Introducing the Ignatian Myth & Narrative Project

or, what you can expect from me these next few weeks

There is a Jesuit priest in Australia named Mick Hansen. He is always a great delight to talk to: high energy; deep insight; big, booming presence. I’ve interviewed him twice for episodes of “AMDG: A Jesuit Podcast.”

Mick is determined to share the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola with as many people as possible. But this 30-day retreat (or year-long retreat in everyday life) can be intimidating to busy folks. Who has the time? Who can make such a commitment?

So, Mick shares Ignatian insights by way of individual exercises, often no more than a page or two, that point to brief, pivotal truths about humanity, the Spirit and the intimate relationship between the two. These exercises encourage reflection, journaling and spiritual reading—basic stuff in the business of spiritual accompaniment.

But Mick also does something that I always find to be quite extraordinary: He shares these exercises with folks of all faiths and none. Ignatius of Loyola was a Catholic priest; he wrote from the Catholic context of 16^th century Spain. His Spiritual Exercises are inevitably soaked in Catholicism.

That doesn’t stop Mick. My Jesuit friend isn’t out to convert people; he’s not proselytizing or beating unsuspecting folks over the head with the Catechism of the Catholic Church. He’s simply offering small, spiritual gems. He simply desires that everyone realize how beloved they are.

And, according to Mick, it works. Folks who engage these brief exercises are brought deeper into an understanding of themselves, their vocations, who they are before the Universe and all people. For Mick and I, we might say the Spirit is at work; God is revealing Godself. But that language is ours and is not forced upon anyway.

These little exercises based on the Ignatian Exercises touch something essential about the human story that transcends any one religious tradition, that goes deeper than anyone language can account for.

Throughout the last four years, I’ve spent not an insignificant amount of time writing and speaking about storytelling and spirituality. My work has reintroduced me to Joseph Campbell’s insights on myth and forced me to keep a copy of Jessica Brody’s text, Save the Cat! Writes a Novel, always ready-to-hand. I can’t help but see Ignatian spiritual principles leap off the pages of novels I read and through the screen of TV shows and movies I watch—much to the chagrin of my wife who then must listen to my musings.

All this to say, the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola are more than just a series of retreat readings or an innovative way to engage Scripture. The Exercises are a journey reflective of our deepest selves. Though written in a Catholic context and for a Christian audience, I have found there to be universal truths woven throughout the retreat experience, threads of human storytelling that bind us together across time and space and with the very essence of Creation—and, consequently, our Creator.

I think that’s what Mick’s work reflects, too.  

And so, seeing as this Substack is about gathering up scraps of story and inspecting them for spiritual wisdom, over the next few weeks I’ll be sharing my reflections on how the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola maps onto—and deepens—some of the most universal storytelling elements. Let’s call it the Ignatian Myth & Narrative Project.

These aren’t just tools that help us in our fiction; these are facets of our own common human journeys. We all know what it means to experience a call to the unknown; we all know what it means to be knocked down and forced to reexamine our lives; we all know what it means to muddle through a dark night of the soul.

Ignatius breaks up the Exercises by “weeks,” and so I’ll use the same nomenclature. But we could also imagine each week as a spiritual movement. Maybe even as Acts within a story or play. Within each movement are meditations or plot points that keep the story rolling.

Here’s a brief roadmap to get us started.

·       The First Week, or the Status Quo. We begin, as all protagonists must, exactly where we already are, enmeshed in the life we know. It’s imperfect—and so are we. But if we don’t wake up to that imperfection, we stay trapped in a status quo that grinds us down.

·       The Second Week, or the Upside-Down World. We have answered the call to adventure and are in the company of a wise mentor. We are challenged—both by the mentor and by a new world we had hardly dared imagine.

·       The Third Week, or the Dark Night. Despite our heroic progress and the journey thus far, tragedy strikes. We are forced to look squarely at our own necessary limitations and mourn loss and suffering—and make a choice.

·       The Fourth Week, or the Return. We emerge from the darkness reformed and remade and eager to share with our community all that we have learned. From our own experience, we know it is possible to remake the status quo—and so we set out to do exactly that.

If this sounds interesting to you, let me know in the comments below! And share with others.