. Like God could love me so very much to give me an opportunity to be with these two young people.
00:24:37
Speaker
as they become great things. One's studying astronomy and physics and the other studying pre-med, sorry. I don't even know who knows what God's going to do with them. I get to just be here and experience it, and that who I am mattered to who they are becoming. That's awe. That's awe. I'm wondering awe in God's creation.
00:25:03
Speaker
I don't know if this is true for you as a parent. I know for me, and you have a 20-year-old and my oldest is 10, so I'm still in the thick of it, but I know for me, having my kids the last 10 years, I have done so much personal growth and understanding of who I am, watching them understand who they are, but also as I had to help them come to understand who they are.
00:25:27
Speaker
I helped them understand themselves as deaf children who wear hearing aids or as I helped them come to understand themselves as kids with learning differences, but also as kids who love animals and kids who are creative and kids who, you know, all of these things that they were learning about themselves and that I was helping them learn about themselves has really made me learn so much about myself, things I never knew about myself as a child.
Parenting and Personal Growth
00:25:53
Speaker
I don't know if that was resonant with your experience as a parent that
00:25:57
Speaker
over the last 20 years. You're really getting that, like what the realness of what God calls us to as parents. And I've been an educator for a long time. So I've worked with many, many young people for 20 plus years. So that affects my own raising too, in the sense that, yes, I am reflective about my own brokenness and my own gifts and my own experience of life.
00:26:26
Speaker
and how it affects my children, my own children. Because I've seen that done in ways that are very poorly done, right? And I've seen that done very well, and I'm sure you have too, as an educator, just like that, because we get kind of glimpsed into people's lives in that way. And it's a, it's a, it's a glimpsing that is one that, you know, that is sacred, I think, looking to people's lives in that way. But I think it makes me so super aware of,
00:26:55
Speaker
my own journey because my own journey can stop me from being like, I'm what God is calling me to be, right? And can call me into what God is calling me to be.
00:27:07
Speaker
So we talk about simple language of the nation-way, desolation and consolation. Desolation is what takes us away from God and consolation is what brings us towards God. So if I think about, for example, my own self-image as an adolescent and aware of how I treated myself in that self-image and how my family treated me, how society treated me really in a way, what was okay in the 80s and 90s,
00:27:36
Speaker
And then how I have to kind of be aware of that and evaluate that and almost examine that in Ignatian terms, right? To be very, very aware of it. It can hinder me or help me to grow my own children and help them hear the voice of God calling them. Does that make sense? Yeah, especially just...
00:28:00
Speaker
The things, the self-talk that you use either internally or externally, I know young kids can be such a reflection of who you are and what you say. And sometimes in moments when my kids are upset or crying or when younger throwing a tantrum and the words that come out of their mouth, I hear myself in those words. And I'm like, when did I say
00:28:29
Speaker
that or something like that about myself that they heard and now that that's what because it had to come from somewhere right and so you yeah you you see good and bad examples externally when you work with kids right but then you also
00:28:45
Speaker
live good and bad examples when you are raising your own kid and you realize, oh my gosh, I can't believe some of the things that I really thought was the way to go about raising kids. And then you try it and you're like, oh no, this is not. And we know this both with the epidemic in young people right now of just mental health and the rise of suicide in young people.
00:29:10
Speaker
It's that important to me when I think about it, for myself personally, and also for the young people that I get to accompany, right? Like in the sense that the little words, I call them, and kids don't know, young people don't know when I say it, it's like old tapes in your head. Now I've got to say where I say it's like old TikTok songs playing over and over in your head, you know? Just those old things that happen over and over and over in your head can become really dominant.
00:29:37
Speaker
And so Ignatius in, you know, Discernment of Spirits simply says, you know, we can dismiss them. We have the ability to dismiss them, not just once, but over and over and over again, to purify like what God is really saying to us. And I think that even that one simple tool for ourselves and for young people is very powerful.
Tools for Discerning Spirits
00:29:58
Speaker
It's at the beginning of the Discernment of Spirits and the spiritual exercises. It says, and Father Gallagher says it this way, be aware, understand, take action.
00:30:06
Speaker
B-U-T. There's a but in between what we can do and what we can't do. If something happens to us or some thought enters our mind, like an old TikTok song or old tape playing in our head, we can say that. Let me be aware of what's happening. Let me understand, where's that coming from? Let me take action. I can accept that or reject that. That small tool that I try to hand to young people, I don't license hands all the time,
00:30:35
Speaker
is powerful. Because we have this thing where we just, oh, just accept everything, all the things that are being said, everything that someone said about me is right and true. And that's just not not true. And I'm a lover of all people. I'm that kind of person. So but it's just that not everyone is saying everything that's true and right for you. Yeah, some things can be dismissed.
00:30:55
Speaker
And it should be, it's like pruning, right? It's like dismiss that part. Because it's just not true. It's a lie, right? But I think that helps us understand how we're loved. Because if we allow those voices, we will believe them. And we will not come to love ourselves in that way. Back in April, when I decided to finally hit the ground running and bring this podcast to life,
00:31:23
Speaker
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Speaker
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00:32:20
Speaker
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Speaker
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00:33:58
Speaker
Yeah, it's hard to have the voice of love be the loudest voice you hear because there's so many more voices that are loud in the sense of you can hear them in your own like hearing in the world and they are shouting at you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can hear it inside, but you also hear it outside and you see it in your phone and those are the voices that
00:34:22
Speaker
They are hard to prune out, and that's why the exam is so effective, too, to constantly examine your day and say, when was I listening to the wrong voices? I think that we live in our modern time in the loudest quiet place in the world that's ever existed, the loudest quiet place that's ever existed.
00:34:43
Speaker
You may walk into a room of people and you don't hear a lot. Like they may be on their phones or they may be texting or they may be, and it's like seems quiet.
00:34:53
Speaker
Whereas, you know, if you go back several decades, it would have seemed loud, you know, like the words that I heard that were not to be, you know, that were detrimental to my own growth, were said aloud to me, mostly, right? Yeah. But we, and I want to say, people want me to say young people, but I'd say we, how it happens for us too, that we are bombarded by more images and thoughts and just things.
00:35:18
Speaker
than we've ever been. And so discerning what is the voice that we should be listening to, that's hardest dang hard. That's a real hard for me, and I think for most people.
00:35:29
Speaker
Well, especially because, and I think this is easier for me too when I'm doing something electronically, but we all have so many people ourselves included that speak with such authority about things that it makes it hard to say, Oh, is this, is this the voice that's telling me the right thing? Or is this the voice that's telling me the right thing? And so it's that understanding of one of the reflections I like to do for myself when I look at something and start figuring out, is this the voice I should be listening to is, is this,
00:35:59
Speaker
a loving response? Is this a response that's recognizing the dignity of the other person? Is this a response that's listening to the story the other person is telling? Is it a response that respects that God created the other person too, just like God created me?
00:36:16
Speaker
And it's hard, too, because those voices come from authority structures that we recognize and have listened to, as well as, you know, people that we love or people that we
Discussing Disagreements with Dignity
00:36:27
Speaker
respect. And so really having coming up with what do you believe in what is your foundation is hard for young people, but really hard for adults as well.
00:36:38
Speaker
Yeah. And so it's so hard to even when you try to, you know, try to be good, or you create a young person to be good, right? So in the sense that, you know, like, I'll teach my children, for example, that are young adults down, you should be nice and kind to everyone, you know, you should give everyone dignity and respect. So they indeed do. But then you come back and this is the real truth, they come back like, well, that person who you told me to be, they said this,
00:37:04
Speaker
And I'm like, well, but let's discern that. Is that really, is that really giving you the dignity or giving the dignity of the person they said it to or no? And so it's complicated. It's not, it's not easy, but in a sense, like really everything's complicated. Like now, like it's like, this just, I think just accepting that complicated, that it is complicated and just kind of throwing yourself into the discernment and knowing that you have to do that kind of discernment at all times to really love yourself.
00:37:33
Speaker
which means to be healthy in the world for God, you know? Yeah. When I think that we mistake speaking in love and speaking with kindness as never disagreeing or never having a difference of opinion or having a tough conversation or having, you know, just a back and forth conversation about things. And I think your work with spiritual direction is a good step
00:37:59
Speaker
that not everyone has experience with spiritual directions, so not everybody understands what that process is, but there's also something called spiritual conversation when you're in a group. And how do you have a difficult conversation? How do you have a discernment conversation where not everyone's going to be on the same page? And it's involving this quiet, this prayer, this idea that everyone gets a chance to speak.
00:38:23
Speaker
then everybody gets a chance to reflect on what they heard, that really modeling of what a conversation should be or what a difficult conversation should be, or even what a disagreement or a debate should be. I think that we get a lot of examples of people yelling at each other or just yelling without the recipient being right there. And so I think all of us kind of need more practice and more examples of how to have those rich
00:38:50
Speaker
conversations where we can disagree, but we still are coming from a place of love. And maybe we can kind of see each other's point and reach a compromise, if that makes sense. It's radical. It makes sense. And it's radical. It's like counter-cultural. It's a radical thought that as you present a new idea that everyone might not agree on, that we could pause for a second and say, let's see how we think about that. Or let's give someone the time to think and then respond, right? Going inside of yourself.
00:39:20
Speaker
I personally see no other way forward though in our world in a way, right? The sense that that radical pause and discerning conversations and conversations with each other through spiritual direction, raising a child, talking to ourselves, talking to our spouses, right? Talking to our elderly parents.
00:39:42
Speaker
all of it, I think all of it needs is exactly what you were just describing, like a sense of just conversation that allows for discernment and pauses and it slows down. That's my big thing. I think that, you know, is it agaric-country, agro-country, how people say it, to work, is it a term from a nation, the nation where you write, where it's like working against something? I think slowness and deliberateness that you were just speaking of,
00:40:08
Speaker
is the working against the modern pushy, yelling, go forward quickly kind of way.
00:40:15
Speaker
Well, and I think that you've done some work with this as well. It's also the idea of being able to pause and listen to people who have different experiences than ourselves, who live in different, you know, cultural, ethnic, whatever it is, different states, different countries, understand what their real lived experiences and then have a conversation with actual people instead of concept, just always concepts and ideas. But like, who are the people at the root of
00:40:44
Speaker
those concepts, those ideas, those judgments, etc. And how much we can learn if we just listen. I mean, I've learned so much, you know, from just listening to people and their experience of life. It not only promotes dignity and worth, which is our primary goal, I think, as Christians. It helps us grow towards God.
00:41:07
Speaker
Understanding and knowing difference and seeing difference helps us become more whole, I think, as people and as a society.
00:41:15
Speaker
So when you're talking about having the idea and understanding the idea of being loved as you are, and then also trying to help teenagers, young people, your own family do that, what are some ways that help you maintain that idea?
Authentic Prayer's Impact on Youth
00:41:29
Speaker
Like remind yourself of that idea, whether it's prayer, retreats, conversations, whatever it is, what are some things that help you remind yourself that you are loved as you are? And what are some ways that you help others remind themselves that they are loved as they are?
00:41:45
Speaker
I think it starts with the adult individual, I would say, in a family, in a school setting, in a relationship where there's an adult. The adults will start with themselves, and we must begin with ourselves in prayer.
00:41:59
Speaker
And so I think there's tons of prayer formats that Ignatius gives, like a daily examine, which you can find tons of resources to do, like engaging in scripture through a, through imaginary prayer, where you kind of read what, you know, even the reading of the day.
00:42:15
Speaker
take the reading of the day and pray over it and say, where am I in this? Where is God calling me to be? And why is God calling me to be here in this place, in this scripture? I think a colloquy, which is another prayer that kind of engages Mary the mother or the Holy Spirit, if you're not Catholic, if you're not comfortable with Mary, first, and then Jesus, and then God asking God,
00:42:39
Speaker
What am I doing? What ought I do? Several questions. And there's other, you know, there's tons of formats out there that you can kind of find that we've created to help you do that. So you start there first. And once you've got yourself kind of settled, like you've got to have, you know, it's so interesting. One of my daughter's friends said one time to me, you really pray. I know that's a weird thing to say, but I have this chair that in my living room that I pray. I don't go off. I want to, you know, I want to be in the middle of things.
00:43:07
Speaker
And I was like, yeah, I have to. I literally have to, because otherwise I'm going to be sending things to the world that should not be sent from my own brokenness. I don't say that because it might happen. I'm saying that because it has happened. I have done things and said things I should not have said because I was not in God, living in God. Someone just told me this at the retreat. I think it's a beautiful image.
00:43:31
Speaker
I begin to live out in instead of living in out. So when I'm in prayer, I live from my interior to my exterior, right? Otherwise, when I'm not in prayer, which I do often, by the way, I'll like whatever comes at me, whatever experience that I'm responding, I'm reacting, you know, like I'm living out in. What prayer does, and we're called to that is to live that in out. And then when we get to young people, you know, that we deal with,
00:44:01
Speaker
First, we're the example of that, and then we can have a real conversation, which I think accompany it and having real conversations with young people, which is what Pope Francis invited us to do, but that is the real stuff. That's what Ignatius calls us to right there. And that's what we feel it. They don't have to tell us because we feel it inside of us. When I sit down with young people and I have a real conversation and I am in prayer,
00:44:25
Speaker
I am calm, you know, and I understand where God wants me to be, that God has me here in this conversation with this young people, then I can listen like you were saying earlier. I can listen to that young person and ask questions. Like it doesn't even have to be complicated. Like, oh, I was, you know, sitting with my friend Sarah. Oh, tell me more about Sarah. Who was she? You know, just listening. And like one of my special director friends says, people so want to just be heard.
00:44:55
Speaker
And we do, we do want to be heard because then hearing us that it validates our worth and our existence and we know we're loved. And dang, if we're loved, we can do all kinds of things in the world, knowing that we're loved, right? So I think just having healthy conversations in your family, with your students, with your nieces, with your nephews,
00:45:17
Speaker
at a grocery store, you know, it's like anywhere and just kind of having these, I think that's good routines. And then we can teach, you know, young people the prayers that we pray to. And I have found great, you know, great things happen with those prayers that I spoke about, even with young people.
00:45:32
Speaker
But we have to show them first through our, because they won't believe us. That's just how this generation functions. I think maybe other generations do a function this way. Whereas if you don't do what you say you're doing, then it's authentic and they won't believe you. They will see you so quickly, like your glass door. They'll see right through you, right? But if you do what you say and invite them to do, then it can change a lot of things. And I've found that in my life.
00:45:56
Speaker
Yeah, it's a sense of authenticity. And I like that you said work on yourself first, because I think that, you know, especially kids, all human beings, especially kids can tell when you're not being genuine or authentic. And so when you are acting out of that place of hurt or
00:46:16
Speaker
you don't really believe in your worth or you're not self-confident. They almost can sense that, even if they don't know they can sense that, right? And so in order to help others be confident and know that they are loved, we of course have to start with ourselves. And they witness that and that kind of helps their own process of coming to that realization.
00:46:43
Speaker
It truly does. It's been proven in my life over and over again that that's happened to young people. When people want to become teachers or educators in some way or a catechist in their parish or a youth group leader or just a godparent, anything, they're like, oh, not me. I couldn't do that. I'm incapable. I always say and think to myself,
00:47:09
Speaker
No, it's impossible that you're not, you are completely capable because you're created by God. And like your humanness, your unique form of being a human created by God, empowers you, enables you to be for a young person. Because all you have to be is really true to yourself and land yourself in prayer. And then just witness that to any young person, slow down enough to have a conversation with them.
00:47:34
Speaker
and you are what you need to be. You can learn everything else. You can Google the sacraments. You can open up a book and learn about the seven sacraments or something like that that you think you might need. But the relational part, the part where you're living a life beside a young person living their life is the most important thing.
00:47:56
Speaker
How does that help or support work with kids in mental health? The idea of helping them understand that they're loved as they are or the idea of accompanying kids. You brought up earlier that one of the big challenges today is mental health and I think not just for kids, it's also for adults as well. First, the idea that for a long time it was a stigma to talk about mental health and a stigma to talk about
00:48:24
Speaker
therapy and all of those things. And now that more people are talking about it and more people are engaging with it, it's figuring out the right ways to help people out and in the right ways to support kids, but also to support adults. Is there a way that this idea of being loved as you are intersects with the conversation of mental health? Yes, absolutely. Right. Because when
00:48:46
Speaker
Often, and this has happened, this happens maybe once a month when I'm teaching, especially, right? Or when I'm working with youth groups or stuff like that, right? But a young person is capable to end the slowing down in prayer, right? Or in conversation that can be prayer with another young person is capable of naming their feelings. And sometimes we're incapable of naming our feelings so we don't know our value and our worth, that we are loved.
00:49:15
Speaker
So if I don't know that I matter, then I'm not gonna talk about my feelings or I'm not gonna talk about what I'm thinking or what I'm experiencing. I'm just not going to because it doesn't seem valuable. So when you slow down enough to invite a young person to prayer or to have a prayerful conversation with a young person and the capability of just naming their feelings and their experiences,
00:49:43
Speaker
often leads them into more capable hands like therapy, which happens almost all the time, not all the time, but happens at least once a month where I'm like, let's talk to your parents, maybe therapy, maybe something you can do. And they'll beside them, but they'll have a conversation with their parents about getting into therapy or getting whatever kind of help that they need. So I think the intersection is sometimes just the worth, just the dignity and worth
00:50:11
Speaker
of knowing that every cell of my body is created on purpose. Otherwise I wouldn't be here.
Youth, Emotions, and Mental Health
00:50:18
Speaker
We wouldn't be here, right? And just like sometimes I like to use the intellect with young people because they're so scientifically bound. I think the binds, your cells are functioning right now because God created them to be here. So you're supposed to be here, right? So how do you feel?
00:50:35
Speaker
What are your feelings right now? And I mean, as simple as like, here's a feelings wheel, right? Which I use often. Maybe you don't know what you're feeling. Can you look at this feelings wheel and name your feelings? And like, oh, well, I feel sad and angry. Yeah. Tell me about the sadness that you feel, right? And just their naming, whatever comes out of them, their naming is in their naming of themselves.
00:51:04
Speaker
they're naming that they matter, right? And so in some ways, in a significant term, the creator is dealing with that creature in that very moment, right? I'm there as a spiritual director or whatever. I'm present in the room, but I'm not directing. God is directing, right? And so that person and just naming, I am angry God. And I was like, well, can you name why you're angry? And letting them name while they're angry, you know?
00:51:31
Speaker
that that can lift a person out of incredible things, right? And I think I must say this now, but I don't know how I feel about it. But it's important to say, I think, I think even when you and I were young people, and maybe when our parents were young people,
00:51:47
Speaker
You weren't to come to God unless you had something that really mattered. That really mattered. There are other people who needed God. You didn't need that. Does that make sense? It's just not true. That's just not how God works because we're limiting God's people. I always tell young people, you're thinking God is human and God's not human. God's beyond that. So I think the more we can do this and counter where the person sits with God and even you sitting with them with God,
00:52:17
Speaker
helps them know that God is really with them.
00:52:21
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it is difficult to wrap your mind around the idea that God has a personal relationship with every person simultaneously, right? And that, you know, even when you're having a conversation about literally nothing, you know, just what's happening in your day or what you're frustrated with, or even like just a conversation about what you're thinking of doing, whatever it is that God is actually able to spend
00:52:47
Speaker
time focusing on you, as well as the person who's in dire need at that moment. Yeah, both in. They can be God for both, be for that person and for you, because how big God is. And the idea that probably the foundational relationship that we have and the most important relationship that we have is with God, because that's the one that won't
00:53:12
Speaker
be able to be broken like a human relationship can be. When you come back to like when we were kids or when our parents were kids, I think that we were taught a lot as a community, as a Catholic or Christian community, that we could break that relationship with God, that it was something that could be severed. And that made us think, oh, well, if I mess up, then God hates me. Or if I make a mistake that I'm not really ready to apologize
00:53:42
Speaker
for yet, God doesn't want to hear from me until I'm ready, right? And so I think that has done some damage to this understanding that we are trying to regain of, no, God is always there. And this relationship is, on his side, God is not severing a relationship with us. We are kind of doing the distance, come back distance. It's paradoxical and it's radical to think that God literally is with us, even when we've done things we shouldn't do.
00:54:12
Speaker
You know, like that, since that God is going to be with us, God doesn't turn God's back on us when we do, you know, when I've done bad things, you know, like, and I felt maybe a distance from God when I've done something I shouldn't do, but it's me step taking the steps backwards. Right.
00:54:26
Speaker
And God loves us like a hurricane. I always say that because of David. Like, you know, it says that he's seeking us. He's coming after us. Like Luke 15, lost sheep, lost coin, lost son, right? God is coming after us even when we think, oh, don't find me, right? Yeah. And I think there's what I think under just understanding that in a way in our minds can transform our relationship with understanding our love, our loveless of God, how God loves us.
Challenges of Modern Belovedness
00:54:57
Speaker
I think we maybe have already answered this question in many ways, but is there anything that you think is particularly challenging for people today, like in 2023 and the time that we're in, to understand their belovedness, to be able to internalize it, but also to understand the belovedness of those they encounter?
00:55:18
Speaker
I think one of the most modern challenges to understanding our belovedness is likely the vastness of the world. And not that the world has just become vast, but our understanding of the vastness of the world, right? That we are more in touch with things happening everywhere than we've ever been.
00:55:41
Speaker
It's not just young people, it's adults too. When we look in social media and see all of these things, right? And we have this sense of comparison inside of us that kind of compares us to everyone else, right? We have all of these voices and all these things that are defining what it means to be human, right? So someone who's in a yacht, laying out in a bathing suit, and then there's a person who, even the person who's in an impoverished country who is,
00:56:06
Speaker
having ravenous kind of hunger kind of experience. We're aware of all of those things. And because our brain is kind of just so open to all of it, we compare ourselves and our life. Those aren't all bad things, but we compare ourselves and our life to those things. So like when we see
00:56:28
Speaker
even a person that we think is probably more love than we are, than we say, oh, that cup, like think about a cup, like that cup of God's love is empty now, there's not enough for me, right? And so it helps us or discourages us from seeing ourselves and discourages our internal voice.
00:56:48
Speaker
It discourages our understanding of ourselves as unique creatures of God. And so I think it's the vastness and the quickness of life. It goes by so quickly that we don't pause to really ponder like, hey, here I am, Stephanie, a beautiful creature of God. And I have desires like I want to be a teacher. You know, I want to teach young people. I want to be a spiritual director.
00:57:15
Speaker
We don't give time amongst the vastness and the quickness of life to say, here I am, loved by God. It's a beautiful thing, right? Like pausing in that time. So I think really the biggest things in the modern time are the vastness and the rush of life.
00:57:35
Speaker
Yeah, and the understanding we sometimes don't give each other for needing to pause. If you take time with a decision or you take time to go out and pray or think about it, then are you being lazy or not decisive or are you not able to keep up with everything that's going on?
00:57:55
Speaker
One of the things that I think is good about how connected we are globally is that we understand different ways of proceeding and different ways of looking and different ways of acting and different ways of deciding different types of brains. You know, we have neurodivergent, all of these things that we're beginning to understand. And so in that way, we can come to a group of people and say, oh, well, maybe we are not all acting from the same
00:58:22
Speaker
place or we don't all need the same thing to be able to understand this concept. So that part is good. I think the hard thing is that we know all of this stuff, but be able to figure out how we will utilize that in our personal relationships.
00:58:37
Speaker
and taking the time to figure out how do I then apply what I know about different ways of thinking, different ways of proceeding, different bodies, all of that. How do I apply that to the situation I'm in now? Like the time for that feels like it doesn't exist, right? I give you a great example of this, which we, you and I probably deal with and seeing a lot because we're educators, right? My children were deciding which college to go to. It is incredible the knowledge they can obtain about different colleges throughout the world right now.
00:59:04
Speaker
And it's a great it's like, yeah, like it's really I'm like, Oh, I wish I wish I could have known more about places I could have gone. So when we start off their junior year, it's like, okay, let's make a list. Like we do a Google Doc, you know, just because we're so fun. And it's like our next cell spreadsheet of like, okay, here are all the places, right? And then we started to narrow discerning like in a particular things narrow and it takes us months and then like almost a year to do. Let society goes
00:59:32
Speaker
Where are you going to college? And if you can't answer it, then why can't you answer it? For us, it's LSU because we're Louisiana. I'm going to LSU because my mom went to LSU or my dad went to LSU, so I'm going to LSU. But there's a lack of value of taking the time to discern that decision, which is an important decision. Or even for past parents.
00:59:57
Speaker
Well, you know, when is your kid going to get on, you know, whatever social media platform, like, I don't know, Snapchat or something, right? And you as parents, like, um, I don't know yet. Like we have to kind of think about that and discern that. And the slowness of that process of making that decision of discernment is good. You know, and it could be really good, you know, and it's just that it helps you decide the best place for your kid to be, you know?
01:00:23
Speaker
Or even you deciding, should we move for this job that we're going to take? It takes time to discern that. But society expects us to make the decision really quickly. Not all of society, but a lot of society expects us to make it really quickly. It's almost counter-cultural or radical to say like, no, no, I'm going to wait and take a little bit of time and decide what I desire, which is what Ignatius is all about. What do I really want? What does God want for me? Where's the congruency of that?
01:00:53
Speaker
That's so funny because I am one of those people that makes decisions quickly. I'll mull over something for a while. But when I make the decision, it's like, we need a new car. We're going to go get it today. Or I need a new house. We're going to start looking today. And my husband's the exact opposite. You know, I want a new office chair. Okay, which one? Let's order it. And he's like, no, no.
01:01:12
Speaker
I'll figure it out. I got to look at if you'll send me links. Is this the one you want? No, I'm just showing you something. No, we need to make a decision. Why do we want to make it fast? Why do we want to make it fast? I don't know. Because we have the next thing to do. I want to do this now so I can do this next thing that I have to do. That's just true. That's just how life is in a way. It's figuring out that.
01:01:34
Speaker
middle ground between that. Yeah. Where do you find the time to make all the millions of decisions that you have to make and to incorporate the discernment that some require? I mean, all decisions require a little bit of discernment, but not all the same amount of discernment. Right. Yeah. Finding what, you know, serial to buy is going to be different than what college should go to, right?
01:01:56
Speaker
Sometimes it's harder for me to decide the cereal than it is for me to decide to buy a new car. So I don't know. My brain's all messed up, but... That's great. Stephanie, thank you so much for coming on the podcast with me today. And I know this will not be our last conversation about being loved as you are, but can you tell people where to find you, how they can find your speaking
01:02:19
Speaker
So we are doing, right now, you can go through Becky Eldridge.com, but we're forming a new community called Ignatian Ministries, and I'll do a lot of my speaking, and from that platform, I go through that platform as well. Am I writing for Into the Deep, just like you do?
01:02:35
Speaker
So you can find me there. A lot of the writing there, kind of our prayer resources are there, which I think are great. We have a collection of audio prayer resources too, which I think people sometimes miss. Like you can just like press play and go through a colloquy or an exam, and so that would be good. In about a month's time, we should be under IgnatianMinistries.com, but right now it's still under Becky Aldridge.com, but you can see it that our transition is kind of happening on the website. So you can find me there and on Instagram and Facebook. I'm there, Stephanie Chloe Davis on both of them and Ignatian Ministries.
01:03:05
Speaker
on all social media platforms. Thank you for having me, Christian. Thank you. Yeah, this is a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much. And I look forward to more conversations. Take care. And I just love your topic to know that you are loved. I think it's essential to each and every one of us. So take care. Good luck with your ministry. Thank you so much.
01:03:53
Speaker
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Stephanie as much as I did. I really appreciate it Stephanie's sincerity as she spoke about the challenges of understanding her own belovedness and helping others do the same.
01:04:06
Speaker
I appreciated all the tools of Ignatian spirituality she brought up in the conversation and the practical ways she invited us to engage with them. I hope that like me, you are gaining light and life from each new guest that shares their beautiful witness of God's magnanimous love on this podcast. If you think you or someone you know has a story to share in this podcast, please email me at lovedasurpod at gmail.com.
01:04:30
Speaker
If you like this podcast, subscribe and leave a review. I'd love to have your feedback and be able to continue to move this podcast in a direction that is valuable for you. You can also follow everything related to this podcast at loved as you are pod on Instagram and at GretchenCrouder.com slash loved as you are podcast links to both are in the show notes. Thank you for joining me today. And until next time, remember to be who you are because that's exactly who God wants you to be.