461 The Way

THE WAY
a review of Christian spirituality published by the British Jesuits
January 2007 Volume 46 Number1
IMAGINATIVE PATHWAYS
it will be here to see with the sight of the imagination the road from
Nazareth, to Bethlehem, considering the length, the breadth, and whether this
road is flat or through valleys and hills (Exx 112)
THE WAY January 2007
The Composition of Place: Creating Space for an 7-20

Encounter
Nicolas Standaert
Why is one encouraged to make the composition of place in the
Spiritual Exercises? Does this imaginative work with scenes indicate a
higher or a lower form of prayer? This article explores how some
illustrations dating from shortly after Ignatius lifetime help us answer
such questions.
The Terrible Sonnets of Gerard Manley Hopkins and the 23-37

Spirituality of Depression
Hilary Pearson
Hopkins so-called Terrible Sonnets emerged from profound mental
suffering, of a kind that would probably now be identified as depression.
What religious sense can we make of them? How can these texts speak
to those suffering from depression today?
Poetry and Prayer beyond Words 39-52

Graeme Watson
Graeme Watson takes the example of George Herbert, the seventeenth-
century English poet and priest, and shows how poetry opens us to the
mystery of a divine silence in which descriptive language breaks down.
Gwen John: Her Art and Spirituality 53-64

Tessa Frank
Gwen John has always been overshadowed by her more famous brother
Augustus, but her work, at least after her conversion to Roman
Catholicism in her thirties, is marked by a quite distinctive spirituality.
Tessa Frank here explores this dimension of Gwen Johns work.
The Spirit in Contemporary Culture

The Vocation of Denise Levertov 65-75
Dana Greene
The poet Denise Levertov, who died in 1997, found her way through
protest against the Vietnam war and against nuclear weapons to Roman
Catholicism. Dana Greene here explores how Levertovs vocation
gradually matured.
The First Method of Prayer: Prayerful Self-Monitoring 77-90

Luis Ral Cruz
In the Fourth Week of the Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius gives us three
Methods of Prayer that are perhaps still too little known. In particular,
the first of the three can enrich our sense of prayerful moral
responsibility.
From the Ignatian Tradition

On Preparation for Prayer 91-99
Achille Gagliardi
One of the earliest and most interesting commentators on the Exercises
gives his own distinctive interpretation of the Additional Directions, the
Preparatory Prayer, and the Preludes.
Book Reviews 101-128
Billy Hewett on the collected essays of Joseph Veale, the noted

Irish Ignatian director
Edward Howells on The Blackwell Companion to Christian
Spirituality
Jane Eade on the Jesuits and the arts
Gero McLoughlin on retreats in daily life
Paul Nicholson on the soul, and on retreat-giving for beginners
Margaret M. Sheldon on spirituality for the single person
Nicholas King on the Bible and pastoral care
Clarence Gallagher on the Bible, homosexuality and trends in
contemporary Roman Catholicism
Anthony Meredith on demons in early monasticism
Anna Abram on theology and bioethics
Gemma Simmonds on French Catholic culture in the Jazz Age
Mark L. Yenson on conversations with Rowan Williams
FOR AUTHORS
The Way warmly invites readers to submit articles with a view to publication. They should normally be
about 4,000 words long, and be in keeping with the journals aims. The Editor is always ready to discuss
possible ideas. Further details can be found on The Ways website, www.theway.org.uk. In the second half
of 2007, we will be publishing a special issue entitled Spirituality and Social Transformation. Contributions to
this project will be especially welcome.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Nicolas Standaerts article first appeared in Cardoner, the journal of spirituality published by the Flemish
and Dutch Jesuits, and has been translated by Joseph A. Munitiz SJ. Luis Ral Cruzs article appeared in
the Bogot Jesuit journal, Apuntes ignacianosit and the Gagliardi text in From the Ignatian Tradition
were translated by Philip Endean SJ. We are grateful to the editors and authors for permission to reproduce
this material. Frontispiece photograph by Rev. Dr John DeLancey, Pastor, Tour Leader, Journey of a
Lifetime Tours, www.Biblicalisraeltours.com. The scripture quotations herein are generally from the New
Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National
Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, and are used by permission. All rights reserved.
FOREWORD
C
REATING SPACE FOR AN ENCOUNTER is Nicolas Standaerts
subtitle for his article on the Ignatian composition of place in
this issue. In one sense, the phrase applies, of course, to any spiritual
practice. But it has a special relevance to the various imaginative
pathways through which Ignatius draws us into prayer: not only the
composition of place, but also the preparatory prayer that all my
intentions, actions and operations should be purely ordered to the
service and praise of His Divine Majesty (Exx 46) and the various
Additional Directions. Indeed, in the First Method of Prayer, explored
in this issue by Luis Ral Cruz, Ignatius almost suggests that what he
offers is merely ways of preparing for prayerhow the soul should
prepare itself and benefitrather than forms of prayer in themselves.
Characteristically, he is suggesting that what really matters is up to the
freedom of God and the freedom of the creature. A wise spiritual guide
does not attempt to prescribe.
The ways Ignatius himself suggests involve the imagination: the
picturing of the scene, the sense of the Divine Majesty looking at me
(Exx 75), even the reliving of our recent past. We can surely enrich
our experience of prayer by drawing on our experience of artistic
beauty. Hence there are also articles in this number that look at the
spirituality of three poets and one painter: George Herbert, Gerard
Manley Hopkins, Denise Levertov and Gwen John. These four figures,
of course, stand for many others.
Ignatian prayer has often been presented as somehow forced and
regimentedthere are hints of the criticism even in the early writings
of Nadal and Gagliardi presented in this issue. Perhaps some retreat
directorsone thinks of James Joyces preacherhave been guilty
along such lines. But Ignatius invites us to use our imaginations freely.
He does not tell us what the road to Bethlehem looks like. Rather he
leaves us to find our own road, indeed to find the pathway to the
heavenly Jerusalem.
Philip Endean SJ
THE COMPOSITION OF PLACE
Creating Space for an Encounter
Nicolas Standaert
E XPERIENCE OF GOD IS AN ESSENTIAL ASPECT of Christian life. Even if

it may be difficult to explain or illustrate such an experience,
nevertheless many people can point to such occasions: before a
landscape, on the birth of a child, in the sudden silence of a prayer, in
the intensity of love, and so on. But while another essential experience
is the encounter with Jesus Christ, for many people the latter seems to
occur with greater difficulty. They can certainly recognise Jesus as a
historical figure who speaks to them from the gospel stories and stands
as an exemplar for a way of life modelled on the Gospels. Above all,
many can find Jesus by analogy in the neighbour whom one meets (as
indicated in Matthew 25). But how are we to represent to ourselves a
real encounter with Jesus Christ? Part of the purpose of the Spiritual
Exercises is precisely to bring us to a personal encounter with Jesus.
The aim of this article is to show that the composition of place
(compositio loci) is a special occasion for facilitating this encounter.
Being Present
At the start of the first meditation in the Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius
advises that one should see the place, and he calls this prelude or
preliminary the composition. He describes the process as follows:
It should be noted here that for contemplation or meditation about

visible things, for example a contemplation on Christ our Lord
(who is visible), the composition will consist in seeing through the
gaze of the imagination the material place where the object I want
to contemplate is situated. By material place I mean for example a
temple or a mountain where Jesus Christ or our Lady is to be
foundaccording to what I want to contemplate. Where the
object is an invisible one, as is the case in the present meditation
on sins, the composition will be to see with the gaze of the
The Way, 46/1 (January 2007), 7-20

8 Nicolas Standaert
imagination, and to consider, that my soul is imprisoned in this

body which will one day disintegrate, and also my whole composite
self (by this I mean the soul joined with the body), as if exiled in
1
this valley among brute beasts. (Exx 47)
In their analysis of this passage most commentators have focused

their attention on the imaginative gaze (con la vista de la imaginacin),
in order to warn that one is not involved here in pure imagining or
fantasizing, but rather that the aim is to contemplate within oneself
something real.2 Few commentators concentrate on the meaning of the
actual composition and the place, and on the how and the
wherefore. After all, would it not be much easier when one is praying
with Scripture to go straight to the text, without following the
roundabout route of composition of place? Ignatius is clear that we
should make this preliminary composition, but he does not explain
why.
The older Directories are particularly laconic in their remarks on
the composition of place. Indeed the earliest do not seem to know
what to say about it, and tend rather to play down its importance. This
attitude may well stem from a certain distrust with regard to the visual
in prayer. Thus Antonio Valentino, in his report on the formation of
novices, summarily notes:
It is true that in these preludes we should not dwell too much on

physical images, as do children or animals, but like rational human
3
beings pass from visible things to invisible. (Dir 16:16)
Even when the composition is described as something positive it tends

to be considered of secondary importance. The line taken by Diego
Mir (about 1581) in his second Directory is characteristic:
1
This article uses the translation of the Spiritual Exercises by Michael Ivens (Leominster: Gracewing,
2004).
2
The Flemish translation of the Exercises used by the authorIgnatius van Loyola Geestelijke
Oefeningen, translated and annotated by Mark Rotsaert and others (Averbode: Altiora, 1994)has a
note to this effect.
3
Translations from the Directories are based on On Giving the Spiritual Exercises: The Early Jesuit
Manuscript Directories and the Official Directory of 1599, edited by Martin E. Palmer (St Louis: Institute
of Jesuit Sources, 1996). They are cited by the document and paragraph numbering deriving from the
1955 MHSJ edition.
The Composition of Place 9
In the composition of place, a person makes himself present, as it

were, to the place where the event occurred, or to some other
place. With the eyes of the imagination he beholds everything
which is found, said, or done there, or is thought to be done there.
He can also imagine that all these things are similarly present to
him in the place where he is. This latter procedure is normally
preferable. But he should not spend too much time on this kind of
composition of place, so as not to tire his head, but should go on to
meditate the event proposed. (Dir 23:66)
This text sets a tone. On the one hand, some of the advantages of the
composition are recognised, namely the making oneself present, as it
were to the place (como presente en el lugar); on the other hand a word
of warning is given. Both these elements will recur in other texts.
According to Gil Gonzlez Dvila, the most important feature of
the compositio loci is that the exercitant should make him- or herself
present (hacerse como presente) in relation to the event contemplated.
In this context he invokes classical writers: for example, he quotes
Pseudo-Bonaventure, an anonymous Franciscan (c.1300-1330), author
of Meditations on the Life of Jesus, a work that was frequently quoted
among the early Jesuits:
In the composition of place the exercitant should remember that

he is present to the entire event, as St Bonaventure says in the
4
prologue to his life of Christ.
Gonzlez also draws a parallel with Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite

(probably c.500), who points to the unique character of this presence,
creating as it does in the one who meditates a special relation with a
person:
In the composition of place, the one meditating should make

himself present in the mystery as though it were being done for him
alone, as St Paul says speaking of Christ our Lord: He loved me
and gave himself up for me (Galatians 2:20); and as Dionysius the
Areopagite relates at the end of his eighth letter, at the conclusion
of the vision of the apostles disciple Carpus: I am ready to die for
them againwhich shows the infinite charity of the Lord.
(Dir 31:161)
4
Dir 31: 93, translation altered.
10 Nicolas Standaert
Gonzlez touches here on the heart of the matter: one can see that
being present is two-sided. The person who contemplates makes him- or
herself present with respect to the mysterybut that mystery is of a
person already present, here and now, and indeed in a unique way, to
the person contemplating. The mystery thus contains not so much an
event from the life of Christ that might reveal the working of God, but
the person of Jesus Christ himself, present in a fixed geographical and
temporal context.
Visual Obstacles
In his analysis Gonzlez also mentions some of the practical advantages
that the composition of place can bring to prayer. It is, he says, a help
for bringing one back to the right path when distractions occur. The
correct use of the composition of place can serve,
to prevent the mind from wandering aimlessly by giving it

something to focus its scattered faculties upon so that the prayer
will be attentiveand so that if the mind later wanders off, it has a
base to which it can easily return.
But then the tone changes:
However, many persons spend a lot of time uselessly dwelling on

this, and the violent effort damages their head and renders them
unfit to go on to the other things for which the composition of
place was devised. (Dir 31:71)
All too quickly the account of the benefits gives way to a word of
warning: the composition of place can be a hindrance! This notion
that the composition can cause harm to body and spirit is to be found
in various commentaries. A helping hand is also offered to anyone who
is less imaginatively gifted: pictures can be called to mind. Thus in the
words of the Short Directory:
Many people find it quite hard to make the composition of place,

straining their heads in the attempt. Those who have difficulty
with it should be told to recall a painting of the history they have
seen on an altar or elsewhere, e.g. a painting of the judgment or of
hell, or of Christs Passion. (Dir 26:41)
This is one of the few occasions when the use of visual aids is explicitly
mentionedmore precisely a painting, or rather the history that is
painted. And this is seen as a method for those who have difficulty in
just imagining.
In the 1599 Directory, these various points are brought together,
and clearly the views of Gil Gonzlez Dvila have been influential. On
the one hand, the advantages and benefits are mentioned, both for
meditating and for making oneself present:
This composition of place is a great help toward concentrating and

moving the soul. With the imagination tied down to some definite
matter, the soul itself is tied down and prevented from straying. If it
does stray, it has a ready means of refocusing and calling itself back
to the spot where it originally imagined itself. Hence, St
Bonaventure writes in the preface to his life of Christ: If you wish
to gather fruit from these matters, make yourself as present to what
is recounted about the sayings and actions of the Lord Jesus Christ
as if you were seeing them with your own eyes and hearing them
with your own ears; do this with all the affection of your spirit,
carefully, lovingly, and slowly, leaving aside all your other concerns
and cares. (Dir 43:122)
Towards the end of this quotation explicit reference is made to

different sense organs that can be brought into play by the composition
of place. Thus the process of composition is not limited to seeing.
However, a difficulty arises at this very point for those who are not very
gifted in this way, and therefore a paragraph is added:
Dangers to be avoided: lastly, care should be taken not to dwell

excessively on constructing this representation of the place and not
to strain the head. The composition of place is not the primary fruit
of the meditation but only a way and an instrument toward it.
There is no denying that some have greater facility in this, viz.,
persons with a more vivid imagination. Others who find it harder
should not labour at it to the point of dulling their minds and
becoming unable to make the meditation itself. (Dir 43:124)
One finds that modern commentators also tend to be reserved

with regard to the composition of place. The entry entitled
Composition de lieu in the Dictionnaire de spiritualit clearly reflects
this tendency. It refers specifically to commentators who warn those
engaged in meditation not to tire themselves over the composition of
place, and mentions spiritual writers such as Jean-Joseph Surin (1600-

1665), who thought that in the case of experienced souls this
preliminary was dispensable. The author of the entry supports the
opinion of Luis de la Puente, and quotes from his Spiritual Guide,
which in its turn is drawing on St Thomas:
although there is great benefit to be had from contemplating

with the representation of sensory images, such prayer is much less
perfect than one where the imagination plays no part and which is
5
a purely spiritual operation.
Thus there seem to be two grades of prayer: one that is lower and
accompanies the use of composition of place, and another that is
higher and needs no such use.
In general the accepted line is that making the composition of
place is of secondary importance. It does have certain benefits, but one
should be cautious about spending too much time over it. For those
who are less capable it can be helpful to use visual aids, but others pass
on to a higher form of prayer.
The Changes of Place, Mental and Personal

Jernimo Nadal (1507-1580) was not in agreement with this narrow
vision. In his magnum opus entitled Annotations and Meditations on the
Gospels 6 he devotes much attention to composition and visualisation.
Now Juan Polanco, the secretary of St Ignatius, believed, as is well
known, that Nadal had been blessed with a true understanding of what
Ignatius intended his new religious order to be. For that reason Nadal
was sent out to explain the Constitutions. One may thus assume that
his Annotations and Meditations on the Gospels are an appropriate
elucidation to accompany the Spiritual Exercises. They serve to open
out the vision that Ignatius had of liturgical and meditative prayer.
Nadal put them together at the instigation of Ignatius, and their main
purpose was to teach student members of the Society of Jesus how to
5
Michel Olphe-Galliard, Composition de lieu, Dictionnaire de spiritualit, volume 2 (1953),
cols. 1321-1326, here 1325see Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, II-II. 181. 2.
6
In Latin, Adnotationes et meditationes in Evangelia, first published in Antwerp in 1595; a modern
edition with English translation (Annotations and Meditations on the Gospels) is being published in a
three-volume series by Saint Josephs UP, Philadelphia, translated and edited by Frederick A.
Homann; volumes 1 and 2 have already appeared in 2003 and 2005.
pray. The work was well received and soon reached as far afield as
South America and the Far East.
The same pattern or structure is found throughout the work. Each
section consists of four parts, and the person meditating is expected to
make use of all four:
1. In the first place comes the gospel text, the passages
arranged to follow the order of the liturgical year;
2. next come the annotations that serve to clarify exegetical or
historical elements in the text; the different points are
marked by letters;
3. the meditation proper follows, often taking dialogue form;
4. finally there is an engraving to illustrate the chosen gospel
passage.
It is these engravings that are the most distinctive aspect of the
book. A history of their planning and of the vicissitudes of their
conception would take us too far from our purpose; enough to say here
that originally Nadal had foreseen a series and then rejected them.
Finally a complete set was nevertheless printed, drawn by the best
etchers of Antwerp.
Nadal was well aware of the problem that such prints would raise.
When making the composition of place it is important to be present
to what is happening, and for this those who are meditating have to
place themselves in the scene. In this process a visual aid, such as a
painting or a sketch, can be a help. But it can also be an obstacle: it
can hinder the imagination of ones being present at the scene. This
can happen because the picture is simply a (historical) re-presentation
of the gospel scene and lacks all relation to what the person meditating
is feeling. Again, the picture may only serve to provoke aesthetic
appreciation.
The engravings that appear in the Annotations and Meditations on
the Gospels provide both the opportunity to pray with the use of a
visual representation, and a unique response to the problems that
might arise in connection with such contemplation. However, this
requires time, and for this reason the Preface of l607 advises one to
spend one or more days in silent attention if one is to draw the fruit
from such meditation.
The overall composition of each engraving is so arranged as to

provide space for a series of mental moves, which can then also lead to
changes of place that affect one as a person. This is brought about
through a distinctive feature of these engravings: the combination of
lettering actually on the print and text below. Beneath each print there
is always a number of points that refer to elements in the gospel
narrative. Each point is preceded by a letter, and these letters can be
found also in areas of the picture itself. By following the order of these
letters in the engraving, the person meditating performs a sort of
pilgrimage following a route marked in the picture. The person praying
always begins by identifying the different elements in the gospel
passage, and then takes up a place in the middle of the scene, before
traversing the different stages in meditation or contemplation. As the
person is constantly moving from picture to text, from annotation to
meditation, he or she assimilates the picture interiorly, and makes it
personal ex libera meditatione (through free meditation).
This process is not primarily a bibliodrama, in which one is using
a bible scene to allow ones own psychological and subjective drama to
come to the surface. Nor, therefore, is it the purpose of retreat
direction to use the composition as a way of better understanding the
retreatants psychological make-up. The goal of the composition of
place is rather a dialogue between the persons involved in the gospel
passage and the person contemplating. It is for this reason that one
composes a place, a place that makes room for another, room for
somebody different from oneself. And it is from this starting point that
one can arrive at encounter. It is through the interaction between
myself and what is offered to me that the possibility arises for two
narratives, that of the gospel and that of my own life, to interact with
one another.
The engraving of the Annunciation can serve as a first example of
what is meant here. If asked what first catches their attention in this
picture, most people would answer: the stream of light, or the meeting
between the Angel and Mary. This is also the central theme of the
meditation. Once that point is established, the person meditating is
required to place him- or herself at different points of time and space.
The letter A indicates the council of angels called by God in order to
choose Gabriel to go and announce the incarnation (a positioning in
the past and in heaven). For the next stage Gabriel acquires a human
form and journeys down to Mary (B and C). But then, instead of
immediately moving to the central scene (E), one is required to go first

to letter D. Here there is a representation of the actual room in which
the event is taking place: Marys house, which, according to tradition,
was re-placed in Loreto (in Italy) and became one of the most
popular pilgrim sites in the early years of the Society. It serves as a
symbol both of the concrete reality in every meditation, and of the
changes of place that can take place within the meditation itself. In
the meditation on the central gospel events, these events are given a
sort of contemporary historical context, and thus placed in a
historical framework for which, as Nadal is clearly aware, there is no
scriptural basis. In F it is indicated that the day of Christs incarnation
coincided with that of the human races creation. With G the message
is that the feast day of the Annunciation was the same as that of
Christs death on the cross (and in fact in the year 2005, March 25, the
Feast of the Annunciation, coincided with Good Friday); and H
suggests that one may think of this same day as that on which the
saints of the Old Covenant in Limbo heard their redemption
announced to them.
The presence of these elements probably does not coincide with
present-day theological insights on the Annunciation, but they
certainly show how this engraving encourages those meditating to
reflect on times and levels that originally would not have occurred to
them, and which give a universal dimension to the
The story itself Incarnation. In this way the representation formed by
begins to the person meditating is no longer confined to an
conduct individuals experience. He or she does not simply
the person project a personal account upon the gospel story;
rather, the story itself begins to conduct the person,
and displaces the self. This is what it is all about: by quietly standing
alongside the places, the persons, the objects and the events we are
invited to place ourselves in a certain situation, and then to be moved
by it, and to undertake pilgrimage. By a mental adoption of place we
are thus relocated as persons.
This interpretation is confirmed by the meditation that Nadal has
added after the annotations. As is well known, Ignatius suggests that at
the end of each exercise of prayer one should make a colloquy:
A colloquy, properly so-called, means speaking as one friend speaks

with another, or a servant with a master, at times asking for some
favour, at other times accusing oneself of something badly done, or
sharing personal concerns and asking for advice about them. And
then I will say an Our Father. (Exx 54)
Even though Ignatius says that this is a conversation, the actual words
and examples he gives are more truly a monologue directed to Christ
by the person meditating. Nadal, however, makes it into a real
dialogue, and in many of the meditations he presents Jesus Christ
himself as one of the partners in the conversation. In the case of the
Annunciation, the person meditating asks for an explanation of the
mystery, and Nadal presents this with Jesus taking the main role:
Rouse first your faith, hope and love for me, and a spirit of simplicity
and deep humility. Then hear . There follows a long exposition.7
Encounter and Relocation

The composition of place, then, can create the space for an encounter:
an encounter that is personal, an encounter above all with the person
in whom God gives HimselfJesus of Nazareth. The encounter is not
simply the product of my imagining or the projection of a personal
emotion; it is a coming up against an irreducible other, a definite
historical person. One encounters in a concrete way the person of
Jesus by stepping into the scene and becoming a sharer in what those
who were there really saw, heard, smelt and so on.
It is indeed significant that Ignatius refers to the composition of
place (alone), and not to that of the persons; but they must come of
their own accord. Such meetings are not something that I can arrange.
Moreover, such meetings are not to do with the past. Thanks to the
dynamic narrative of the text itself, the compositio loci allows us to knit
together the context in which we move and that of the text. Jesus is
present for us here and now, and it is this meeting with him which
establishes our own personhood, the second dimension of the personal
encounter that is our concern here. Precisely in this direct contact
with the reality in which God reveals Himself (just as He revealed
Himself for the human race in Jesus of Nazareth), we come to know
ourselves recognised as persons, and feel ourselves to be loved.
This very encounter, too, may lead on to a further relocation: not
merely the mental or personal repositioning found in the scene of the
Annunciation, but a relocation-become-flesh in the personal life of
those who, through the composition, allow themselves to be set in
motion. To understand this better it will be helpful to consider how
7
Annotations and Meditations, 1. 108.
Nadal presents the encounter between the risen Christ and Mary
Magdalen. The engraving is structured in such a way that it says all
that can be said about meeting, conversation and real change of
place. The first scene is set in the background of the print: the
meeting between Mary (A) and the gardener (C), between whom a
first dialogue takes place (as is made quite clear by the alternation of A
and C in the explanations under the picturehere the colloquy forms
part of the contemplation itself). But as soon as the recognition and
the exchange of names takes place, as soon as the revelation and the
loving mutual recognition occurs, with the gardener becoming
Rabboni and the woman becoming Mary, both figures are moved to
the foreground. In his Annotation, Nadal points out that Mary directs
not only her gaze but her whole self towards Jesus. And the whole
declaration of love is conveyed in two words: each of the partners
expresses everything in a single word.
Mary is then sent, upon her pilgrim way, to announce the news to
the apostles (F). She goes to the city, and therefore steps out of the
picture, so to speak, just as the person meditating steps once more into
real life after the exercise. Finally, the engraving points to the soldiers:
they have not taken part in the encounter; they have not got up from
the ground; they have therefore not taken a new position (G). By this
contrast between those who change place and those who will not let
themselves be relocated, the engraving conveys the dynamic force of
the encounter, one that can have a bearing on, cause a relocation
within, the real life of the person meditating. In this composition of
place, therefore, we find resurrection faith taken seriously as something
to be made flesh. But at the same time it is the revelation of a way of
human living rooted in reality.
Little is know about the opinions Ignatius may have had
concerning visual aids in prayer, but there is certainly no indication
that he was in any way opposed to them. According to Bartolomeo
Ricci, who followed Nadal by publishing an illustrated life of Jesus
(1607), Ignatius himself was in the habit of using such aids:
Occasionally when he was on the point of meditating on the

mysteries of our Redeemer, he would look, just before he began to
pray, at the prints that he had gathered and had displayed around
his room for this purpose.
At any rate, the work of Nadal makes it quite clear that to pray with
open eyes need not be a lower form of prayer in the way that the
predominant interpretation of the composition of place within the
Jesuit traditionshaped as this is by Luis de la Puentesuggests.
Rather this prelude appears as an essential component of personal
encounter with Jesus. By creating a space where this encounter can
take place, the composition of place also opens up the way for the
repositioning of oneself that such an encounter can have as its
consequence.8
Nicolas Standaert SJ is a professor of Chinese Studies at the Catholic University

of Leuven, and specialises in the history of Sino-European cultural contacts. His
more recent work has centred on the role of ritual in such contexts.
8
In writing this article I have drawn freely from, among others, the following: Michel de Certeau,
Lespace du dsir ou le fondement des Exercices spirituels, Christus, 77 (1973), pp. 118-128; David
Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response, (Chicago: U. of Chicago
P., 1989); Pierre-Antoine Fabre, Ignace de Loyola: Le lieu de limageLe problme de la composition de
lieu dans les pratiques spirituelles et artistiques jsuites de la seconde moiti du XVIe sicle (Paris: Vrin,
1992); Jeffrey Chipps Smith, Sensuous Worship: Jesuits and the Art of the Early Catholic Reformation in
Germany (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2002); and Walter S. Melions introductory studies in the two
volumes so far produced of Annotations and Meditations on the Gospels. My thanks go to Jacques Haers
SJ and Hugo Roeffaers SJ, who helped me to clarify my own thoughts, and contributed several
suggestions adopted by me here.
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from the Secretary.
THE TERRIBLE SONNETS OF
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS
AND THE SPIRITUALITY
OF DEPRESSION
Hilary E. Pearson
D
EPRESSION IS A VERY LONELY DISEASE. Sufferers are unable to see
beyond the blackness enclosing them, even if they are surrounded
by loving friends and by a supportive family. It is difficult for them to
talk to people who do not share their experience, and difficult for those
others to understand how they feel.
Although there is evidence that depression has been experienced
since the earliest times, it was only in the twentieth century that it
began to be studied systematically and that its symptoms were
classified for diagnostic purposes. Even today diagnosis is not easy:
sufferers often do not consult a doctor or may present with physical
symptoms, making it impossible to assess accurately what percentage of
the population suffers from this disease. Estimates range from 3% to
12%.1
The Sonnets of Desolation or Terrible Sonnets of Gerard Manley
Hopkins are a group of untitled poems probably written during 1885-
1886. Unusually, these poems were not sent by Hopkins to his friend
Robert Bridges, but were found after his death. There are six poems,
usually referred to by their opening words as: To Seem the Stranger, I
Wake and Feel, No Worst, Carrion Comfort, Patience, Hard Thing
and My Own Heart. Not all commentators believe that Hopkins was
suffering from depression when he wrote them, but the evidence seems
strong that he was.
I first encountered the poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins when
studying for A Level English. He has remained one of my favourite
1
Lewis Wolpert, Malignant SadnessThe Anatomy of Depression (London: Faber, 1999), 3-7, 14-18, 45.
The Way, 46/1 (January 2007), 23-37

24 Hilary E. Pearson
poets. For many years I was plagued with depression related to

hormonal disturbances. At times it was so bad I could barely function
three weeks out of four, although throughout much of this period I was
living the intense life of a litigation lawyer. When I was depressed, I
found Hopkins poems, particularly these poems, to be a source of
comfort. He described vividly how I felt.
Was Hopkins Depressed?

The Circumstances of Writing the Terrible Sonnets
At the time when Hopkins wrote these poems he was feeling very
isolated. His sense of alienation is expressed in To Seem the Stranger:
To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life

Among strangers. Father and mother dear,
Brothers and sisters are in Christ not near
And he my peace, my parting and my strife.
England, whose honour O all my heart woos, wife
To my creating thought, would neither hear
Me, were I pleading, plead nor do I: I wear-
y of idle a being but by where wars are rife.
I am in Ireland now; now I am at a thrd
Remove. Not but in all removes I can
Kind love both give and get. Only what word
Wisest my heart breeds dark heavens baffling ban
Bars or hells spell thwarts. This to hoard unheard,
Hear unheeded, leaves me a lonely began.
This is a threefold alienation. First, Hopkins is alienated from his

family by his conversion to Catholicism. Then he is alienated
spiritually from his beloved country, since England had failed to make
the return to the Catholic Church for which he longed.2 His move to
Ireland in 1884 added physical separation from England, the
third/Remove of the poem.
The appointment of the English Hopkins to the Classics Fellowship
at the new Royal University caused a political row. Desire for Home
Rule was growing and Hopkins, an English patriot, was not
sympathetic to this movement, so he was alienated from his Irish co-
2
See stanza 35 of The Wreck of the Deutschland.
The Terrible Sonnets of Gerard Manley Hopkins 25
religionists. His work was not congenial: the Royal University had
inadequate facilities and most of the students were uninterested in
learning. He had to spend a great deal of time marking examination
papers which were generally of a low standard, and he felt that this
burden kept him from creative activities. He was not a successful
teacher and did not get on with most of his colleagues.
Hopkins General Psychological Health
Most of the evidence about Hopkins health while he was in Dublin
comes from his letters to his closest friend, the poet Robert Bridges.
From the very beginning he complains about weakness, sometimes
showing desperation, as in the outburst AND WHAT DOES
ANYTHING AT ALL MATTER? About the time the poems were
composed he wrote to Bridges, I think that my fits of sadness,
although they do not affect my judgment, resemble madness.3 In No
Worst he presents a vivid image of the depressives terror of falling
over the edge into insanity:
O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall

Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who neer hung there .
This was not the first time that he had experienced such feelings.
Throughout his life his temperament had been sensitive and highly
strung. In 1873 he recorded the effect of a strenuous journey:
In fact, being quite unwell I was quite downcast: nature in all her
parcels and faculties gaped and fell apart, fatiscebat, like a clod
cleaving and holding only by strings of root. But this must often
4
be.
The last sentence seems to indicate weary familiarity with this exper-
ience. Joseph Feeney5 has demonstrated from Hopkins letters and
journals that each period of teaching in his life was accompanied by
3
Poems and Prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins, edited by W. H. Gardner (Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1953), 199.
4
Poems and Prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins, 132.
5
Joseph J. Feeney, Hopkins the Teacher: The English Years, in Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-
1889): New Essays on His Life, Writing and Place in English Literature, edited by M. E. Allsopp and M.
W. Sundermeier (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1989), 203-219.
The house where Hopkins lived in Dublin
tiredness, lack of energy and inability to complete anything he took up,

although until the Dublin post none of his teaching jobs had been by
any reasonable measure onerous.
Some secular commentators regard Hopkins Jesuit vocation as the
sole cause of his mental problems. This view seems to be based more
on prejudice than evidence. However, one aspect of this vocation,
celibacy, may have contributed to Hopkins problems. Mary Ann
Coate, writing from a Freudian psychological viewpoint, believes that
there is a possible link between celibacy and depression, particularly in
those (like Hopkins) whose sexuality was not fully or indeed ever
roused before they espoused the celibate life.6 Another factor in
6
Mary Anne Coate, Celibacy and Depression, The Way Supplement, 69 (1990), 79.
Hopkins state of mind was his inability to have his poems published
except in the few cases where this was permitted by his superiors. John
Pick discusses in detail the complex interaction between Hopkins the
poet and Hopkins the Jesuit. His conclusion is that, although the lack
of recognition given to Hopkins poetry caused him great suffering,
overall his spiritual life as a Jesuit gave to his poetry the very qualities
which are its greatness.7
The Terrible Sonnets certainly reflect suffering. In To Seem the
Stranger, Hopkins poetic creativity, what word/Wisest my heart
breeds, is doubly frustrated, by dark heavens baffling ban and by
hells spell. The latter perhaps refers to his dark mood.8 The former,
however, could refer to the effective ban on publication of his poetry
that resulted from his Jesuit vocation. But Hopkins accepted this when
he joined the Jesuitswhy is he now complaining? It could be that the
absence of spiritual consolation made the ban much harder to bear. It
could be that he had just entered his forties and was realising that, far
from attaining his goals in life, he had built nothing and would be
Times eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.
There are other clues to Hopkins state of mind in the Terrible
Sonnets themselves. The opening of I Wake and Feel is a vivid
description of the sleep disorder characteristic of depression: lying
awake for hours with tormented thoughts, finally falling asleep to be
haunted by disturbing dreams, then waking in darkness to find the
torment still there.
I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.

What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in longer lights delay.
Here Hopkins is describing his own experienceWith witness I speak

thisand it is not the experience of just one night.
The beginning of Carrion Comfort may represent Hopkins
struggle with a temptation to utter despair (carrion in the sense of
dead), even suicide (nor untwist these last strands of man; not
chose not to be):
7
John Pick, Gerard Manley Hopkins: Priest and Poet (London: Oxford UP, 1942), 128.
8
Exx 318 teaches that desolation can be caused by evil spirits.
Not, Ill not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;

Not untwistslack they may bethese last strands of man
In me r, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not chose not to be.
It is remarkable how often Hopkins manages to use not in these four

lines; they are a cry of desperate refusal to surrender to the darkness
pressing in on him.
Symptoms of Clinical Depression
While experiences of depression range across a continuum, a
distinction must be made between subclinical depressed moods and
clinical states. The accepted symptoms of clinical depression are a
persistent depressed mood and lack of interest with no obvious cause,
accompanied by one or more persistent and uncontrollable symptoms
such as feelings of guilt, insomnia or excess sleeping, fatigue, suicidal
thoughts, anorexia or excessive eating, or inability to concentrate.
Perhaps the most painful experience of depression is self-hatred.9
Christopher Frosts review of depression literature shows a common
view that this disease is rooted in defective self-awareness.10 Turner
sees depression as disintegration of an appropriate and healthy sense of
self .11 What he calls the persons psychological self, the self as
actually experienced, is negatively contrasted with their therapeutic
self , the self they perceive as normal.12
Depression and Other Explanations
Hopkins poems and other writings seem clearly to reflect most of the
symptoms of depression. Letters written in May 1885 complain about
an inability to finish tasks, lethargy and a crippling anxiety about work,
while I Wake and Feel contains vivid descriptions of self-loathing:
I am gall, I am heartburn. Gods most deep decree

Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
9
Dorothy Rowe, Depression: The Way out of Your Prison (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983),
quotes a moving description of this state by a sufferer who eventually killed herself (48-49).
10
Christopher J. Frost, Melancholy as an Alternative to the Psychological Label of Depression,
International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 2/2 (1992), 101-108.
11
Denys Turner, The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism (Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
1995), 227.
12
Turner, The Darkness of God, 228-229.
It seems likely that Hopkins was clinically depressed when he wrote

most, if not all, of the Terrible Sonnets. Robert Martin thinks that
Hopkins was subject to cyclical fits of deep depression.13
Alternative explanations for these poems seem less convincing.
Some early commentators such as Martin Carroll14 and, more recently,
Walter Ong15 saw them as evidence of the increasing perfection of the
Jesuit Hopkins, an example of advanced spirituality and the dark night
of the soul. This approach seems merely pious and hagiographicalin
James Cotters view it is simply evading the mystery of the real nature
of suffering.16 John Pick17 and Donald Walhout18 are emphatic,
moreover, that Hopkins experience does not fit with the classic dark
night. A similarly over-optimistic approach is to see these poems as
demonstrating Hopkins ultimately successful struggle to achieve self-
recognition and integration. This is a surprising conclusion which does
not seem to be supported by the poems or by his other writings.
Other commentators use Ignatian spirituality to interpret these
sonnets in various ways. Paul Mariani argues that they,
are most clearly read by following the map of St Ignatius

Spiritual Exercises. With this guide for the way, it is clear that
Hopkins was going down profound depths only to go upward
19
with God.
That Ignatius rules for discernment, particularly in the hands of a

skilled spiritual director, may help Christians suffering depression is not
in doubt. However, the question here is whether these poems can be
explained as the outworking of these rules in the life of one individual.
There are clear signs of Ignatian influence, such as the desire for
patience; but in the bleakest poems, such as I Wake and Feel,
Hopkins appears to have yielded to desolation, and his recital of the
13
Robert B. Martin, Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Very Private Life (New York: Putnam, 1991), 171, 379.
14
Martin C. Carroll, Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Society of Jesus, in Immortal Diamond: Studies
in Gerard Manley Hopkins, edited by Norman Weyand (London: Sheed and Ward, 1949), 49.
15
Walter J. Ong, Hopkins, the Self and God (Toronto: U. of Toronto P., 1986), 152.
16
James F. Cotter, Inscape: The Christology and Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins (Pittsburgh: U. of
Pittsburgh P., 1972), 221.
17
Pick, Gerard Manley Hopkins, 129-131.
18
Donald Walhout, Send My Roots Rain: A Study of the Religious Experience in the Poetry of Gerard
Manley Hopkins (Athens, Oh: Ohio UP, 1981), 140-143.
19
Paul L. Mariani, A Commentary on the Complete Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell UP, 1970), 241.
reasons for his suffering in Carrion Comfort and Patience sounds

unconvinced. Daniel Harris,20 in contrast to Mariani, uses Ignatian
elements (in particular the absence of colloquy in these poems) to
come to the conclusion that the poems show a failure of consciousness
of Gods presence and a hideous despair at the centre.21
In conclusion, the evidence is very strong that Hopkins was
clinically depressed when he wrote the Terrible Sonnets. None of the
alternative explanations put forward by various commentators seem to
fit this evidence as well as does a diagnosis of depression.
Depression and the Dark Night

Issues for Depressed Christians
Anyone who suffers from depression tends to think that they are
abnormal. Depressed Christians are liable to think that their
experience is a sign that there is something wrong with them
spiritually, for surely depression is not a normal part of the Christian
experience. Arent we supposed to rejoice always? The belief that this
is an abnormal experience leads to feelings of guilt and self-loathing.
Sufferers feel that they are losing their faith. Suicidal thoughts are
particularly distressing to those Christians who have been taught that
self-destruction is a serious sin, adding to their guilt and self-hatred.
Dorothy Rowe has found in her work with the depressed that those
with a religious belief suffer at the hands of both Freudian psychiatrists,
who believe that religious beliefs are evidence of neurosis, and
Christian ministers, who can only provide platitudes about Gods
forgiveness.22 Some Churches make this worse by treating depression as
evidence of sin, or even of demonic possession.
Christians suffer especially greatly when their depression seems to
arise from a life situation which was freely chosen in response to what
they were convinced was Gods calling. Does this mean that they were
mistaken? How could walking in Gods will for them result in such
suffering? One approach to these questions is the tradition of
20
Daniel A. Harris, Inspiration Unbidden: The Terrible Sonnets of Gerard Manley Hopkins (Berkeley:
U. of California P., 1982), 75-125.
21
Harris, Inspiration Unbidden, xv.
22
Rowe, Depression, 37.
apophatic mysticism, the darkness of God, as an agent of spiritual

transformation.
Depression and the Darkness of God
As Hopkins was a Jesuit, he would have been exposed to Ignatian
teachings. Those most relevant to depression are the Rules for
Discernment of Spirits, particularly those that deal with what Ignatius
calls desolation. Desolation here means feelings and affective
movements that tend to draw us away from God and make us more
self-centred.
Can desolation be connected with the illness of depression?
Gerard Hughes23 thinks that perhaps it can, although in his experience
consolation (feelings drawing us towards God) can also be
experienced during depression. The danger of desolation is that, if we
yield to it, it can weaken or destroy the Christian life; so Ignatius
counsels resistance and counter-attack. He also gives very practical
advice, such as not to change decisions made while experiencing
consolation. The ultimate weapon against desolation is patience.
There is a strong tradition throughout Christianity which regards
darkness as necessary to spiritual growth.24 A developed description of
this tradition is found in the writings of John of the Cross. He emerged
from the terrible experience of imprisonment and ill-treatment by his
own order with profoundly spiritual lyric poems. He later wrote
detailed theological commentaries on these poems. He teaches that
the souls movement towards God requires a painful stripping away.
This process begins with active purification, requiring ascetic human
effort, but this alone is not enough. The passive dark night is Gods
purifying activity, getting at the roots of sin and immeasurably more
terrible and costly than the active night alone.25
John understood that, experientially, what we now call depression
could not be distinguished from the passive dark night. He gave three
signs for distinguishing between the dark night and dryness from other
23
Gerard W. Hughes, God of Surprises (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1985), 98.
24
Rowan Williams, The Wound of Knowledge (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1990 [1979]),
170. It is beyond the scope of this article to examine the complex relationship between consolation,
desolation and darkness in Ignatius and how his teachings compare to those of John of the Cross.
25
Some have discerned a relationship between John of the Cross Dark Night and Jungs
individuation process, although Jung himself rejected this. There is not space here to pursue the
extent to which Hopkins experienced individuation.
causes, including bad humours (The Dark Night, 1.9). First, there is
no satisfaction from anything, physical or spiritual. Second, there is
consciousness of dryness and a painful care towards God. As these are
not sufficient to distinguish some psychological states, he adds a third
sign: inability to meditate imaginatively.
Denys Turner discusses the relationship in Johns thinking between
depression and the dark night, concluding that they can only be
distinguished in their outcomes and causes.26 When the passive dark
night has passed the self is transformed; when depression lifts the
previous state of selfhood is restored. The dark night is caused by
God; depression is caused by some physical or psychological imbalance.
Of course, God can use depression as part of the dark night
experience: the differentiating test is the outcome.
Applying this test to Hopkins seems to point to depression rather
than a dark night experience. While he hates the self he experiences
(I Wake and Feel), he clings to it (Carrion Comfort), and seems to
26
Turner, The Darkness of God, 235-238.
be approaching the restoration of what Turner calls the therapeutic

self in My Own Heart. It is instructive to compare Hopkins poems
with those that John of the Cross produced while undergoing a terrible
experience. Johns poetry describes leaving the self and going out into
the darkness to search for the absent Beloved; Hopkins poetry
expresses a flight into the self, looking for an escape from the darkness.
This difference perhaps results from their different images of God. John
sees God as a tender lover, whereas for Hopkins God seems to be
dominating, terror-inducing, a potential annihilator;27 it is difficult to
search for, let alone surrender to, such a God.
How Can the Terrible Sonnets Help Those Suffering Depression?

Spiritual Help
There are many definitions of spirituality, but they have in common an
emphasis on experience and practice in the search for God. For many
people suffering from depression, who often have low self-esteem,
spirituality depends on their answers to questions about whether they
have any relation to God at all, whether God has interest in them and
whether they can do anything to reach out to him. Hopkins gives the
sufferer from depression help in finding answers to these questions.
First, all the poems show that Hopkins maintained some kind of
relationship with God: indeed that is their common theme. The real
issue is what kind of relationship this was; for this, we must look at the
answer to the second question. As we have seen, these poems and
others seem to reveal a relationship with a distant, stern God: a hard
taskmaster who must be obeyed. Even in Hopkins happiest poems,
such as Hurrahing in Harvest, the imagery is still of remote majesty. I
suspect that many depressives have a similar image of God; here
Hopkins stands primarily as an example of what has gone wrong in
depression.
Can those in depression reach out to God? Hopkins certainly
shows that this is possible, even if only in the anguished cries for relief
27
Peter Hardwick, The Inward Struggle of the Self with God: Gerard Manley Hopkins and George
Herbert, The Way Supplement, 66 (1989), 33, draws this conclusion in comparing Hopkins poems
with Herberts: Hopkins is most deeply troubled, indeed almost destroyed, not by a sense of Gods
absence as a friend, but of his terrible and overwhelming presence as an absolute being,
unapproachable but all-demanding God the assailant can be felt as God the un-creator.
of No WorstComforter, where, where is your comforting?or the

questioning of Carrion Comfort:
But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me

Thy wring-earth right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruisd bones?
In some respects these poems show how Ignatius very practical but
terse principles can be applied to depression. Patience, Hard Thing
reflects Ignatius eighth rule, Let him who is in [spiritual] desolation
work at holding on in patience (Exx 321):
Patience, hard thing! the hard thing but to pray,

But bid for, patience is! Patience who asks
Wants war, wants wounds; weary his times, his tasks;
To do without, take tosses and obey.
Hopkins, like most of us, clearly found patience difficult. In his

1879 poem Peace he lamented the elusiveness of peace in himself:
When will you ever, Peace, wild wooddove, shy wings shut
Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs?
Instead of peace, his Lord had left Patience exquisite,/That plumes to

peace thereafter. But in Patience, Hard Thing even that patience is
eluding him. The poem mirrors Hopkins struggle as he prays for
patienceyou can almost hear him gritting his teeth. Patience is not a
cure for suffering; to ask for patience is like enlisting as a soldier,
accepting war, wounds and deprivation as a result of obedience.
Nevertheless, Hopkins follows the stark first stanza with images of ivy
tranquilly covering ruins, and of honeya natural antiseptic and
source of sweetness. There is hope that, through patience, struggle will
end in healing and the return of the sweetness of Gods presence.
Donald Walhout offers a detailed study of Hopkins spirituality,
finding in it a three-stage process: encagement, naturation and
grace.28 Encagement is a sense of spiritual confinement, accompanied
by dryness, disappointment, discouragement and despair; naturation is
the beginning of recovery through relating to creation; while grace is
28
Walhout, Send My Roots Rain, 7-8.
the aspect of recovery that comes from God. While this is a process of
moving from desolation to consolation, Walhout admits that it remains
abstract:
In actual practice however, everyone knows that personal life is too

precarious, too confused, too subject to ups and downs, for anyone
to think that an abstract model is precisely duplicated on the
29
slippery slope that is human life.
This theory is attractive because it provides a more accessible version

of Hopkins spirituality than heroic Jesuit sainthood and is more
comforting than bleak despair.
Practical Help
Hopkins also provides practical help for those seeking to escape
depression. It is valuable advice to treat yourself kindly:
My own heart let me more have pity on; let

Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirsts all-in-all in a world of wet.
Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, lt be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
S not wrung, see you; unforeseentimes ratheras skies
Betweenpie mountainslights a lovely mile.
Hopkins begins this poem by deciding to be more kind to himself, to

accept his lot and not make things worse by continually repeating his
tormented thoughts. However, his limited recovery from the depths of
No Worst and Carrion Comfort is not the result of a restored sense
of the presence of God: my comfortless shows that his inner landscape
is still desolate, with no sign of the Comforter whom he had so
desperately invoked in No Worst. He ends with the hope that he will
29
Walhout, Send My Roots Rain, 71.
again glimpse Gods smile, as skies/Betweenpie mountains, recalling

images from happier times.30 Making oneself remember previous
experiences of consolation is important in getting through desolation
according to Ignatius principle of counter-attack.
We can also learn from the negative side of Hopkins experience.
Those who have difficulty accepting that God loves them
unconditionally, as Hopkins seems to have done, are likely to have low
self-esteem, which is an indicator for depression. And an effective
remedy for the low self-esteem which characterizes most depressives is
belief and acceptance that God does love them unconditionally
something that requires an openness to God but can only be given by
Gods grace.
Is Hopkins Still Relevant to Modern Treatments for Depression?
Despite a century of study, there is still a stigma attached to depression
and it is rarely understood by those who have not suffered it: Hold
them cheap/May who neer hung there. That stigma may be felt even
more acutely by depressed Christians, who can face lack of
understanding or even judgmental attitudes in their Church. To avoid
the stigma, sufferers may exert costly efforts to conceal their depression
from those around them.
In 1885 there was no effective treatment for depression. The
twentieth century saw the introduction of anti-depressive drugs, and
the use of psychotherapy and ECT to treat depression. Does this
modern medical treatment vitiate Hopkins work as a source of help?
Drugs alone rarely provide more than relief from the worst
symptoms of depression, and even the full panoply of treatments does
not seem to effect a cure. Anthony Clare, a practising psychiatrist,
stresses the importance of having someone who is there, prepared to
listen, willing to support, able to indicate that he or she understands.31
If nothing else, Hopkins poems tell sufferers that someone has been in
the same situation before them. For Christians, Hopkins shows that
even dedicated servants of Christ can suffer depression. While the
sense that he had achieved nothing remained, birds buildbut not I
30
Pied Beauty and Hurrahing in Harvest.
31
Anthony Clare and Spike Milligan, Depression and How to Survive It (London: Arrow, 1994), 161.
build (Justus), Hopkins was strengthened by the knowledge that

Christ too was doomed to succeed by failure. 32
A Spirituality for the Depressed

For centuries Christians in distress or despair have turned to the great
Lament Psalms. Walter Brueggemann says:
The faith expressed in the lament is nerveit is a faith that knows

that honest facing of distress can be done effectively only in
33
dialogue with God who acts in transforming ways.
In the Terrible Sonnets Hopkins expresses this same faith while

struggling with depression, showing those in similar suffering a
spirituality that is open even to them. Depression is a disease that
brings darkness of mind, self-loathing, exhaustion, despair. Perhaps the
most important message from these poems to the depressed is that they
can indeed have a spirituality. Although modern drugs and
psychotherapy can provide some relief to sufferers, they are not a
complete answer. The spirit is just as affected by depression as the
mind and the body, and spiritual treatment is also needed. These
poems contain an outworking of Ignatius spiritual and practical advice
to those in desolationbe patient, dont despair, hang on to decisions
you made when things were going well spiritually, be kind to yourself.
Hilary Pearson has been a lawyer specialising in intellectual property for the last
thirty years. She is a professed Anglican Franciscan Tertiary. In 2004 she
completed an MA in Christian Spirituality at Heythrop College, and started
doctoral research at Oxford in 2006 on Teresa de Cartagena.
32
The Correspondence of Gerard Manley Hopkins and Richard Watson Dixon, edited by Claude Colleer
Abbott (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1970 [1935]), 138.
33
Walter Brueggemann, The Psalms and the Life of Faith (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 69.
POETRY AND PRAYER
BEYOND WORDS
Graeme Watson
T
HERE IS A GROWING INTEREST in forms of prayer which take us
beyond words into the prayer of silent stillness. This may be
variously called Centring Prayer, or Christian Meditation,1 or, more
generally, prayer of the heart or contemplative prayer. The discovery
of such forms of prayer comes as a relief for some people who have
been struggling for years to find the appropriate words for spoken or
mental prayer. Others have sought such a way of prayer in Eastern
religions, and later discovered that there is a rich but little-known vein
of silent prayer within the mine of Christian tradition. Others who
have had little previous serious experience of Christian prayer find that
this is the most natural form of prayer for them. For some, going
through a prolonged period of spiritual dryness, the discovery has
brought about almost a rebirth.
One priest tells how, when faced with a serious crisis of faith, he
found that all attempts to return to the kind of prayers that he had
been using throughout his ministerial life brought no experience of
renewal. Recognising that he needed to find a new way of praying, he
dared to give up what was once so satisfying. Seeking a greater
simplicity and depth of prayer, he found it in Christian Meditation.2
This is a way of poverty of spirit, in which we do not seek to think
about God, but to be with God, to experience Him as the ground of
our being.
Apophatic Prayer
One way of describing these silent forms of prayer is to call them
apophatic. In popular terms apophatic spirituality is sometimes
1
See such websites as www.centeringprayer.com or www.wcm.org.
2
The Prayer of the Priest, edited by William F. Eckert (Tucson: Medio Media, 2005).
The Way, 46/1 (January 2007), 39-52

40 Graeme Watson
described as emptying the mind of all mundane matters in order to open

it up to spiritual realities.3 But it is better to start not with the
individuals religious and psychological experience, but at a different
place.
The Christian traditions of silent or apophatic prayer offer us not
just a method of realising a spiritual dimension to life, but a healthy
recognition that all truly theistic prayer breaks down at the last resort,
simply because of the limitations of human language. Christian
apophatic prayer focuses on the One to whom we pray, recognising
that Gods greatness is such that even the most exalted language
ultimately fails. We know God because the heavens declare Gods
glory, and every part of the universe reflects aspects of God. As readers
of the Christian Scriptures and inheritors of Christian tradition, we
also know God through Gods revelation of Himself in Jesus Christ and
in the work of the Holy Spirit. Yet we are simultaneously aware that
God transcends everything in the creation, and no human language
can define or describe the essential being of God. We cannot know God
in his nature, since this is unknowable and is beyond the reach of mind or
reason writes the fifth-century theologian Denys the Areopagite. It was
he who first coined the term apophatic as contrasted with
cataphatic. What does he mean by these two words?
This is how Denys continues:
We know Him (God) from the arrangement of everything, because

everything is, in a sense, projected out from Him, and this order
possesses certain images and resemblances of His divine paradigms.
We therefore approach that which is beyond all as far as our
capacities allow us, and we pass by way of the denial and the
transcendence of all things and by way of the cause of all things.
God is therefore known in all things and as distinct from all things.
He is known through knowledge and through unknowing . This
is the sort of language we must use about God . The most divine
knowledge of God, that which comes from unknowing, is achieved
in a union far beyond mind, when mind turns away from all things,
even from itself, and when it is made one with the dazzling rays,
3
See, for example, www.apophaticmysticism.com.
Poetry and Prayer beyond Words 41
being then and there enlightened by the inscrutable depths of

4
Wisdom.
By cataphatic, he means that which can be said affirmatively of God,

while apophatic means that which must in turn be denied. All
theology, according to Denys, must end in silence, not the silence of an
empty and meaningless void, but the silence of embrace, unity with
God who unspeakably comes forth from divine life in order to draw
what is not divine into divinity.5
It is important to be clear what Denys is saying and what he is not
saying. When he argues that God is infinitely greater than anything we
can see or understand, he is not rejecting intellectual knowledge, but he
is saying that the only way in which we can attain to union with God is
through a spiritual participation surpassing the boundaries of what can
be known by the human intellect. Nor again is he suggesting that we
can reach God through darkness and negation rather than through light
and affirmation. He is saying that God is infinitely beyond all images,
concepts and human formulations.
This means that we find God not
in nothingness, but in mystery. As
Denys Turner6 puts it, commenting
on his fifth-century namesake, it is
the failure of what we must say
about God. Talk about God is
defective. This is not because we
have nothing to say about God,
but because, however much we
may pile up our words and images
about God, ultimately we know, as
all the great Church Fathers did,
that words fail to represent God
adequately. In the end words and
images can only point us beyond
Denys the Areopagite all human formulations.
4
The Divine Names, 7.3for texts of Denys, see Pseudo-Dionysius, The Complete Works, translated
by Colm Luibheid (New York: Paulist, 1987).
5
Mark McIntosh, Mystical Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 55.
6
Denys Turner, Silence and the Word, edited by Oliver Davies and Denys Turner (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 2002), 18, note 14.
42 Graeme Watson
The Poets
This is where, I want to argue, poetry can inform us. Obviously, the
only resources a poet has are his words, images and metaphors. But the
particular gift of certain kinds of religious poetry is that they point the
reader beyond those words, images and metaphors towards an
experience of the holy, of God, where all human language fails. This is
especially true of the so-called English Metaphysical poets of the
seventeenth century, such as Donne, Herbert, Vaughan and Traherne,
and also of T. S. Eliot and R. S. Thomas, for example, in the twentieth.
The particular poet whose work we are going to explore here is
the Anglican priest George Herbert (1593-1633). Unlike his older
contemporary John Donne, George Herbert wrote only religious verse.
Yet Herbert is far from being a poet of simple pieties, as has sometimes
been suggested. Like Donne he uses extraordinary words and images
drawn from ordinary life in order to convey spiritual truth. To name
but a few titles of his poems, we find Artillery, The Bag (that is, the
post-bag), The Pulley, Mans Medley, The Bunch of Grapes, The
Size (that is, status), The Method. The variety of voices that we meet
in Herberts poems indicates a sophisticated complexity of poetic
strategy.7 Of all the poets of that period Herbert seems to have
captured and retained the broadest appeal in his own century among
Christians of the widest diversity, but in later centuries he also
appealed to people outside the communities of faith. Looking back to
the period before he became a Christian, for example, C. S. Lewis
observed: Here was a man who seemed to me to excel all the authors I
had ever read in conveying the quality of life as we actually live it from
moment to moment. In a recent book, in which some twenty or so
prominent Christians were asked to name the poet who had most
inspired them, George Herbert came out top of the list. And one of his
best-known poems, Love bade me welcome, was their first choice.8
My argument is that much of Herberts poetry, full of bold and
cataphatic images, leads us into apophatic silent contemplation. But
before we look more closely at some of his most successful poems, we
need to take account of the context in which Herbert wrote. It was a
7
From the editorial introduction in George Herbert, The Country Parson and the Temple, edited by
John Nelson Wall (New York: Paulist, 1981), 26.
8
Five Gold Rings, edited by Anna Jeffery (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2003).
time when the English lyric poem was undergoing an explosive

development.9 The lyric poem is particularly well suited to spiritual
themes because it typically celebrates human love, and human love is
intimately related, and profoundly comparable, to the
reciprocal love of God for human beings, and the love of The lyric poem
human beings for God. Human earthly love is not directly celebrates
accessible to observation. It can only be observed through human love
the evidence of the senses, and it can only be
communicated by analogies. So, too, with the language of divine love
and its human response. Moreover, the language of love is frequently
the language of excess, movement, change and life. It cannot remain
static and achieve its goal. It is the very exuberance of the language of
love which compels the poets to acknowledge, either implicitly or
explicitly, that all language fails sooner or later when it comes to
speaking of the relationship between human beings and God.
Paradoxically, it is their use of exciting and bold images which leads
them in only one possible directionto the holy ground where the
only appropriate response is silence and contemplation. On this holy
ground, all images, concepts and human formulations vanish.
This silence into which George Herberts poems lead the reader is
not yet a well rehearsed theme, but it is one which is by no means new.
One distinguished commentator has drawn attention to it in a close
study of a sequence of some of Herberts most significant poems.10 He
observes that the central implicit issue in Herberts poem The
Thanksgivingthe necessity of Christs sacrifice on the crossis
based not on doctrine so much as on human experience. Universal
human self-centredness demands it. He writes:
the important gesture here is not the poem of praise, with all its
art, but the acknowledgement of inadequacythe collapse into
silence, when language and the mind meet a stumbling block they
cannot master.
9
See William Countryman, The Poetic Imagination: An Anglican Spiritual Tradition (London: Darton,
Longman and Todd, 1999), 35-36, to which I am indebted for the themes of this paragraph.
10
James Boyd White, This Book of Starres: Learning to Read George Herbert (Ann Arbor: U. of
Michigan P., 1994). See especially Chapter 3, Sequences.
44 Graeme Watson
National Portrait Gallery, London

George Herbert, by Robert White, 1674
So this substantial poem simply ends with the words: Alas, my God, I
know not what.
The paradoxical truth is that Herberts success as a poet often
(perhaps nearly always) lies in such an acknowledgement of failure.
The poetical project is doomed not simply because of human sin, or
even because of human finitude, but because it inevitably reveals the
limits of human language in describing our relationship to the divine.
Ultimately we cannot reach God with our intellects or even in our
imaginations, but only in our hearts by Gods grace and in response to
Gods love.
Similarly, in The Agony, Herbert finds himself turning from
doctrine about sin and love to the experiential discovery of what sin
and love mean, and this can only be expressed in a heartfelt response
to picturing Christs Passion in all its messy bloodiness. The poem can
only work in language, yet it leads us beyond language to the
experience of life within the community of faith in which the Word is
heard and the Sacrament is received. The bold cataphatic images give
way to apophatic silence.
Again, in The Sinner, the poet recognises that sin is not a matter
of accounting (how many times have you sinned?) but of identity
(Where are you?, as God asks of Adam and Eve when they hide
themselves, or, as a spiritual director today might well ask a directee,
Where is God in what you have told me?). Like the good teacher,
Herbert begins with a common but mistaken assumption: in this case
that one can somehow counterbalance the weight of sin in the divine
scales by collecting positive points on the other side. He then skilfully
turns the reader to a position that is close to the prayer of contem-
plation, in which the only adequate human response is a bare groan:
Lord, restore thine image, hear my call:

And though my hard heart scarce to thee can groan,
Remember that thou once didst write in stone.
The same writer comments that, although Herbert wrote only on

religious subjects, what he wrote is not so much like a series of prayers,
but rather poems exploring the impossibility of prayer.11
Herberts whole upbringing, his experience of higher education, his
expertise in rhetoric and poetry, and his knowledge of the world, led
him to give the highest value to the human intellect and the ability to
articulate language with persuasive skill. But, as someone trying first
and foremost to work out a relationship with God, he came to
recognise, and incidentally, to help others realise that the intellect by
itself would never bring one to God. The whole self could only be
engaged by the heart.
There are some poems which express a wholehearted ease and
intimacy with God. Of particular interest to us is one entitled Clasping
of Hands. It begins with the language of loveLord, thou art mine,
and I am thinethen moves on towards the thought of a union with
God that transcends I and Thou. The climax in the second stanza
leads us into contemplating the moment of Christs death:
Since thou in death wast none of thine

Yet then as mine didst me restore.
Oh be mine still! Still make me thine!
Or rather make no Thine and Mine!
11
Compare Romans 8: 26: for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit
intercedes with sighs too deep for words.
46 Graeme Watson
Here Herbert seems to be comparing two related self-offerings,

which involve both a loss of identity and, at the same time, an
awareness of true identity. He is alluding first to the cry of dereliction
on the cross, when Christ having offered himself to the Father, appears
to lose his sense of identity in the cry: My God, my God, why hast
thou forsaken me? Yet, also, as the words of the psalm from which
Jesus quoted indicate (Psalm 22), by continuing to trust in God, he is
ultimately vindicated by God and takes his place as Lord and Saviour.
But Herbert is also alluding to the paradox that, as the Christian
believer loses his identity in voluntarily offering his life to God, so he
becomes newly aware of his true identity in Christ. The self-negating
way of the cross is none other than the royal road towards the ultimate
vision of God. In such a vision the human soul is so caught up into the
life of the Trinity that there is for that soul no longer any sense of self
as apart from God. But this is not absorption or assimilation of the soul
into God, but integrationthe union of the Lover with the Beloved.
There is only one human language which can bear this weightthe
erotic language of human love, in which there is no really fruitful life
without the death of the false, self-centred person. We are being drawn
by the poet into that apophatic space that takes us beyond all images,
concepts and human formulations, even beyond the image of Lover
and Beloved, towards nothing less than the beatific vision of God.
It is precisely this movement from images to silence, I suggest, that
we find in Herberts well-known sonnet Prayer I:
Prayer the Churchs banquet, Angels age,

Gods breath in man returning to his birth
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heavn and earth;
Engine against th Almighty, sinners tower,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six-days world transposing in an hour,
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;
Softness and peace and joy, and love and bliss,
Exalted Manna, gladness of the best,
Heaven in ordinary, man well dressed,
The milky way, the bird of Paradise,
Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the souls blood,
The land of spices; something understood.
A Manuscript of Herberts Easter Wings
Herbert boldly juxtaposes what seems at first sight to be a series of

unrelated words and images, in order to excite our imaginations about
the limitless scope of prayer. As we respond to the images, we reflect
that to pray is to enter into the life of heaven (angels age). It is Gods
breath and grace stirring in us, enlarging our soul as we travel as
pilgrims through this life towards heaven. As the poem builds up, the
images become more earthy, vivid and boldthe builders plumb line
that directly connects earth and heaven; the engine (battering-ram)
by which we assault God in times of desperation; the [siege-]tower
by which we sinners dare to approach and climb over the walls of
heaven; thunder that does not, in this case, come down from the sky
but goes up with a clap from the earth; the soldiers spear that pierces
a hole in Christs side, providing a receptacle close to his sacred heart
for our petitions.12 Each image draws us further and deeper into the
infinite range and extent of the business of prayer.
12
See Herberts poem The Bag (p. 276) where he develops this powerful image of communicating
with Christs heart through his wounded side.
48 Graeme Watson
Then, fascinatingly, in the final line, comes the land of spices.

This phrase surely picks up the last verse of the biblical Song of
Solomon: Make haste, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or a young
stag upon the mountains of spices! (Song of Songs 8:14) Throughout
the medieval period this book had been widely and popularly
interpreted as an allegory of the yearning love of God for each human
soul. Ultimately the goal of such love is the consummation of mystical
union with God. Although there is not likely to be a direct influence, it
is interesting to note that such a reading had become known in
northern Europe within Herberts lifetime, in the Spiritual Canticle of
St John of the Cross (1542-1591), published in Brussels at least as early
as 1627. So the final image of prayer with which Herbert completes the
poem points us, like St Paul in his hymn to Love, beyond our present
condition of knowing God only in part to that ultimate one: then I
will know fully, even as I have been fully known (1 Corinthians
13:12). Such knowledge is not, of course, intellectual knowledge, but
the intimate knowledge of the heart, in which all previous images and
concepts disappear in the actual moment of being carried into the
divine presence. As the last two words of this poem surely hint, this is
something understood by the heart rather than by the mind.
Let us now see how this approach works out in Herberts culm-
inating and most famous poem in The Temple collection, Love III:
Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back

Guilty of dust and sin
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lackd anything.
A guest, I answered, worthy to be here.
Love said, you shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?
Truth Lord, but I have marred them, let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat.
So I did sit and eat.
The widespread appeal of this exquisite poem has many aspects.

One of the foremost is the use of the universal images of host and
guest, lover and beloved. The occasion is a meal. The invited guest has
his reasons for not accepting, but in the end finds that all his reasons
are excuses. The dialogue between host and guest opens up the nature
of the broken relationship between them. So the poet explores the
nature of the struggle, of which he is himself painfully aware, between
Love, that is, in Christian terms, Christ (or God), and the Love refuses
resistant human soul. Christ yearns for us, but when he to take no
offers us his hand, it is spurned for reasons which seem good for an answer
enough to the human heart in its stubborn pride. But Love
refuses to take no for an answer, and comes back smiling, gentle and
firm. Love exposes the false ego, which presumes to tell his host that I
am not worthy of his hospitality (I the unkind, ungrateful), and
reminds me who my Creator is. The ego is now ready to accept Gods
love, but, like Peter refusing to have his feet washed, still makes a false
move, now wanting to assert its false pride in the guise of humility (I
will serve). But Love defeats this last stratagem of the ego by firmly
telling the soul to sit down, and simply receive what is offered.
In other words, God makes the first move, by offering us an
invitation. Naturally we are interested but feel anxious and hesitant to
accept. Questions and answers follow that enable us to grow painfully,
step by step, into a greater self-knowledge. As we come nearer to
accepting, our final defences are knocked over by the steady insistence
of Love. The false ego is exposed to the true self, which now knows itself
as God knows it, and in the process has come at last to know God as
Unconditional Love. So I did sit and eat. Christ and I are at last united.
At this point, not only is the poem complete, but poetry is over as
a contemporary teacher of Christian Meditation points out.13 No
language on earth, not even poetry, can take us beyond this stage. The
poet and his readers are now left only with the reality of the divine
presence to contemplate in silence, beyond all human imagery. So, in
the poem, we see how the contemplated reality of God comes not so
much from a deliberate attempt to empty the mind, but rather grows
out of entering into the lively imagery of the poet. The images lead us
13
See Laurence Freemans contribution to Five Gold Rings, 52.
50 Graeme Watson
towards the presence of God, and then fall away as Herbert leaves us
at that point of encounter with the divine.
Poetry and the Mystical

In her book on the subject of poetry and mystical experience the poet
Elizabeth Jennings states that poets can only use concrete images, and
yet it is they who often come nearest to a full expression of mystical
experience.14 Poets do not deal in concepts, they use pictures, and in so
doing they sometimes point to a place which is dark with excessive
light. Henry Vaughan, another seventeenth-century poet, and a great
admirer of Herbert, echoes the language of Denys the Areopagite,
describing this as nothing less than the deep but dazzling darkness
with which God is surrounded.15 It is also famously described as the
cloud of unknowing which can only be pierced by the dart of longing
love. Language about God becomes a broken language in which the
silence which falls in the embarrassment of prolixity is transformed
into awe.16
It would be as well to explain here what we mean by the word
mystical, for in modern usage the term is a difficult one to use
precisely. Elizabeth Jennings adopted the definition of the mystical
given by the Benedictine Abbot Christopher Butler. This may be
paraphrased as the experiential perception of Gods presence, and
especially union with God, a union that is not merely psychological,
in conforming the will to Gods will, but a real union of the soul with
God, spirit with Spirit. This union is described by Christian mystics as a
momentary foretaste of heaven. If we take the example of Herberts
poem Love bade me welcome, it could be read as telling of an actual
momentary experience of being transported beyond this earth to be at
one with God as a guest at the heavenly banquet promised to all
believers.
However, such a reading would be highly problematic, for it is by
no means clear that Herbert could be described as a mystic in this
sense.17 We are on safer ground if we pursue an interpretation of him as
a poet who speaks the truth about the human condition and about
14
Elizabeth Jennings, Every Changing Shape (London: Andre Deutsch, 1961), 17.
15
Henry Vaughan, The Night.
16
Denys Turner, Apophaticism, Idolatry and the Claims of Reason, 18.
17
Graeme Watson, Was George Herbert a Mystic?, Theology (forthcoming).
God, from a profound knowledge of, and unity of spirit with, both God
and humanity. Like the psalmist, he dares to assume the voice of God
in dialogue with human beings. It is the rich abundance of his imagery
which leads the reader so often towards the awed silence of apophatic
prayer.
Silence and Spiritual Formation

As spiritual directors will readily acknowledge, communication
happens at many different levels between people, and between people
and God. However wise and learned he or she may be, a directors
words of counsel, questions or affirmations, may sometimes be the least
helpful form of response to the directees story. When a director has
the courage to be silent, simply waiting for the movement of the Holy
Spirit, in tune with the directees sighs and groans, it is often the case
that the directee will experience a moment of what can best be
described as a divine disclosure, to which they can only respond
Amen!. So the spiritual director who has the wisdom and the patience
to wait for that moment may be the most effective.
However, assuming that there is no such moment of disclosure, the
next step in the work of a spiritual director may simply be to ask what
may be called the redemptive questions, such as Where is God in all
this? or simply Where are you? This is exactly, we remember, the
question that was thrown up by Herberts poem The Sinner. This
question is sometimes best answered not by words, but by making a
drawing, a painting, or a paper sculpture, or by writing a poem to
express what the directee is feeling about his or her relationship with
God.
For some directees, the bold imagery of the poems of George
Herbert could provide a lively and encouraging model of the spiritual
journey and its ultimate goal, describing, as Herbert himself
acknowledged, a picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have
passed betwixt God and my soul, before I could subject mine to the
will of Jesus my Master,18. And for the reasons I have suggested, his
poetry may, by its beauty and power, also attract many people to
explore the possibility of practising prayer beyond words: the prayer of
18
Quoted in Izaak Walton, The Lives of John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Richard Hooker, George Herbert
and Robert Sanderson, edited by George Sainsbury (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1973 [1927]), 314.
52 Graeme Watson
silent contemplation. Here the essentials are faithfulness and

perseverance, for the aim of such prayer is not to pursue mystical
insights, but to discover in the silence of contemplation the reality of
oneself and the reality of God. So the desired outcome is to be found
primarily in the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5:22-
23).
In his own, often brutally honest but always subtle, exploration of
how God relates to the human condition, Herbert expresses both the
depths and the heights of Christian experience. In this process of
exploration, cataphatic and apophatic are not opposites but
complements. One leads to the other, and then back to the first again.
Despite the obvious cultural and linguistic gap between us and
Herbert, we who speak and live in the English-speaking world live in
the same faith (but by no means necessarily Anglican) tradition as
Herbert. So we share the same faith too that Love, which has bidden
us welcome to the Eucharistic feast, may at last overcome all our
natural fears, doubts and hesitations, and draw us one day into that
heavenly banquet where our times of contemplative silence will give
way to sublime music, and the momentary awareness of Gods glance19
to the eternal actuality of Gods presence:
Consort both heart and lute, and twist a song

Pleasant and long:
20
Or since all music is but three parts vied
And multiplied;
Oh let thy blessed Spirit bear a part,
21
And make up our defects with his sweet art.
Graeme Watson was born in London in 1935. He was ordained an Anglican

priest in 1962, and has worked as a parish priest and theological teacher in
Tanzania, in the Midlands, and in the west of England. He is married and now
lives in Hackney, North London, where he co-leads an ecumenical Christian
Meditation group. He is also engaged in local church-based social action.
19
George Herberts poem The Glance.
20
Vied increased in number by addition or repetition (Wall edition, 156n).
21
George Herbert, Easter (I).
GWEN JOHN
Her Art and Spirituality
Tessa Frank
Gbrother, Augustus,
WEN JOHN
(1876-1939), in contrast to her famous and flamboyant
was an artist almost unknown during her
lifetime. In her late teens she studied at the Slade School of Fine Art,
University College, London, where she carried off a prize for figure
composition. At the age of 22 she studied in Paris at the Acadmie
Carmen under Whistler, who commended her for her understanding of
tone. Returning to London she led a semi-subterranean life in a series
of basement rooms in great poverty. Here she worked, very slowly, at
paintings, mainly of women, a subject characteristic of her art
throughout her life.
In 1903 Gwen went on a walking tour in France with her friend
Dorelia McNeill, who later became her brothers mistress and lifelong
companion. Intending originally to go to Rome, they stayed the winter
of that year in Toulouse, eventually returning to Paris, where Gwen
decided to stay. Here she supported herself by modelling for women
artists, and then for the great sculptor Auguste Rodin. She had a
passionate relationship with Rodin which caused her at first intense
happiness and then, when he turned to another woman, intense grief.
Remaining in Paris till 1911, she painted some of her best-known works,
such as A Corner of the Artists Room, Lady Reading and Girl Reading at
the Window. Being poor, she could not afford models but based her
pictures on herself. In 1911 she moved to Meudon, a suburb of Paris,
where she was received into the Roman Catholic Church early in 1913.
The nuns of the Meudon convent,1 particularly the Mother Superior,
who was her godmother, were a great support to her at the time.
By now, Augustus had introduced her to the American art
collector John Quinn, for whom she produced paintings until his death
1
They were Dominican Sisters of Charity of the Presentation.
The Way, 46/1 (January 2007), 53-64

54 Tessa Frank
in 1924. The annual stipend Quinn paid her eased her financial
situation considerably; years later, in 1926, she bought a tumbledown
wooden shack in a large tree-surrounded garden in the rue Babie in
Meudon. She eventually moved into this humble home where she
lived like a recluse, devoting herself to prayer, her cats and her garden.
She died in Dieppe in September 1939.
Gwens Religious Journey

Gwen Johns life has been well documented in several biographies.
Here I want to consider her religious journey, which began a year or
two before her reception into the Roman Catholic Church. During her
relationship with Rodin and while she was modelling for him she had
read and translated philosophical and spiritual extracts for the
seminars he gave to those around him. Father Faber, the Oratorian,
was a great favourite with her; her notebooks at the time contain
copious extracts from writers such as St Francis de Sales, Bossuet, St
Gertrude, Dom Guranger and many others. These extracts mainly
focus on single-mindedness, silence and the desire to achieve self-
controlimportant to a person as passionate and headstrong as Gwen.
Her great attraction was for interiority, recollection, calm and
one of her favourite wordsharmony. Her desire to be recollected
appears frequently in her letters and notebooks:
A beautiful life is one led, perhaps, in the shadow, but ordered and
regular, harmonious. I must stay in solitude to do my work.
2
You must leave everybody and be alone with God.
In an undated letter to her lifelong friend Ursula Tyrrwhit, she wrote:
As to me, I cannot imagine why my vision will have some value in

the world, and yet I know it will because I am patient and
3
recueill[ie] in some degree.
2
All quotations refer to original letters and notebooks stored in the National Library of Wales: MSS
22280B, 22281, 22287A, 22289A, 22291A, 222301B and 222936C, unless otherwise specified.
3
Quoted in Cecily Langdale and David Fraser Jenkins, Gwen John, An Interior Life (London: Phaidon
Press, 1987). Gwens French was never very good and she spelt her favourite word wronglyrecueill
instead of recueillie.
Gwen John 55
Estate of Gwen John/DACS 2007
Young Nun, by Gwen John
Long before her conversion, Gwens paintings were strongly

characterized by stillness and tranquillity, from the days when she
painted her own room (1907) through to the portraits, during the
1920s, of composed, meditative, seated women (for example the
pictures known as The Convalescent series). All her life Gwen strove to
develop this virtue of interiority: I saw that God is a God of quietness
56 Tessa Frank
and so we must be quiet; I may never have anything to express except

for this desire for a more interior life.4
There were problems in attaining this inner peace, not least her
unrequited love for Rodin: It is despised love that hurts so much. On
one occasion when Rodin apparently rejected her, she turned to God:
I think of God more often. Oh that that thought would become my
refuge, my stronghold, my tour divoire. More and more she saw God as
a source of unchanging love.
Gwens yearning to be a saint motivated her desire for speedy
progress in the spiritual life. She made heavy demands on herself,
asking, What pleasures and what ease can I sacrifice?, even though
the conditions of her life were Spartan to a considerable degree. Trying
to direct and control [her] thoughts every minute of the day became
an obsession, no doubt causing some of the headaches from which she
frequently suffered.
Seeking Perfection in Art and Life

About the time of her conversion the nuns asked Gwen to paint a
portrait of their eighteenth-century founder, Mre Marie Poussepin,
and to base it on a small prayer-card picture which they gave her. For
almost seven years Gwen laboured at a series of portraits of the
founder, and also of other nuns in the convent, seeking perfection in
her art as also in her life. During this period she suffered continual ill-
health and tiredness: Very tired. Desire very much to finish my nun
and to go to Pont lAbb.
David Fraser Jenkins comments that:
Her involvement with the Church gave her the motivation to see
through a task which must have been especially difficult, to
complete so many paintings, none taken from life. After a period of
little painting, when she might have ceased to work, these were a
second start. The self-confidence required, then and later, she may
5
well have found in her religion.
4
Gwen John: Letters and Notebooks, edited by Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan (London: Tate Publishing,
2004), 53.
5
Langdale and Jenkins, Gwen John: An Interior Life, 41.
Gwen John 57
These were the war years and Gwen, who decided to stay in
France, suffered from the wartime privations, which were great, as well
as from her own ill-health and lack of energy. Her confidence in and
awareness of God were, however, increasing:
He has filled my heart with love to-night. [Pr]ayer is becoming a

joy.
Oh God, I thank Thee for the peace and sweetness in my
meditation to-night.
It is my home to be near my God.
Gwen had by now a great devotion to Thrse of Lisieux.6 In 1919

she visited Thrses shrine in the church at Plneuf in Brittany and
then exclaimed in her notes: I must be a saint, too. I must be a saint in
my work. She desires to be a child of prayer and Gods little artist.
She had almost certainly read Histoire dune me, in which the saint
outlines her Little Way of doing everything, even the smallest things,
for love. Her message spoke to Gwen, who henceforth showed its
influence in her life: she asked for Gods help to work diligently to give
Thee little presents every day. She spoke of herself as Gods child with
a confidence like Thrses:
I need not be afraid of anything. He will make me His child.

God is here. I will be a child of prayer. I will be a child of
contemplation.
Her devotion to the saint later found expression in a series of

sketches and watercolours she made of Thrse as a child with her
sister Cline, based on a prayer-card photograph of the two which she
went to great trouble to find.7 On paper taken from Les Grands
Magasins du Louvre reading room, she made febrile sketches of them
all over the page, which she had divided into tiny rectangles. Her final
watercolour sketches of the two are known now as The Victorian Sisters.
Later, in December 1927, she showed the connection of the state
of spiritual childhood with her art: To be Gods child is to think about
6
Carmelite nun (1873-1897) canonized in 1925 and made a Doctor of the Church by Pope John Paul II
in 1997.
7
Her battered photograph of the two survives in the archive of the National Library of Wales.
58 Tessa Frank
your painting.8 She is Gods little artista seer of strange beauties.

These she found in the flowers and leaves of field and forest and in the
peaceful beauty of her portraits. The thought that she was working to
please God led her to seek even greater perfection in her paintings, as
becomes clear from a notebook in the Print Room of the Cardiff
Museum and Art Galleryit is filled with sketch after sketch
preliminary to the painting of a Woman in a Mulberry Dress.
Gwen had never been driven by a competitive spirit: now her
strong motivation was to please God in her art. Sir John Rothenstein,
noting the exceptional strength of her later work, suggests that she
gained wisdom from her spiritual ordeals and that her goodness,
which had earlier been instinctive and unfocused, became radiantly
manifest.9
Seeking Love
In her fifties Gwen still suffered intensely from loneliness, shyness,
timidity and a lack of love in her life. She had good friends but these
were mostly at a distance. The poet Rilke, for whom she felt great
affection, died just after Christmas 1926 and she felt bereft. Despite
her need, it is disconcerting to find someone so advanced in the
spiritual life, with a strong love of God, suddenly developing a new
obsessive love, this time for a woman ten years her junior, Vra
Oumanoff, who was the sister-in-law of the well-known Thomist
Jacques Maritain. His friendships with artistsamong them Rouault
with poets and theologians, brought many interesting people to his
house in Meudon. Vra, a devout, even mystical, Catholic convert,
lived with her sister Rassa and Maritain, her brother-in-law, in
Meudon, in an atmosphere of rarefied spirituality. Retreats were
arranged by Maritain each year in the Meudon convent for as many as
three hundred people. One might have imagined that, through Vra,
Gwen would have been caught up in the Catholic Revival in France,
but sadly it remained a closed book to her. Wyndham Lewis suggestion
that Gwen was part of it was repudiated with scorn by Jacques
8
That Gwen did think deeply about her painting is clear from the numerous lists of colours and
instructions she wrote for herself in many of her notebooks.
9
Sir John Rothenstein, Modern English Painters (London: Macdonald and Janes, 1976 [1952]), 171.
Gwen John 59
Maritain. The idea, he wrote,

considering her total solitude,
is senseless.10
After Gwens first contact
with the Maritains in Dec-
ember 1926, her relationship
was only with Vra. Gwen
hoped that Vra would become
her spiritual counsellor. And
Vra indeed helped her: Those
new things you told me, wrote
Gwen, made of me a new
being.11 At first Vra allowed
Gwen to confide in her, went Vra Oumanoff
for walks with her, gave her
chocolates, and showed concern for her physical and spiritual welfare.
God has given you to me, Gwen wrote in a draft letter to Vra.
However, Gwens growing importunity and desire for her friends
attention and love seemed to Vra inordinate: she felt Gwen was too
attached to her for her own good. She told Gwen to direct her love
towards God, not towards one of his creatures. As Vra tried to keep
Gwen at arms length, the latter suffered yet once more from despised
love, and from the apparent rebuffs; her old sensitivities reawakened
and it is probable that this was one more trial she had to undergo
before she finally won through to inner peace. We glimpse her suffering
in a draft letter to Vra where she speaks of yearning: it is a desire for
love, perhaps human, perhaps divine, of which one is deprived.12 In
the end Vra felt compelled to break off the relationship. Years later
Jacques Maritain wrote of Gwens rare magnanimity joined to a
passionate violence from which she was the first to suffer. He explains:
[Her] affection was intolerably engrossing, and it was because of

this, as also because of remedying the need she had of torturing
10
Jacques Maritain, Notebooks (New York: Magi Books, 1984), 301.
11
Authors translation.
12
Authors translation.
60 Tessa Frank
herself that Vra had to recognise the necessity of ceasing to see

13
her.
The decision cost Vra dearly, and was not taken without the
certitude that it was in Gwens own interest that she acted thus.14 He
tells us that Vra prayed for Gwen for the rest of her life.
Given Vras spiritual qualities, it is not surprising that Gwen
desired her for a friend and mentor, but Vra was unable to give the
intensity of love she desired. Nor did Vra seem to value the little
sketches, the dessins de lundiVra had rationed Gwens presents to
one day a week, Mondaythat Gwen lavished on her, any one of
which would command a four-figure price today. No doubt this painful
experience was one which eventually intensified Gwens spiritual life
since it threw her back on God, whose love never fails anyone.
Prayerand Drawing in Church

Gwen was faithful to prayer throughout her life as a Catholic, although
she found it difficult to pray for any length of time: I am troubled
because my mind rises for such short moments in prayer to God, she
wrote in February 1915.
Her prayer was ardent, characterized by great yearning and desire,
but quite limited in its horizons. One recognises a Garden of the Soul
type of prayer, sound and of value but lacking biblical or liturgical
dimensions. She prayed to the Father, and to the Son as Jesus; there
was no mention of the Holy Spirit at a time and in a place where entire
retreats were being organised by the Maritains on the sole subject of
the Spirit. Neither did she appear to pray to Our Lady. The Rosary did
not commend itself to her; she had several broken rosaries among her
sewing cottons, but, as she told Vra, she did not use them. Gwens
prayer was simply expressed and straight from the heart. In October
1914 she wrote:
My God, I thank Thee for Thy goodness to me! Oh let me live by

what I know of Thee! Oh have pity on me when I do not think of
Thee! Oh listen to my prayers! I want to please Thee and live by
Thy light alone.
13
Maritain, Notebooks, 301.
14
Maritain, Notebooks, 301.
Gwen John 61
Estate of Gwen John/DACS 2007

Drawing done by Gwen John in church
She told Vra that she drew while she was in church because she
could not pray for very long at a timean interesting admission in
view of the fact that at one stage she scheduled an hours meditation
each morning. Vra, whom she consulted about drawing in church,
told her that she did not think it a big sin to occupy herself thus at
Mass. The cur said it was a sin, Gwen told her; then it must be, Vra
agreed.
To salve her conscience, Gwen declared that she would draw at
Vespers, Benediction and in retreats, but not at Mass. However, she
held to her convictions explaining that:
Like everyone else I like to pray in church, but my spirit is not able
to pray for a long time at a stretch. Now those moments when it
looks at exterior things have become so long that not much time is
left for prayer. The orphans with those black hats and white ribbons
62 Tessa Frank
and their black dresses with little white collars charm me . If I

15
cut off all that there would not be enough happiness in my life.
Gwen told Vra that these sketches were little gifts that she made to
God: Very little they may be but that doesnt matterHe accepts
them. From such remarks one may infer how closely Gwen lived in
Gods presence.
Unless one nourishes ones spiritual life, it does not grow. Gwen
actively pursued her inner life by prayer and continual reading; the
latter was was very important to her. It is significant that a good
number of her paintings show people reading: The Convalescent, The
Precious Book, Lady Reading and Girl Reading at the Window, to name
but a few. She had quite a large library in her house, and in it were
both spiritual and philosophical works, as well as books on art. In
December 1928 she thanked Tom Burns, later editor of The Tablet, for
a spiritual book he had sent her. In a letter she mentioned a book on
the Mass by Father Martin DArcy SJ, while in 1923 she told a priest
friend that she read Father Fabers The Blessed Sacrament every
evening. Her habit of copying extracts from her reading into her
notebooks continued until the notebooks came to an end.
Gwens Catholic Life

As a Catholic, Gwen took a full part in parish life, attending daily
Mass, Benediction, Vespers, and parish retreats. She confessed to the
parish priest, went on parish outings and contributed to the parish fte.
She visited Lourdes twice. When she had some spare money she was
very generous to those poorer than herself. Her own life was ascetic:
she ate little and lived frugally, tragically neglecting her health. There
are occasional frustrated outbursts, as when she exclaimed that it was
almost impossible to be a true Catholic; she complains that Catholics
lack simplicity and are not above telling little liesshe was thinking of
Vra here. Her neighbour in rue Babie thought she remained a
Protestant in some ways; for example, when Pope Pius XI died, the
good lady next door was scandalized that Gwen was more moved by
the death of a rather unamiable neighbour than by that of the Pope.
15
Draft fragment to Vra, see Gwen John: Letters and Notebooks, edited by Lloyd-Morgan, 154.
Gwen John 63
In her later years (1930-1939), Gwen seemed to live continually in

awareness of Gods presence, telling her parish priest, I think of Jesus
when I start my work and when I wake up in the morning and before
going to sleep. She found that practical life and art dont go well
together, yet she told her solicitous neighbour Mme Roche, my
religion and my art are my whole life.16 No paintings in oils survive
from this late period of her life, though she continued to sketch and
make small paintings in gouache and watercolour. In a letter she
declares that she is always in Jesus company and thinks of Him: Jesus
is with me more frequently now I have no fear that Jesus will
distance Himself from my life.
After 1933 there are no more notes and jottings extant, although
there are still letters to friends. Her neighbour confirmed her frugal
and devout life, while the impression she made on an American,
Maynard Walker, who paid her visits in 1929, 1930 and 1937, is
revealed in his comments. He wrote of her rare and sweet humility,
acknowledging her to be both a great artist and a great person as
well. He felt peace and joy after his visits, telling her on one occasion
that,
the same spirit that emanates from your paintings is in that

garden that surrounds you. I dont know whether you are religious
or not, but in any case you have got a halo.
Writing after her death to Gwens nephew and heir, Edwin, about
his last visit, Maynard Walker found it difficult,
to give you the impression she made on me and especially the

beauty of that last afternoon I spent with her when she gave me tea
underneath those great brooding trees at the back of that wild
garden. We talked of Proust, of spirits and angels and sinners and
painters, and I came away filled with the wonder of her spirit and
17
the keenness of her intellect.
After her death in Dieppe at the start of World War, II Augustus

received the pictures that Edwin had rescued from the damp of Gwens
16
Rothenstein, Modern English Painters, chapter on Gwen John.
17
All Maynard Walker quotations taken from Cecily Langdale, Catalogue raisonn (New Haven and
London: Yale UP, 1987).
64 Tessa Frank
home in the rue Babie, declaring, It will be a satisfaction to show them

without dreaming for a moment that their exquisite reticence will
excite the multitude, though he acknowledged that a few people
would possibly be able to receive the secret message she whispered.18
The harmony, recollection and interior peace which emanate from
Gwens later pictures were qualities which her work had exhibited from
the beginningwitness the portrait of Dorelia, The Student, done in
1904, or The Corner of the Artists Room (1907)but these qualities
gradually intensified as her spiritual life developed. The details of the
backgrounds become progressively sparer, until there is only the central
figure, monumental and somewhat misty, with entranced gaze and
folded hands, to focus our attention. Augustus speaks of peering
fixedly at Gwens paintings; that is the way they yield up their spiritual
depths.
Tessa Frank is a retired teacher of Religious Education and English. For many
years she was a Holy Child nun. She read English at Oxford and completed a
BLitt there in 1972. She taught an Arts course for the Open University in the
1980s and later studied Medieval Liturgy at York. Her interest in Gwen John
came about when she visited the Augustus and Gwen John exhibition in Cardiff
in 2005.
18
Quoted in Rothenstein, Modern English Poets, 173.
The Spirit in Contemporary Culture
THE VOCATION OF
DENISE LEVERTOV
Dana Greene
Fhearing. Only after that was there naming,

OR HER, REVERENCE AND ATTENTION came first; then seeing and
and in the naming, the
seeing intensified. This vocational summons to reverence, pay
attention, see, hear, and name coalesced in her childs tentative self-
understanding. At the age of ten, Denise Levertov claimed, she was an
artist-person and had a destiny.1 At that point her artistic expression
was still fluid; she wrote poetry, painted and danced. But language won
out. Her passion for the things of the world and their naming became
indistinguishable. Now, ten years after her death, what remains are
more than twenty books of poems and essays. In life, her work and her
passionate living were entwined; they remain so in deathinscribed
on the page. Her pilgrimage as a poet was also a pilgrimage of
faith:the two were interconnected in her seventy-four years of living.
Levertovs description of her early sense of destiny might be
dismissed as the recollection in later life of a successful poet if it were
not for other evidence. At the age of twelve she sent a clutch of poems
to T. S. Eliot for review; at seventeen, she published her first poem.
Her early life contained elements that were to nurture a poetic
sensibility. As a child she had solitude; her only sister was nine years
her senior. She did not attend school; rather her mother gave her
lessons until she was twelve. Unencumbered and much on her own,
she was free to wander from her home in Ilford to the nearby English
countryside of the county of Essex, exploring historic towns, revelling
1
Autobiographical Sketch, in New and Selected Essays (New York: New Directions, 1992), 260.
The Way, 46/1 (January 2007), 65-75

66 Dana Greene
in opulent gardens, and visiting, time and again, the Victoria and
Albert Museum in central London.
Like everyone in her family she read voraciouslyWordsworth,
Tennyson, Keats, Herbert, Traherne and Rilke, as well as all the
Victorian novelists. Every room of the house was filled with books, and
everyonemother, father and the two girlswrote. There were no
curtains on the windows: everyone could see in, and they could see
out. Boundaries between inside and outside were permeable. Beatrice
Spooner-Jones Levertoff and Paul Philip Levertoff (their daughter
subsequently changed the spelling of her name) provided a rich
intellectual and emotional environment for their children, a place
where art and language, music, natural beauty and social sensibilities
were valued. The Levertoffs were politically responsive. They took in
refugees from Nazism and protested against Italian and Spanish
fascism. Unknown to them, their girls hawked the Daily Worker.2
Sense of Destiny
Denises sense of being different derived neither from ambition nor
from competition, but from solitude and her ancestry as half Celt and
half Jew. Hers was a difference of confidence. Her father was a Russian
Jew and a descendant of the Rav of Northern White Russia, the
founder of a branch of Hasidic Judaism; he converted to Christianity
while studying in Germany. He met her Welsh mother in
Constantinople. They married, and Paul Levertoff became an Anglican
priest, assigned to Ilford, where there was a large Jewish community.
He was a scholar of mysticism and a man of great religious intensity.
Although Denise attended Anglican services, she did not define
herself as religious. Rather, it was this sense of destiny which
dominated her psyche. She was summoned to acknowledge and
celebrate mystery, something she later claimed was the most
consistent theme of my poetry from its beginnings.3
If there was a place where her poets vocation was born, it was in
the Edenic world of her mothers garden. There, face to face with the
natural world, the first act of reverencepaying attentiontook
2
The organ of the Communist Party of Great Britain. In 1966 it was renamed Morning Star.
3
The Poets View, in New and Selected Essays, 246.
The Vocation of Denise Levertov 67
place. Later she would write of this beginning point and link it to the
creation of the poets song:
The progression seems clear to me: from Reverence for Life to

Attention to Life, from Attention to Life to a highly developed
Seeing and Hearing, from Seeing and Hearing (faculties almost
indistinguishable for the poet) to the Discovery and Revelation of
4
Form, from Form to Song.
The natural world offered not only the origin of poetry but a
touchstone for a life of celebration and joy. But her paradisiacal youth
ended with the coming of war. The End of Childhood, the opening
poem of The Double Image, her first collection of poems, describes this
ending:
The world alive with love, where leaves tremble,

marking miraculous hours
5
is burning round the children where they lie .
Nonetheless the wonder and openness of her childhood would never

be entirely extinguished in her.
The war began when she was fifteen, ending any hope of her
attending university. She took up war work and trained as a nurse.
After the war she went to Paris and served in an English hospital. In
Switzerland she met Mitchell Goodman,6 an American GI, whom she
married in 1947, when she was 23. A year later she moved with him to
New York City, and the following year their only child, Nikolai, was
born.
Life in the USA

As a young poet, newly arrived in the United States of America, she
was fortunate: six of her poems appeared in an anthology of new
Romantic British poets. But, never having conceived of herself as
English, she now tried to find a new voice. Inspired by Emerson and
Thoreau, she read Ezra Pound, who taught her the precision and
4
Origins of the Poem, The Poet in the World (New York: New Directions, 1974), 55.
5
Childhoods End, The Double Image (London: Cresset, 1946), 9.
6
Mitch Goodman was a teacher and writer. He wrote three books of poetry and a novel, but was
best known for his outspoken criticism of the Vietnam War in the 1960s.
68 Dana Greene
accuracy of the poets craft, and William Carlos Williams, from whom
she learned the rhythm of the language of ordinary life. Through her
husbands connections she met Robert Creeley and then Robert
Duncan and Charles Olson, all of whom were associated with the
Black Mountain School.7 While these relationships were personally
and professionally fruitful, she never considered herself part of a school
of poetry, although others tried to claim her.
During the 1950s the Goodmans lived in Mexico for a few years,
and in France, before returning to New York City. It was a time of
financial insecurity and domestic responsibility; none the less, she
produced five collections of poems in which she carefully honed her
craft. Those poems portray a double visionwonder, joy and love on
the one hand, and death, darkness and destruction on the other. In
Three Meditations, she writes:
Barbarians
throng the straight roads of
my empire, converging
on black Rome.
8
There is darkness in me.
In Jacobs Ladder she poignantly lays out a perilous way forward:
The stairway is not

a thing of gleaming strands
It is of stone.
A stairway of sharp
angles, solidly built.
and a man climbing
9
must scrape his knees .
Yet within this brokenness and among the dualities of joy and
destruction, she acknowledges a certain pull. In the poem The
Thread she writes:
Something is very gently,

invisibly, silently,
7
In the 1960s the Black Mountain School in North Carolina was a unique educational experiment
for all forms of artistic expression, and especially for a group of avant-garde poets.
8
Three Meditations, Jacobs Ladder (New York: New Directions, 1961), 30.
9
Jacobs Ladder, 37.
pulling at mea thread

or net of threads
I havent tried
the strength of it. No barbed hook
10
pierced and tore me.
In the 1960s she published several collections of poems, supporting

herself as poetry editor of The Nation for several years and teaching
part time at Vassar, City College of New York, Berkeley and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. One year she had a
Guggenheim Fellowship, having been recommended by William Carlos
Williams. She gave poetry readings and participated actively in protests
first against nuclear weapons, and then against the involvement of the
US in Vietnam. In the early 1970s she visited Hanoi and Moscow.
Mitch Goodman was engaged in these protests too; in 1967 he was
arrested and stood trial for anti-war activity.
Levertov believed that
Timothy Klein
the poet must engage life,
with all its promise and its
brutality. While never
confessional, her work is
none the less intensely
personal and self-reve-
latory. In 1960 she had
written No barbed hook/
pierced and tore me, but
in the next decade great
sorrow closed in. Her
anguish over the war and
her grief at the haunted
life and early death of her
sister Olga expressed
itself in her poetry. The
Sorrow Dance (1967),
Relearning the Alphabet
(1970) and Staying Alive
(1971) are filled with her
10
Jacobs Ladder, 48.
70 Dana Greene
rage, despair and grief. Revolution or death, a mantra from the

streets, was brought into her poems. Mad Song reflects her own
suffering:
My madness is dear to me.

I who was almost always the sanest among my friends,
11
. Ive forgotten how to tell joy from bitterness.
The strain of the war weakened her commitment to pacifism and

contributed to the fraying of relationships. Her friendship with Robert
Duncan ended, never to be healed before his death. And her marriage
became less emotionally satisfying. She and her husband separated in
1973 and divorced the following year.
At the centre of this great wrenching was her poetic vocation.
Although she insisted that poetry should never be propaganda, she
took as inspiration these lines from Ibsen: The task of the poet is to
make clear to himself, and thereby to others, the temporal and eternal
questions. 12For her, the eternal questions had parallels in the
contemporary world and in the self. The individual was a microcosm
reflecting the tyrannized injustices of the external world. Her question
was how to respond, how to find authenticity in a world gone mad.
Her poetry and her reflection on her craft proved to be the way
through.
The Techniques of Poetry

There are few poets who have thought as deeply as Denise Levertov
about the origins and the technique of poetry and the interrelatedness
of the meditative and the active life. Two collections of essays, The Poet
in the World (1974) and New and Selected Essays (1992), explore these
questions and the relationship between poetry and engagement with a
suffering world.
For Levertov the process of writing organic, living poetry is
linked to the content of the poem and to her vocation as a poet.
Through intensity of experience and in passionate passivity the poet
waits until thought and feeling crystallize in words, and the music of
poetry comes into being. The poet stand[s] with open mouth and is
11
Mad Song, Relearning the Alphabet (New York: New Directions, 1970), 49.
12
She quotes Ibsen in the poem Three Meditations.
brought to speech.13 The poem is the record of that inner song. The
poet searches for the inner form of a thing, what Gerald Manley
Hopkins called its inscape. Intuition recognises this patterned order
in which the thing partakes, and then expresses it in analogy,
resemblance or allegory.14 Like her mentor Rilke, Levertov believed
that if a thing was to speak to the poet it must be regarded as the only
thing that existed and be given exclusive love at the centre of ones
universe. This gave the poet a kind of inseeing, an access into the
very centre of the thing itself.15 In Poet in the World she explores the
vocation of the poet:
I believe poets are instruments on which the power of poetry plays.

But they are also makers, craftsmen: it is given to the seer to see,
16
but it is then his responsibility to communicate what he sees
The poetwhen he is writingis a priest; the poem is a temple;
epiphanies and communion take place within it. The communion
is triple: between the maker and the needer within the poet;
between the maker and the needers outside himthose who need
but cant make their own poems and between the human and
the divine in both poet and reader . Writing the poem is the
17
poets means of summoning the divine .
Rilkes inseeing and Hopkins inscape are closely linked to

Levertovs understanding of imaginationthe human capacity which
connects poetry to compassion and which leads her to assert that the
authentic poet must work against all forms of injustice and destruction.
Poetry must be a giving of life. In Poet in the World she explains this
connection:
The imagination of what it is to be those other forms of life that

want to live is the only way to recognition; and it is that
imaginative recognition that brings compassion to birth. Mans
capacity for evil, then, is less a positive capacity, for all its
horrendous activity, than a failure to develop mans most human
13
Both phrases, stand[s] with open mouth and brought to speech, are found in Some Notes on
Organic Form in The Poet in the World, 8.
14
Some Notes on Organic Form, The Poet in the World, 7.
15
Rilke as Mentor, New and Selected Essays, 235-236.
16
A Testament and a Postscript1959-73, The Poet in the World, 3.
17
Origins of a Poem, 47.
72 Dana Greene
function, the imagination, to its fullness, and consequently a failure

18
to develop compassion.
The role of the poet is to awaken and engage the reader. In her
poem Taste and See she reverses a famous line from Wordsworth:19
The world is
not with usenough.
20
O taste and see.
This tasting and seeing meant not only revealing what was hidden, but
holding oneself open to the experience of the transcendent, the
numinous. The key was imagination, the chief of human faculties, the
perceptive organ which synergized intellect, emotion and instinct, and
made it possible to experience God.21 And it was to that numinous,
transcendent mystery that Levertov turned increasingly.
A Re-evaluation of Her Faith

For most of her adult life Levertov considered herself an agnostic,
suspecting that belief was irrelevant, an embarrassment, and
potentially incompatible with her political and aesthetic values. After
the war and the end of her marriage, she returned to her earlier
pacifism and to a gradual re-evaluation of her faith. It was in 1979,
while writing her long poem Mass for the Day of St Thomas Didymus,
that she came to a new understanding of faith. For months she worked
on the poem, and when she completed the Agnus Dei portion she
realised that she had begun to resolve the questions she had wrestled
with for years: how can the love of God and the suffering of humanity
be reconciled? How can joy and sorrow co-exist? In writing the poem
she came to understand the incarnation as the supreme
relinquishment of Gods self. By it, God, an innocence, was made
defenceless, so that human freedom could be honoured. It was
humanity which caused suffering, and it was humanity which needed
to keep the spark of remote light alive in a suffering world. Suffering
18
Origins of a Poem, 53.
19
The world is too much with us; late and soon/ Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers ,
William Wordsworth, The Major Works (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000), 270.
20
O Taste and See, Poems, 1960-1967 (New York: New Directions, 1983), 125.
21
A Poet's View, New and Selected Essays, 246.
did not annihilate joy; in the process of writing she came to an

incipient reconciliation of the two.
Beginning in the early 1980s and continuing for more than a
decade, Levertov taught at Stanford University during the winter term,
even after she moved to Seattle in 1989. These were extraordinarily
productive years during which she published six collections of new
poems and two books of essays. She was now unattached; her son was
grown and her mother had died in 1977. The focus of her work
increasingly turned toward the magisterial natural wilderness of the
Pacific North West and toward the numinous she found embedded and
accessible everywhere. It was not that her religious faith had overcome
doubt. In the blur of flesh/we bow, baffled,22 she wrote in Mass, and
in Suspended she acknowledged:
I had grasped Gods garment in the void

but my hand slipped
on the rich silk of it.
for though I claw at empty air and feel
nothing, no embrace,
23
I have not plummeted.
It was through the writing of her later poetry that what she called
her shaky belief became closer to faith: Thus for me the subject is
really reversed: not faith that works but work that enfaiths.24 Her
faith was never one of intellectual certainties, but rather of hope and
intention deepened through her creative activity.
For almost ten years she explored the treasures of the various
Christian traditions: Catholic, Anglican and Presbyterian. She was
especially attracted to the mystical tradition of the Catholic Church
and the nourishment she received in its liturgy. But her admiration for
Catholic witnesses to justiceDorothy Day, Daniel Berrigan,
Raymond Hunthausen, Thomas Gumbleton, Helder Camera, Oscar
Romeroas well as her friendship with the contemplatives Thomas
Merton, Murray Bodo and David Steindl-Rast influenced her greatly.
In about 1988 she became a Catholic, admitting that she did not like
22
Mass for the Day of St Thomas Didymus, Denise LevertovPoems, 1972-1982 (New York: New
Directions, 2001), 266-273.
23
Suspended, Evening Train (New York: New Directions, 1992), 119.
24
Work that Enfaiths, New and Selected Essays, 255.
74 Dana Greene
Elsa Dorfman
Denise Levertov
the hierarchical structure of the Church, nor its inflexible dogma, but
that, like others, she would now criticize from within.
In the final years of her life she found parallels between the work of
the poet and the mystic. Both took risky journeys into the unknown,
both were in service of the transcendent, both experienced
transformationthe mystic in being, the poet in the work itself. In the
art of writing poetry, the poet summons the divine; in the art of being,
the mystic becomes the divine. Whether considering the presence of
Brother Lawrence, the enacting of metaphor of the divine in Julian of
Norwich, or the coming to speech of the mute poet-monk Caedmon,
Levertov found these transformations of being analogous to the
transformation of words into poetry. She also found resonance between
the poets use of imagination and that of Ignatius of Loyola in the
Spiritual Exercises.25
25
Nicholas OConnell, A Poets Valediction, in Poets & Writers (May/June 1998), http://www.pw.
org/mag/levertov.htm.
It took a lifetime of intense living for Denise Levertov to establish

the link between poetic insight and compassion for the world. Having
revered and seen, named and imaginatively entered into the other, the
poet was incapable of destroying that which she had come to know.
Throughout her life, sometimes awkwardly and imperfectly, she
enacted and lived out that insight by creating a significant corpus of
poetry. Her coming to faith derived from her poets appreciation of the
sacramentality of the world and the power of imagination. While her
faith might be flickering, it was nonetheless clear, simple and single in
intention. It is summarised best in Primary Wonder, the final poem in
her final book of poems. In it she confesses that day after day she
forgets the quiet mystery, but it returns, once more present to her:
the mystery
that there is anything, anything at all
rather than void; and that, O Lord,
Creator, Hallowed One, You still,
26
hour by hour sustain it.
Ten years after her death, the poetry of Denise Levertov continues to
give witness to the primary wonder of life itself.
Dana Greene is currently Director of the Aquinas Center of Theology at Emory

University and Dean Emerita of Oxford College of Emory University. For many
years she was Professor of History at St Marys College of Maryland. She is editor
of four books and author of Evelyn Underhill: Artist of the Infinite Life and The
Living of Maisie Ward, both published by the University of Notre Dame Press.
26
Primary Wonder, in Sands of the Well (New York: New Directions, 1996), 129. Denise Levertov
died in Seattle, on 20 December 1997, of complications from lymphoma.
THE FIRST METHOD OF
PRAYER
Prayerful Self-Monitoring
Luis Ral Cruz
I GNATIUS USES THE WORD EXERCISE to cover a wide range of

spiritual activities He is particularly concerned with prayer and its
practical implications, and he is highly methodical in offering us
various forms of prayer. In his definition of exercises he implies a
distinction between meditating, contemplating and praying vocally
and mentally (Exx 1). When, at the end of the Spiritual Exercises, he
presents the three Methods of Prayer, he combines vocal and mental
prayer; vocal prayers from the liturgy and from basic catechesis serve as
a basis for mental prayer. This article is an attempt to unpack
something of the rich significance of the First Method of Prayer (Exx
238-248), and to show how it can both deepen the examination of
consciousness and enrich the life of prayer more generally.
The First Method of Prayer and Christian Instruction

Ignatius envisages that the First Method of Prayer should be part of a
process of Christian formation, whether for people receiving basic
instruction or for those seeking to make progress in a deeper
identification with Christ after the full Exercises. This First Method of
Prayer is mentioned in the light Exercises (Exx 18) that Ignatius
developed out of his experiences in Manresa and Monteserrat.
Living in a culture that is no longer explicitly Christian, but still
influenced by the memory of Christianity, we need to think carefully
about some of our basic assumptions. To say I know the Ten
Commandments can be made to mean just I dont do anyone any
direct harm. This then soon becomes Im kind to everyone. Before we
know where we are, we are giving ourselves the benefit of
the doubt to the extent of avoiding Christian commitment altogether.
The Way, 46/1 (January 2007), 77-90

78 Luis Ral Cruz
238 THREE METHODS OF PRAYER AND FIRST ON THE

COMMANDMENTS
The first Method of Prayer is about the Ten Commandments,
and the Seven Deadly Sins, the Three Powers of the Soul and
the Five Bodily Senses. This method of prayer is more to give
form, method and exerciseshow the soul may prepare itself
and benefit in those thingsand so that prayer may be
acceptable, rather than to give any form or way of praying.
239 First there should be made the equivalent of the second
Addition of the Second Week: that is, before entering on the
prayer, the spirit should rest a little, the person being seated or
walking about as may seem best to them, considering where
and what I am going to. And this same addition will be made
at the beginning of all Methods of Prayer.
240 A preparatory prayer, as, for example, to ask grace of God Our
Lord that I may be able to know in what I have failed as to the
Ten Commandments; and likewise to beg grace and help to
amend myself in future, asking for perfect understanding of
them in order to keep them better, and in order for the greater
glory and praise of His Divine Majesty.
241 For the first Method of Prayer, it is well to consider and think
about the first Commandment, how I have kept it and in what
I have failed, having it as a rule as regards the length of time
how long it takes to say the Our Father three times and the
Hail Mary three times; and if in this time I find faults of mine,
to ask pardon and forgiveness for them, and to say an Our
Father. And this same way should be followed with each one
of the Ten Commandments.
Perhaps the very fact that no one talks about the First Method of
Prayer any more might make it quite useful as a tool in Christian
formation. It might serve to establish the basic sense of the law of God
that should inform any Christian life. People today take a great deal for
granted, unreflectively and undiscerningly. The result can be a quite
inadequate, empty form of Christianity: subtly, we make idols of our
own egos, imagining that this is the way to become like God, when the
reality is quite different.
The First Method of Prayer 79
242 First Note. It is to be noted that when a person comes to think about a
Commandment on which they find they have no habit of sinning, there
is no need for them to spend so much time; but according as the person
finds in themselves that they stumble more or less on that
Commandment so they ought to detain themselves more or less on the
consideration and examination of it. And the same is to be observed on
the Deadly Sins.
243 Second Note. After having finished the run-through just mentioned
regarding all the commandments, accusing myself about them and
asking grace and help so as to amend myself hereafter, one should
finish with a colloquy to God our Lord, according to the subject matter.
244 II. ON DEADLY SINS
About the Seven Deadly Sins, after the addition, the
preparatory prayer should be made in the way already
mentioned, the only change being that the matter here is of
sins that have to be avoidedbefore it was of Commandments
that have to be kept. And one should keep the order and rule
already mentioned in the same way, and the colloquy.
245 In order to know better the faults committed in the deadly
sins, one should look at their contraries; and similarly, to avoid
them better, the person should take as their purpose, and with
holy exercises take care, to acquire and possess the seven
virtues contrary to them.
246 III. ON THE POWERS OF THE SOUL
Method. On the three powers of the soul the same order and
rule should be kept as with the commandments, making its
addition, preparatory prayer and colloquy.
Initially the First Method of Prayer seems rudimentary, basic,

something for beginners. It can thus often be undervalued,
unappreciated and forgotten. We think we already know everything it
has to say, thanks to our first religious instruction and the Christian
routines that we have always followed. It seems that there is nothing
new here. It seems dry and moralistic: here the gospel seems to have
lost its savour and fruitfulness.
Perhaps, however, the truth is different. Perhaps, indeed, as we set
about evangelization today, this First Method of Prayerhowever risky
80 Luis Ral Cruz
247 IV. ON THE FIVE BODILY SENSES

Method. About the five bodily senses the same order always
will be kept, but changing their matter.
248 Note. Whoever wants in the use of their senses to imitate Christ Our
Lord should in the preparatory prayer recommend themselves to His
Divine Majesty; and after making consideration about each individual
sense, they should say a Hail Mary or an Our Father. And whoever
wants in the use of the senses to imitate Our Lady should in the
preparatory prayer recommend themselves to her, that she may
obtain for them grace from Her Son and Lord for it; and after making
consideration about each individual sense, they should say a Hail
Mary.
or inconceivable this claim might seem to somecan become a way of

really assimilating the Christian life, a way in which Christian
instruction can avoid getting lost in sheer vagueness and fostering a
style of faith dissociated from real life. In Ignatius time, people made
their confession either once a year or more sporadically. The practice
was quite similar to what occurs today, except that then people were
obsessive and insistent about the reality of sin, whereas today we
hardly speak about it. For both of these extreme positions, sin is
something that cannot be coped with: it is something painful, lethal.
Vatican II taught us that sacramental practice should be intimately
connected with the living out of faith. The sacraments are sacraments
of faith; they nourish, strengthen and express faith. The grace which
they impart should have effect in the lives of believers, disposing them
to receive this grace in a fruitful manner.1 We might well ask ourselves
how far this vision has become a reality.
Ordinary catechesis in preparation for the sacraments involves a
kind of giving of the Exercisesone that should not be despised on the
ground that it does not even involve the full First Week, and is
directed at people who are straightforward and without refinement.
Normal people are quite capable of taking on board, with a healthy
realism, the basic questions about the Commandments that we find in
the First Method of Prayer, and they find this kind of reflection a
support to their faith life. Meanwhile the learned and the clever of this
1
Sacrosanctum concilium, n. 59.
world can be led by their learning to despise what is most central to

faith; they can be cut off from real knowledge of it and regard it as
somehow unworthy of their academic training.
The First Method of Prayer provides a way of speaking about what
is most central in life with a simplicity and straightforwardness that is
truly of God, and it has its place in Ignatius definition of Spiritual
Exercises:
every way of examining ones conscience, of meditating, of

contemplating, of praying vocally and mentally, and of performing
other spiritual actions .(Exx 1)
Whether you are following in full Ignatius systematic treatise on the

spiritual life, or whether you are simply looking for first steps that can
lead you gently to peace of soul, what this First Method of Prayer
containsthe examination of consciousness, both general and
particular, and the sacramental life of eucharist and reconciliation
remains solid and worthwhile.
In this First Method of Prayer, indeed, we find the whole Exercises
in microcosm. It may consequently turn out to be very useful for
people who are nominally Christian, but who, for whatever reason,
find themselves becoming conventional, lukewarm and resistant to the
action of God in their lives. It can spur such people to begin or to
resume a genuine life in the Spirit. Perhaps, too, it can serve as a way
of finding out whether people are genuinely open to the full Exercises,
and of developing for them the capacity that Ignatius demands: the
desire really to be initiated into Christianity, and the recognition that
there is more to Christian commitment than a certain level of religious
culture.
The First Method of Prayer and Self-Examination

Ignatius encourages us not only to move beyond ourselves and help
others, but also to work on our own selves. Perhaps the best known
means he proposes are the so-called Examens. But there is also
another means hidden within the First Method of Prayer: here too, in a
situation that is explicitly prayerful, a person can review how he or she
is behaving.
82 Luis Ral Cruz
This self-examination (a very Ignatian word)2 can set off in each

individual a distinctive process of improvement, touching both on
aspects of conduct and on the very heart of the individual. More is
involved than mere piety. Moreover the growth in sensitivity hereto
the commandments, to sins, to the powers of the soul, to the senses
is not a matter of simple observation. It remains elusive, especially to
the person concerned.
It is well known that evil strategies, complicities and collusions
operate within our thought-processes without our being fully aware of
what is happening, or, rather, without our being willing to admit to it.
We are in need of grace if we are to have our eyes open, grace
operating amid the dis-grace that cannot, thanks to the subtle work of
the evil spirit, be seen clearly for what it is.
2
The evaluative connotations of this word can seem off-putting, but any alternative comes up
against the same problem. What is at stake is not a problem of language, but the challenge of
responding well to what God is wanting and desiring from each of us.
Ignatius, as we know, wants people to move out from their self-

love, their self-centred desires, their self-interest (Exx 189), and to
work hard at overcoming themselves and setting their lives in order, to
become free of disordered affections. The aim is that we become
interiorly open to love and service in every dimension of our lives,
constantly moving forward in ways befitting our vocation to become
the likeness of God. But there is always the risk that our freedom will
be trapped subtly by the evil spirit that cannot leave our desires and
actions in peace, but is always disturbing us, impeding us, paralyzing us.
We are thus always having to work at discernmentdiscernment
which inevitably involves self-examination.
Discernment is the quest for knowledge about which spirit is
moving us. It involves self-analysis, and makes us more sensitive to the
action of the spirits. The Examen is another evaluative activity which
helps people to become self-aware. Discernment and self-examination
are two inescapable and permanent tasks, because our liberty is never
definitively guaranteed, and it is always conditioned by both internal
and external factors. Attentive examination serves to help us become
aware of where our thoughts are leading us, so that we can know from
which spirit they proceed.
We need, therefore, to regard discernment and self-examination as
inseparable activities that are intimately related as part of the same
process. Self-examination can go wrong, and in quite a decisive way, if
we try to do it independently of the more fundamental activity of
discernment, which actually identifies the voice of the evil spirit
speaking from within. Without that discernment, it is obvious how
easily our freedom and our desire, operating on their own, can
misinterpret the voices which come from outside. Without that
discernment, we can also fall into mere psychologizing, into a feel-good
narcissism, leading to a subtle self-idolatry that puts the ego on a
pedestal and dethrones the God of life. Like Israel in the desert, we can
construct our golden calf, even when we know full well that God is
descending towards us.
The First Method of Prayer is about taking on board what is obvious:
what we claim already to know and be living out of, perhaps even what
we think we have moved beyond. Everyone knows the command-
mentsthey are part of every Christians mental furniture. But how
are we living them out? We might well say nave things such as, Im
not a thief; I dont go round murdering people; Im a nice, peaceful
84 Luis Ral Cruz
person. Or my faults are just the normal ones. But what, here, do we
mean by normal? And are we not neglecting the need to transform
the world in which we live? The truth is that we need to get beyond
the verbal justifications in which we indulge for our behaviour,
protesting our excellent intentions. We can then let this First Method
of Prayer lead us in a similar process with regard to sin itself, to the
powers of the soul, and to the senses. What is involved is so obvious
but also so rarely acknowledged.
Ignatian self-examination is never just a matter of scrupulously
counting up faults in the hope of attaining a self-justifying perfection
that might satisfy my narcissism. The task is rather to take stock of the
poor response I have made to the opportunities for salvation that I
have received, and of how I might make amends in the future if I
count on the gracious action of God. It is not, therefore, a matter of
merely knowing the Commandments, but of sensing and relishing
Gods hidden action within my history, and of making myself ready to
move in accordance with it. It is also a matter of knowing the snares
and deceits of evil in order to become more attentive against them.
The First Method of Prayer can serve as a fuller alternative to the
method which Ignatius gives in the Examen proper. It can lead to
something more than the scrutiny of specific behaviours in the
The First light of the commandments, something more than an
Method of assessment of how I am counteracting the sinfulness within
Prayer myself. It can help me think about how I am using and
enriches guarding my own senses, how I am using my intelligence, my
the Examen memory, my will. It can lead to a wide-ranging self-awareness,
and to a deeper sense of how my life is moving, both
objectively and subjectively. It can help in the quest for integrity and
harmony already begun with the interior watchfulness of the Examen.
A merely moralistic spirituality bears no long-term fruitwe need
something that opens our spiritual horizons. The First Method of
Prayer is relational. It allows people to review before God how they are
dealing with reality: their values, their habits, their attitudes, their
thoughts, feelings and perceptions. It invites us to embark on a process
of exodus. We are to leave our old selves behind, and take a step out
into a new reality. We are to conquer ourselves, and set our affections
in order. We are invited to take seriously the ambiguity of our lives, and
clarify our real attitudes, discerning the influences that come to us
from outside, and recognising whether their origin is in the good or evil
spirit. This becomes a continuous, lasting activity, even when clarity is

not to be had.
The moment of truth is one of confrontation with the richness and
forcefulness of the Word. Are we or are we not in harmony with the
Kingdom of God? It is also a moment when we ask how far we have
assimilated the gospel, and how far we are resisting it. You will know
them by their fruits (Matthew 7:16) is an important criterion for
judging the effectiveness of any practice of Examen. With the First
Method of Prayer, Ignatius seems to be creating a relational context for
assessing our behaviour that gives the process vitality and freshness,
and moves it beyond the coldness of a simple examination.
Ignatius evidently wants those making the Exercises not to neglect
even the smallest aspect of their way of life, whether as regards the
interior roots of behaviour or external comportment. He is inviting us
to live to the fullness of our potential. He is also asking that we open
ourselves, as we come to see our powerlessness and ignorance, to the
light and grace that can come to us only from God.
The First Method and Growth in Prayer

The benefits which come from prayer, and from the expansiveness it
gives to our spirits, are all the greater if we are living in a situation
which fosters intimacy with God. This First Method of Prayer is about
strengthening this context; in one sense, it is not a method or
technique of prayer at all:
This method of prayer is more to give form, method and

exerciseshow the soul may prepare itself and benefit in those
thingsand so that prayer may be acceptable, rather than to give
any form or way of praying. (Exx 238)
The aim is to enrich our self-awareness so that our prayerin a more

narrow sensecan become more zestful. Ignatius is hinting at some of
the ways in which we can prepare and dispose ourselves for prayer, and
thus helping us make these more robust. He is also nourishing our
inner life by sharpening our inner sensitivity, our power to sentir y
gustar (Exx 2).
What is central here is the human person and his or her attitude
towards God. Christian perfection is aimed at fidelity to the double
command of love. Ignatius is schooling us in prayer by getting us to pay
86 Luis Ral Cruz
attention to our personal lives: how we are coping with our own selves,
with society, with the world at large, and with God. We are being
encouraged to think both about our inner liveshow we are dealing
with what comes into our psyches through the sensesand also about
our external behaviour in deeds of love and service. The whole is an
aid to self-knowledge, and to an awareness of how far our lives are on
the divine wavelength.
It is striking how Ignatius presents the organization of a good
encounter with the Lord. Even in this First Method of Prayer he
suggests an addition that we should bear in mind: a moment of calm,
focusing on what we are about to do (Exx 239). And as a final step
before beginning the exercise proper, Ignatius has us make a
preparatory prayer for the right dispositions (Exx 240). The Kingdom
and its magis have always to be present, in the form of our desire to
give ourselves to God as Gods own possession and to divest ourselves
of all selfishness.
Ignatius presents this First Method of Prayer as a process. It begins
with a preparatory prayer that involves not only a compressed version
of the Principle and Foundation, but also a petition densely expressive
both of risk and commitment: our lives are to be in continual harmony
with an attitude of prayer. Then comes the actual work of meditation
(Exx 241): a prayerful reflection that should move the will and the
affections, and also enable us to draw strength for making our daily
lives a true reflection, in todays world, of the life that is Gods.
Ignatius also gives directives about how long we should spend on this.
Finally, he issues an invitation to colloquy, to an intimate conversation
arising from the prayer, in the hope of heightening our awareness of
what we are living out before the Lord (Exx 242). Ignatius suggests
that this First Method of Prayer be focused chiefly on the
commandments, while also mentioning the Seven Deadly Sins, the
three powers of the soul, and the five bodily senses.
The Christian life is more than living morally; Christianity cannot
be reduced to ethical obligations. The point of this prayer is to help us
take a step forward in friendship with God. It provides an opportunity
for sincere, profound exchange, and an invitation to confront ourselves
with Gods living, effective word. We can review our response to the
gospels call, in a spirit of renewal and with a desire for continued
growth. The First Method of Prayer prompts us to make progress. It
strengthens us in following Jesus Christ, and has us learn from Jesus
www.visipix.com
A Man Praying, by El Greco (1541-1614)
and Mary how they used their faculties and senses (Exx 248). There is
a whole programme of learning here.
It is clearly important to bear in mind peoples dispositions,
according to which such exercises are to be applied (Exx 18):
questions of age, of education, of what is fitting at this point in the
persons life. Ignatius believed that some examinations of conscience
and methods of prayer could be given widely,
especially the first of the latter which is given in the Exercises

for anyone who has good will is going to be capable of this
(Constitutions 7.4.F [649]).
In Ignatius own life-story, this First Method of Prayer has strong links
with his experience at Salamanca, when, on being commanded to talk
about the first Commandments, he complied in such a way that they
asked no further questions (Autobiography 68).
88 Luis Ral Cruz
This First Method of Prayer can be helpful at any stage of the

spiritual life. It helps us think about the obstacles we are putting in
loves way, starting as it does from who we are and from what we are
doing with the gifts of Gods grace to us. It centres the heart on the
self s deepest centre of unity, the wellspring of the wills desires. It
concentrates our sense of our deeds, our memories, our words and our
relationships, and thereby nurtures our interior life. Uniting as it does
meditative and vocal prayer, it confronts us with the basic principles of
the Christian life, it spurs us to continuing conversion, and it attracts
us to the true life (Exx 139).
Fixing the Attention

This aid placed at the end of the Spiritual Exercises does not presuppose
any particular state of the spiritual life. It takes the fragile reality of
human life as it is, and offers a pathway towards personal growth. It
can serve both as a simple initiation into the spiritual life in the way
that Annotation 18 describes, and as a help for the person completing
the Exercises, as its position in the Fourth Week suggests.3
Like the Examen of Consciousness, this First Method of Prayer can
be used in everyday life as a way of seeking God in all things. It can
nourish an attitude of contemplation in action and of discernment
amid lifes options. As we encounter the Word in self-examination, this
style of prayer opens up chances for change, for growth at the level of
the heart. There are various reasons why this is so.
Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also (Luke 12:34).
What is at stake here is not just behaviour or morality, as the reference
to the commandments might suggest. The aim is rather that we
become truly new human beings by identifying ourselves with Jesus
Christ, and by committing ourselves clearly and decisively to follow
him. Whatever the difficulties, ruptures, changes, demands, we are to
follow Christ as he carries his crosswe are his companions on the
journey.
For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you
have received a spirit of adoption. (Romans 8:15) When the Spirit leads us
to cry, Abba! Father!, our sense of being daughters and sons of God in
3
See Exx 4: the Fourth (Week) the resurrection and ascension, which sets down three Methods of
Prayer.
www.visipix.com
Peter Penitent, by El Greco (1541-1614)
the Son, and hence brothers and sisters to each other, arises not from
sociology, nor from the fact that we happen to be nice congenial
people. It comes as a sheer gift from God living among us, a gratuitous
action of Gods Spirit continuing to transform us if we allow that Spirit
to act in our lives in such as way as to make each of us another Christ.
Followers and Servants. We are not deluded fanatics, under the sway
of some theory or some guru. We are following a person who is both
divine and human, a person who is inviting us to journey with him. By
the work of his Spirit, the desire for identification with Jesus Christ is
constantly growingChrist who draws all people to himself (John
12:32) in such a way that we move out in love from our selfishness and
manipulativeness (Exx 189), indeed in such a way that we are sent
90 Luis Ral Cruz
into todays world to be his witnesses, living presences stimulating new

ways of acting, thinking and speaking.
I have kept all these; what do I still lack? (Matthew 19:20) The
Christian life becomes credible if we live out a witness to what we are
saying. What is the point of saying that we are Christians if we do not
reflect this fact by lived actions of solidarity, justice, social change,
generosity and non-violence? Christian commitment has to be
reflected in deeds born of love, in the dedication and committed
service proper to a servant and follower of Jesus. The test of a method
of prayer is whether it fosters identification with the Christ who loved
his own to the end (John 13:1).
This First Method of Prayer is a way of helping us move forward in
our encounter with God. It is one of the Ignatian expressions of the
experience of God, one of the means by which creatures are opened to
the action of the creator. Though the means which it uses may be
simple and humble, this form of prayer is not for that reason
unimportant. And it might be particularly helpful in a world where all
our values seem so often to be called into question, and where people
are tempted to seek God in ways that are void of any serious
commitment.
Luis Ral Cruz SJ comes from Colombia. He has studied in Spain as well as in
Colombia, and is now active in retreat work, serving as a member of staff at the
Ignatian centre for retreats and reflection in Bogot.
From the Ignatian Tradition
ON PREPARATION FOR
PRAYER
Achille Gagliardi
In April 2003, The Way published an extract from one of the earliest
commentaries on the Spiritual Exercises to have come down to us, by
the controversial Italian Jesuit Achille Gagliardi (1537-1607).1 Here we
present another extract, a highly-wrought rhetorical elaboration on what
Ignatius says about how an exercitant should prepare for prayer. Nicolas
Standaerts article on the composition of place earlier in this issue
presents Jernimo Nadals approach to Ignatian prayer with its stress on
the scriptural and pictorial elementsan approach that was
subsequently set aside by mainstream Jesuit thinkers. This passage from
Gagliardi vividly illustrates the shift. Gagliardis intense evocations of
reverence and of the divine majesty and transcendence are powerful. But
they lead him, almost inevitably, to marginalise the Preludes, with their
focus on a scriptural text and the exercitants desires. Later
commentators would argue as to whether the Exercises were a school of
union with God or of decision. Even though the alternatives here should
not be polarized, the differences in intuition about the nature of prayer
are probably perennial.
There were many things that Holy Father Ignatius did in order that
before prayer we would prepare ourselves for it well. And regarding this
preparation he prescribed many things in an ordered and considered
fashion.
1
Achille Gagliardi, Requirements for the One Giving and for the One Receiving the Exercises, The
Way, 42/2 (April 2003), 29-40see this text for further information about Gagliardi. The article can
be downloaded from http://www.theway.org.uk/back/422FIT.pdf.
The Way, 46/1 (January 2007), 91-99

92 Achille Gagliardi
1 A Holy Desire
The first thing of all he requires before meditation is a desire for it, and
this of the kind that is described by him in eloquent words:
The person who receives the Exercises is helped in a wonderful way

if, coming to them with a great and generous spirit, they offer all
2
their effort and their power of decision to their Creator etc. (Exx 5)
Secondly, there is the intention of applying oneself with supreme effort,

and of engaging in this activity, so that the human person is in this way
cooperating with divine grace. Thirdly and finally, the person should
offer this intention and the totality of their effort very generously to
God; in this way the spirit will be prepared and disposed to receive
those divine inflowings that enlighten and fire the spirit for praying.
II Prior Recollection of Spirit

This preparation consists in the removal of impediments. The
impediments all reduce to one: the distraction of the spirit that we
take on as a result of our daily occupation with the business of the
world. On this account, we cannot easily be intent on contemplation.
The only remedy is an interior recollection of the spirit. And so Holy
Father Ignatius hands on much about withdrawal and solitude, and
counsels that each individual should repair to a place where they are
apart from others and detach themselves from all business. The more
a person has withdrawn themselves from their friends, the greater the
progress they will make in the spiritual life. (Exx 20) And this is
evident for the three reasons, or fruits, adduced in that same passage,
particularly for the second and third.3
Here, then is this second preparation. It is described in these
words:
When all thought has been concentrated and reduced to one

object, to worship of God, the persons Creator, the soul uses the
2
Gagliardi uses, sometimes rather loosely, the 1548 Vulgate text, written as it is in a polished Latin.
An English translation from this Latin version can be found in The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius,
edited and translated by Pierre Wolff (Liguour, Mo: Triumph, 1997).
3
Gagliardi is about to quote the second and the third; the first is the merit gained by a person who
withdraws from friends and acquaintances for the sake of Gods praise and service.
On Preparation for Prayer 93
powers of nature much more freely and expeditiously in seeking

that which it so much desires.
Then a little below:
The person makes themselves better fit to seek and to reach their
Creator and Lord.
In order to induce this interior recollection, Holy Father Ignatius

laid down many things that are external and corporeal, namely
withdrawal from all dealings and business, accommodation in ones
own separate room, the closing off of the light, the casting down of the
eyes, and the like (Exx 79-81). These things, if they can be done, are
optimalif, however, we understand them as things to be done for the
sake of our recollecting the soul interiorly. If, for just reasons, they are
not observed, we should take on other things in their placeand these
are corresponding interior things, namely: a withdrawal of the spirit, an
interior solitude, and the accommodation of the interior person within
their room, the cutting off of the senses and passions with regard to
what is immoderate, and the like. And from this recollection of the
spirit, peace arises, and the tranquillity of spirit which is the most
suitable preparation for prayer.4
III Closer Preparation

For the closer approach to the act itself of prayer, Holy Father Ignatius
laid down various other things to be done beforehand. These have
greater effect in preparing the spirit.
The first of these is:
after having gone to bed, before sleep I should think for a small
space of time about the hour at which I am to rise, and about
the exercise to be done (Exx 73).
I should pray, and, with my spirit raised towards God, ask for the grace
of shaking off sleep and of waking at the appointed hour, and of
4
It is not clear here whether Gagliardi is envisaging the style of Exercises indicated in Annotation
19, but it is striking that a writer who otherwise stresses recollection so strongly can envisage the
concerns behind Annotation 20 being answered in a figurative as well as in a literal fashion.
remembering those things that I am to meditate on for the greater

glory of God.
The second:
once woken up from sleep, at oncewith all other thoughts

cast asideI should direct my spirit towards that on which I am to
contemplate (Exx 74).
In this connection, he thinks it very helpful if I reduce the matters on

which I am to meditate to a certain number of points laid down in
advance, so that at once, without any bother, I can think about them
before the prayer.
The third is that while I am putting on my clothes, I stimulate
myself by some sensory image, and prepare myself for the effect that
afterwards, through the prayer, I am to stimulate in myself. Thus, if
confusion or grief at sins is to be sought, I should take the images that
are given by the same Holy Father Ignatius as appropriate for the
exercises about sins (Exx 47), and corresponding images when the
material is different. Or at any rate I should take some commonplace

images which move me to take prayer seriously, or to submission and
piety. Or I should recite some psalm or verse that contains these or
similar images. For anything at this point that I will be turning over in
my mind will be adequate for this preparation; but it will be all the
more suitable to the extent that it resembles the prayer in prospect.
IV Immediate Preparation
The immediate preparation is the preparation done just a little before
the time of prayer, and consists of three things done in order.
FIRSTLY, briefly, but with maximum concentration and attention,
I should consider carefully where I am being carried, what my aim is,
or, as it says elsewhere, what I am approaching and what is to be done.5
(And since it is clear that prayer is the activity to which I am being
carried and at which I am aiming, it clearly follows that before we
approach prayer, we should have a proper understanding of what
prayer is, and of what we are seeking in itand in each of its parts too.
And consequently Holy Father Ignatius explains in the first Annot-
ation what exercises are, what their aim is, and other things of this
kind, so that thus we understand how a person dedicating themselves
to their prayer must first be instructed about it and about its individual
parts, in order that they do not proceed by chance in so great an affair.
Rather they should be pondering the momentousness and seriousness
of the business. But this instruction will be easily gatherable from what
has already been said and from what will be said below.)
What we need for the moment, by way of explanation of this
preparation immediately before approaching prayer, is that the person
should recall and consider within their spirit how prayer is nothing
other than a union of colloquy and consort with God, with the aim of
obtaining gifts to do with salvation and perfection, ones own and
others. It is with great attention and reverence of spirit, thereforeas
befits something of high seriousness in its own right, of great advantage
to ones own self, and of necessity involving Gods own personthat
one should approach it.
SECONDLY, by means of those words, before whom I am going to
appearand more clearly by means of other wordsI shall consider
5
There seem to be allusions here to Exx 131 and 206.
as someone present and looking at what I am about to do my Lord

JESUS, to whom I will need to show reverence with a humble gesture
(Exx 75). With these words, an act of preparation is indicated on
which the significance and fruit of the prayer completely depend.
(i) It is therefore necessary that the person have the most exalted
ideas possible about God and about the Divine Majesty. As they
consider how they will soon have converse and consort with God, they
should approach these realities appropriately: with a submissive spirit
and with fear. With anything else, they would be acting inconsiderately
and rashly.
(ii) They should understand and ponder how God is infinite
wisdom, goodness, powerand a sea beyond measure of infinite
perfections. It is He who has created the whole world out of nothing
out of His sheer generosity; He sustains it so that it does not fall into
nothingness, and governs it with a providence descending even to the
number of leaves, of grains of sand, of raindrops and of hairs. The
person should notice that, in the presence of such great Majesty, the
whole arrangement of the world is as an ant. Likewise they should
picture to themselves the whole ocean as ink, all the trees as pens, and
the whole extent of the heavens as paperthen human beings and
angels are writers who want to express the Divine Majestys
immeasurableness. And yet the individual should be quite sure that
nothing these people write or say will measure up to what God is in
Himself. By means of these and similar images and ways of thinking,
they should be impressed with the greatest admiration for God
possible, so that they draw near with due fear and reverence.
To these things, the person should add that God, Christ the Lord,
in His Majesty already spoken of, will be present in this prayer now,
and consequently will be looking on the person as they pray, and on all
their acts, even very intimate ones, and taking delight in them. Then
the person should turn to their own self, and consider their
worthlessness, both in itself andin particularin the sight of God.
They should understand that they are nothing; they are moving from
nothing to nothing; they depend in all things completely on God; they
are laden with so many wretchednessess and sinsand soon they are
to appear in the presence of the Most High God! If a completely
scabby and grubby yokel were to appear in the presence of the Emperor
of the whole world, they would at least make some effort in the
direction of supreme humility, fear and reverence, in the way that they
thought might be more

pleasing to so great a Prince.
How much the more will a
puny human being, as they
gather and prepare them-
selves before making their
approach, fill themselves with
the greatest possible sense of
embarrassment, and then also
with fear and due reverence
towards God.
All these things, there-
fore, serve as immediate
preparation for the person
who is about to approach
prayer; and without these,
prayer is made rashly. But this
is what happens with many The frontispiece of the 1548 Vulgate text of
people. Yet, conversely, the the Spiritual Exercises
deeper a person immerses
themselves in these things, the greater the light and fruit with which
they will pray.
(iii) There follows the Preparatory Prayer with its Preludes. For,
immediately following on from what we have been speaking about,
with supreme submission of spirit and as if trembling in the sight of the
Divine Majesty, the person, prostrate or kneeling, before they meditate
on the material proposed, must direct the eyes of their mind towards
the God who is present, and, before all else, adore Him. This is what
these words prescribe: to whom I will need to show reverence with a
humble gesture (Exx 75). For the most fitting thing of all, as a human
being, a sheer wretch, appears in the sight of such Majesty, is that the
wretch adore the Majesty.
This act of adoration presupposes the awareness of God and of
ones own wretchedness already mentioned, and also the greatest
possible wonder. From this, reverential fear arises, and then a very
great desire of submitting oneself to so great a God. There then follows
the form of reverence which is adoration: nothing but a kind of deep
submission of the will and of the whole self in recognition of the divine
greatness and sublimity. Just as, when I make a bodily genuflection
before the Emperor, I am saying and acknowledging by this bowing and

submission that he is my lord, very much higher than I am, and that I
am a trivial and unworthy servant, dependent on him in all respects.
Once this adoration has been given, there follows a humble
petition to the Lord that He direct all my actions, and this present one
especially, to His glory, and give during its course an intimate grace of
devotion. For this the most holy Virgin Mother of God, the Guardian
Angels, and the Saints to whom we have a special devotion are to be
invoked. And this preparatory prayer begins already to unite the
person to God; it is also the first entrance, as it were, into this palace.
V The Preludes
Then two or more Preludes are done. The specific function of these is
to direct the spirits attention towards the material on which it has to
meditate. By the first Prelude, the understanding is helped; by the
second, the will. So that the understanding, which can very easily be
distracted and wander, can remain fixed in meditating, and be as it
were tied to and shaped by the material on which it is to meditate, and
so that distractions can gently be avoided, St Ignatius wiselysince
the human person depends on the senses and on imagesprescribed

that if the person will be meditating on something bodily, they should
represent all this (the persons, the places, the circumstances) to the
imagination, as if they had it before their eyes. If the meditation about
to happen is explicitly spiritual, then the person should invent an
image, such as that which sees the soul in the body as being confined
in a prison, laden with chains. And similar things, in keeping with the
changing nature of the material.
In the second Prelude we pray for the grace of the affection we
want, as for example the grace of confusion and sadness for sins, or of
rejoicing, and other similar things. This helps to hold the spirit and the
will in that same material for meditation. Thus, just as the Preparatory
Prayer is like an entrance into the first courtyard of the divine palace,
so the two Preludes lead us, as it were, into two rooms, immediately
before the bridegrooms (that is, Gods) chamber. Then the meditation
brings the soul, the bride, into the chamber itself.
This is what Holy Father Ignatius prescribes about preparation for
prayer. If the things he says are reflected on, and pondered in the order
in which we have set them forward, we will understand that there is no
surer or more excellent method by which the soul can be disposed for
praying. And indeed we state again that this is certainly of such
importance that, when souls are being trained, they should be given
exercises in all these thingsand especially in most exalted sense
possible of the Divine Majesty as present, and of our wretchedness.
Further, it in no way detracts from the prayer itself that we should
spend some part of the prayer time during the first days in this action
of worship, submission and reverence, until the person reaches the
point where they can do this in a moment. Indeed, such a practice is
very useful, as a way of making swift progress in this submission. For it
is appropriate for a wretched human being, who, from so great a God,
is about to ask and beg what they want for their salvation, and to begin
dealings with Him, to humble themselves before anything else and
acknowledge so great a Majesty, so that by this they may move His
Majesty to kindness and to the granting of all those things that the
person is going to ask for in prayer.
RECENT BOOKS
Joseph Veale, Manifold Gifts: Ignatian Essays on Spirituality

(Oxford: Way Books, 2006). 0 904717 27 5, pp. 244, 12.00.
This book brings together the spiritual writings of Joe Veale (1921-2002),
a leading Irish contributor to the Ignatian renewal following Vatican II.
After an affectionate and informative memoir by Noel Barber and some
editorial explanation, we have fifteen essays grouped under four headings:
The Spiritual Exercises; The Ignatian Constitutions; Retrieving Ignatian
Wisdom; St Ignatius and Contemporary Ministry. Each of these has its
own excellent editorial introduction. The volume concludes with a full
bibliographical list of Joes spiritual writings from the latter part of his life.
This is a paradoxical book that almost does justice to a paradoxical
man. On the one hand, Joe engaged in a highly specialised ministry: the
giving of the full Ignatian Exercises individually to a clientele carefully
selected for their generosity and commitment. On the other hand, he
wrote encouragingly and meaningfully at a much more popular and
accessible level. This is partly due to the attractiveness and lucidity of his
English style: Joe taught English for 21 years before beginning his ministry
of the Exercises, and did so with great distinction, communicating his
enthusiasm and concern to initially reluctant schoolboys who became his
lifelong friends. It is a pity that the editors chose not to include some of
Joes writings from this period, which were on education, on literature,
and on popular religion.
Joes success and Joes writings were rooted in three convictions that
he took from Ignatius himself.
Start where the other person is, however unpromising that may be.
Encourage the person to get in touch with their real desires.
Recognise that Ignatius is merely suggesting means, and therefore
sit light to the text, letting your reading of it be informed by a
contemplative grasp of its purpose.
These three principles, deeply Ignatian though they are, enabled Joe and
those who learnt from him to move beyond both the realities and the
caricatures of Jesuit practice as rigid and rule-bound. They recur
constantly in these eminently quotable essays. More generally, Joe was
102 Recent Books
convinced of how God speaks within unfolding human experience,

through our continuing attempts to discern the authentic touch of the
Spirit from illusions. As we discover our true desires, the desires which are
according to Christs mind, we also construct our own story of how God
the Father, though the Holy Spirit, is leading us. For Joe, moreover, this
process was corporate as well as individual, a theme which figures large in
his essays on the Constitutions.
Manifold Gifts, the opening essay, gives its title to the whole
collection. For Joe, the phrase refers to the varieties of the Spirits
working. But Joe himself also was a man of manifold gifts. His gift for
scholarly contextual study was complemented by a gift for popular
expression and sometimes blistering rhetoric. He reveals much to us, for
example, about the Jesuit Constitutions. He presents them as
demonstrating how the graces of the Spiritual Exercises and of Ignatius
own life in the Autobiography can be lived corporately by a group. At the
same time, the passionate anger of the penultimate chapter, about the
Church and sexual abuse, shows how committed Joe was to giving
contemporary Ignatian ministry a prophetic bite. This ten-page essay cries
out to be shouted from the house-tops.
Not, of course, that Joe himself would ever have shouted it. His
upbringing, as he himself admits in one of these essays, was Jansenist, and
his temperament was depressive. Not for Joe charismatic alleluias, vulgar
chants and risky exhibitionism; my attempts to encourage him into the
mildest of circle dances never succeeded. The grainy black and white
photograph at the front of the book, taken as it was shortly before Joes
death, is worth contemplating. In the course of preparing this review, I
have found myself making colloquies with Joe through it. I began rather
testily: dear Joe, why were you such a misery when you had the makings
of such joy? But as time moved on, I came to see, within that thin-lipped
oblong mouth, hints of the burgeoning smile I could so happily remember.
And though the writing in this book might initially appear rather bleak,
patient savouring of the text reveals a subtle warmthan uplifting
interplay, so to speak, of forty shades of grey.
One of the essays published here for the first time is a historical
reflection on the religion of early modern England in the context of
contemporary ecumenical developments in the ministry of the Exercises.
Here Joe comes up with wonderful paradoxes. Not far from the Catholic
recusants in Lancashire, Edmund Bunny was adapting for use in the
English Church a spiritual text bursting with Ignatian insights and
imaginative contemplations shamelessly plagiarized from a Jesuit text,
Robert Persons Christian Directory.
Recent Books 103
This discovery adds weight to Joes bold statement that from 1600 to
1965, over-rigid Jesuit tradition obscured an openness to the freedom of
God that one could find even when the Reformation conflicts were at
their bitterest. Perhaps there is something of Joes melancholy in this bold
generalisation; perhaps, too, he is protesting against the rigid religious
regimes under which he so patently suffered for much of his life, the
suffering not lost in the remembering. And yet, too, there is a greyish
gratitude, in particular for the Christian Brothers who were among his
earliest educators. In the end, much did come through Joes very
desolation; the greyness deepened into the blue-bleak of Hopkins
embers, and sometimes the fire of the Spirits breath burst out from within
it.
My only regret about this book is the absence of any sort of index;
perhaps a subsequent edition might rectify this lack. Joe used key words
such as consolation, desolation , experience, desire and
contemplation in rich, radical and thoughtful ways, and it would be good
to be able to trace the variety more easily. Indeed this very variety is itself
a sign of how Joes gifts were themselves manifold, displayed here in
writing that ranges from the severely scholarly to the passionately
rhetorical. In authentically Ignatian fashion, Joe was a man who learnt
from his experience, who sought and found God in all things, and who
gave generously of himself in all he said and did and wrote.
Billy Hewett SJ
Manifold Gifts is available from The Ways Ignatian Book Service, as

are The Jesuits and the Arts and Retreats in Everyday Life, reviewed
belowcontact the editorial office, or visit www.theway.org.uk.
The Blackwell Companion to Christian Spirituality, edited by Arthur

Holder (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005). 1 4051 0247 0, pp.xiv + 568,
85.00.
This is the third major textbook on the study of Christian spirituality to

have been published in 2005, following Minding the Spirit: The Study of
Christian Spirituality (edited by Elizabeth Dreyer and Mark S. Burrows),
and The New SCM Dictionary of Christian Spirituality (edited by Philip
Sheldrake). The aim of all three has been to provide material mainly for
104 Recent Books
students, teachers and researchers studying Christian spirituality as an

academic subject in universities and colleges. This book contains thirty
essays covering 550 pages, all specially commissioned. It amounts to the
single most thorough treatment of the field to date.
There are six parts. Unlike Minding the Spirit, Holders collection gives
little attention to issues of definition of the field; Part I, dedicated to this
topic, has only one essay, by Sandra M. Schneiders. Part II contains two
essays on Scripture, a lack in previous collections. The essay by Barbara
Green on the Old Testament provides a survey of interpretations of the
story of Jonah through history, from Origen to Rosemary Radford Ruether,
showing the variety of meanings found and methods of interpretation
used, and the spiritualities that the various interpretations both produced
and reflected. This essay is typical of many in the collection, in that
scholars have been given the space to develop ideas from their own areas
of research, lending the book considerable interest and depth.
Part III has six essays on the history of Christian spirituality, divided
into four periods. It is a fair overview, but this part is the least satisfactory:
it attempts a task that has already been done in other, larger historical
studies of Christian spirituality, and has too little space to offer anything
new. The two essays on the modern period, in particular, covering the
years from 1700 onwards, have an impossibly large remit.
Part IV has seven essays on the relationship between theological
themes and Christian spirituality: taken together, they amount to the best
treatment of this topic that I have read. A common theme which emerges
in these essays is the need for the discipline of Christian spirituality to be
underpinned by a trinitarian understanding of the human relationship
with God, one which lays the discipline open to mystery and regulates the
kind of knowledge that it claims to possess. Spirituality is not concerned
with analyzing and grasping something, or a particular collection of things,
but with pursuing questions which arise in different religious traditions as
people come before the mystery of God.
Part V contains seven essays on different kinds of reflection that are
now informing the interdisciplinary study of Christian spirituality: the
social sciences, personality sciences, natural sciences, aesthetics, feminist
studies, ritual studies, and the theology of religions. This is the first
sustained attempt to work out in what ways the study of spirituality ought
to be or can be multidisciplinary. The essays show that significant research
is being done on spirituality from within these other disciplines. John A.
Coleman, for instance, notes that the category of spirituality has become
widespread in sociological research in the USA since the 1990s, and that
it is being used to put forward new and controversial claims: one recent
Recent Books 105
study, for instance, suggests that the commonly stated separation between
spirituality and religion may be misconceived, since those who become
interested in spirituality in fact gravitate towards the organized religions,
rather than away from them (p.297). But it remains rather unclear where
the common ground lies between the approaches to spirituality within
each of these disciplines, let alone between any one of them and Christian
theological traditions. Until progress is made in resolving this unclarity,
the use of interdisciplinary methods in the study of spirituality will remain
problematic.
Part VI contains a further seven essays on special topics in
contemporary Christian spirituality, such as mysticism, interpretation and
nature. These suffer from some repetition of the themes already covered
and from a lack of coherence as a group, but they are useful in introducing
some of the main areas of research in the study of spirituality today.
Students of spirituality remain divided on the question of what they
are supposed to be studying. There are two schools. Some define the study
of spirituality as the study of a certain kind of experience. Others, by
contrast, define it as the study of the whole of reality through a particular
framework of questions and language. Sandra M. Schneiders, in her essay
on the definition of the field, exemplifies the first approach, defining the
study of spirituality, as she has done previously, as the study of the
experience of conscious involvement in the project of life-integration
through self-transcendence toward the horizon of ultimate value one
perceives (p.16). Philip Endean, the only essayist to express explicit
dissent from this (pp.228-231), argues that the study of spirituality is the
study of an approach to the whole of reality, as opposed to the study of a
part of reality designated as the spiritual part. Everything can be regarded
from a spiritual point of view; the use of the word spiritual implies not a
particular class of descriptive claims but rather the asking of questions
about reality in terms of inherited teachings about humanitys relationship
with Godteachings which claim to disclose the spiritual significance of
all reality. The discipline of spirituality involves a certain kind of
questioning.
Interestingly, this collection suggests that the approach to spirituality
as a kind of experience, favoured by Schneiders, is actually losing ground
to various kinds of approach more like Endeans. Not all of these begin
from theology, as Endean does. But they give prior attention to the
context in which the spiritual is understood, not as a particular kind of
experience, but as a framework for approaching the whole of reality. Amy
Hollywoods essay on feminist studies, for instance, argues that the
experiential language of spirituality in late medieval texts (affective, bodily
106 Recent Books
and ecstatic) hides an array of contextual and historical assumptions,

especially about the feminine, which need to be explored very carefully if
we are to understand how and why this experience has been regarded as
spiritual. This approach makes the study of spirituality a great deal richer
than in the past, because it refrains from restricting the spiritual to a
certain kind of experience, beginning instead with the contexts through
which the spiritual is named, and so bringing a wider range of reality
within the purview of spirituality.
This book, along with the two published earlier in 2005, shows that
the study of Christian spirituality has started to display the characteristics
of a mature academic field: teaching, research, and an identifiable
community of scholars and scholarship. Some will regard this
development with suspicion, as perhaps separating the study of spirituality
from the practice, but they should be assured that things are looking up:
scholars are less often approaching spirituality reductively, and good work
is being done.
Edward Howells
The Jesuits and the Arts 1540-1773, edited by John W. O'Malley and
Gauvin Alexander Bailey (Philadelphia: Saint Joseph's UP, 2005).
0 916101 52 5, pp. 477, 36.00.
This encyclopedic volume contains an almost world-wide survey of the

artistic enterprise of the Society of Jesus, from its inception in 1540 to its
suppression in 1773; and it is essential reading for anyone working on the
arts of this period. Although much of the book first appeared in Italian,
French and Spanish in 2003, many of the chapters in this English version
have been edited or updated and their bibliographies have been amplified.
It is superbly illustrated, in colour, and contains 184 new images, some of
which are published here for the first time.
John OMalley and Gauvin Bailey were among the editors of the earlier
The Jesuits: Cultures, Sciences and the Arts 1540-1773 (Toronto: U of
Toronto P, 2000). Like that pioneering work, this volume is international
in subject, but it is narrower in scope: its twelve essays focus on the arts,
covering architecture, painting, music, theatre and iconography.
Collectively they address an intriguing paradox, made explicit by Juan
Plazaola Artola in the books prologue, which contrasts the simplicity of
the Jesuit way of proceeding with the often extravagant and varied
nature of the artworks produced under the Societys aegis.
Recent Books 107
In the opening essay John OMalley delineates with remarkable clarity

how artistic culture came to be developed and integrated within the
Society. In the gradual transformation of the Society into the first
teaching order, OMalley shows how Ignatius inaugurated a cultural
programme derived not from biblical study but from the humanist ideals of
Cicero. Although the arts were not a particular feature of the original
religious mission of the Jesuits, the Societys pastoral pragmatism
particularly on the missionsnecessitated an early engagement with
traditions of music and dance. The growth of a musical tradition is
explored in an essay by T. Frank Kennedy, while theatrical works are
surveyed by Marcello Fagiolo, who investigates the Holy Theatre of the
Forty Hours Devotions (Quarantore), the theatres of light and glory in
the frescoes of Baciccio and Pozzo, and the Jesuit stage designs of the
Sopron album.
Three essays elucidate the Societys relationship with architecture.
The much-debated notion of a Jesuit style in architecture, synonymous
with the baroque, was decisively undermined by the Jesuit scholar Joseph
Braun in the early years of the twentieth century. Richard Bsel, in his
panoramic tour of Jesuit architecture in Europe, demonstrates the
startling variety of the Societys building projects. The recurrence of
certain typological features is balanced by a profound responsiveness to
local building traditions. The principle of religious simplicity gave rise to
certain functional norms in Jesuit architecture, though, as Giovanni Sale
notes, the Society was not always successful in enforcing them over
considerations of a more formal character. This point is particularly well
demonstrated in the design of the Societys mother church in Rome, Il
Ges, which, as Sale argues in a second essay, was the outcome of a
fraught but ultimately creative partnership between the donor, Cardinal
Farnese, and the superior general of the Society of Jesus, Francisco de
Borja.
Though the straightforward identification of baroque art with the
Jesuit order has long been discredited, the Jesuit apostolic enterprise did
crucially involve an appeal to the emotions, an appeal with a connection
to baroque art. It is probably because of the link with the Jesuits that the
baroque became the first truly global style. Gauvin Alexander Baileys
remarkably comprehensive essay on Italian Renaissance and baroque
painting under the Jesuits is especially useful in this context, making
explicit the relationship between the use of the senses in the Spiritual
Exercises and the imagery of works commissioned by the Society. The
resulting development of a Jesuit iconographic programme is fully
discussed by Heinrich Pfeiffer, from the adoption of the IHS monogram
108 Recent Books
and the struggle to find a likeness of Ignatius, to the painted cycles which
came to be dominated by images of the saints, the blessed and the martyrs
of the order.
Further essays by Bailey cover Jesuit art and architecture in Asia and
North America (the latter a new and welcome addition to the English-
language version of this book), and extend our awareness of the
profoundly hybrid nature of the work produced by the missions. In an
essay on the legacy of the Jesuits in Spanish America, Ramn Gutirrez
and Graciela Mara Viuales suggest that part of the Jesuits artistic
success was the orders ability to integrate daily life with religious life;
they highlight the important role played by lay brothers (of diverse
origins) who were architects, sculptors, painters and silversmiths. Philippe
Lcrivain discusses the Jesuit way of proceeding in relation to the
missions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, particularly
missions to the very different worlds of South America and China, and
the complex relationship between a respect for the other and a
commitment to evangelization.
Collectively these essays are a monumental testament to Ignatius
caveat that the Societys way of proceeding be carried out as will seem
best according to places, persons, and circumstances. The ability of the
Society to receive the inspirations of others and to assimilate local
customs is an important counterbalance to the view expressed in other
recent scholarship, for example Evonne Levys stimulating Propaganda and
the Jesuit Baroque (2004), that the purpose of imagery adopted by the
Society was essentially to create subjects and that the control of this
imagery was in an important sense mono-directional. Nevertheless, the
paradox referred to earlier between the emergence of a distinct
programme of iconography in Jesuit arts and the Societys ability to
incorporate the other raises some interesting questions. One is left
pondering why certain stylistic elements travelled as successfully as they
did, while others were modified, altered or rejected. The beginnings of an
answer to these questions is present in every contribution, but its
delineation belongs to small-scale research rather than the big picture
historical scholarship represented by this volume. One is grateful that
such an exceptional and comprehensive sourcebook enables the detailed
enquiries to arise.
Jane Eade
Recent Books 109
William V. Thompson, Retreats in Everyday Life: A Handbook for a

Month of Individually Guided Prayer (Bath: Open House Publications,
2005). 0 9551859 0 4, pp. 120, 7.95.
This book springs from the pastoral experience of its author, Rev Will
Thompson. For nearly two decades before his sudden, untimely death in
2005, he had been the dedicated pastor of the Baptist congregation in
Yeovil, Somerset. Now presented in a revised edition, Retreats in Everyday
Life is the fruit of his long association with Ignatian spirituality and of his
awareness of its pastoral effectiveness. The text is well laid out, and
provides a practical and detailed explanation of how to organize and
sustain a retreat in daily life. In three principal sections, the book
addresses the task of planning, introducing and concluding such a retreat.
Within these sections the material is less immediately practical, but
nonetheless helpful. There are five pages of brief introduction to the
theme of discernment, for example, which engage with the subtleties
involved despite their brevity. Another five pages contain a
comprehensive selection of scriptural material to present to retreatants.
The description of how to undertake lectio divina and of how this may lead
into imaginative prayer is lucid. In the last section the author has brought
together a collection of non-biblical material that he felt could be of use
in addition to the scriptural passages. While the purpose of including an
abridged version of T. S. Eliots The Journey of the Magi in this last
section is not clear, the authors intention with regard to the whole book
is evident.
He hoped not only to provide guidance for those who want to arrange
retreats in daily life (no light undertaking, as the details included in the
book make clear), but also, and more importantly, to help people to pray
daily and to find something deeper through their prayer. In the foreword,
Bishop Graham Chadwick notes the peculiarity of using the word retreat
for what is often an advance, a life-changing experience (p.5). Perhaps
this book is actually offering approaches to something more accurately
described as recollection. It suggests ways of helping people to collect
themselves again around the unifying centre of God acting through their
lives.
Some readers may be deterred by the detail with which the book sets
out its programme, but throughout there is an emphasis on flexibility and
on adapting its suggestions to the needs of a person looking for help with
their prayer. In using this book to help others pray, it would be worth
bearing in mind the authors own remark that retreats are not ends in
110 Recent Books
themselves (p. 17), and his conviction that the real guide in such a
ministry is the Holy Spirit (p. 12).
Gero McLoughlin SJ
Thomas G. Casey, Life and Soul: New Light on a Sublime Mystery

(Springfield, Il: Templegate, 2005). 0 8724 3267 X , pp. 189,
12.99.
I recently discovered a surprising website, sponsored by the British

government, entitled Mind, Body and Soul (www.mindbodysoul.gov.uk).
The first surprise was that any government should consider this part of its
brief; the second was the sites content. It does not, as the name might
suggest, offer a definitive view on, or even a review of, perennial
philosophical problems. It is rather a health page, aimed at teenagers, with
advice on issues ranging from alcohol abuse to physical exercise. Even the
section promoting emotional well-being is restricted for the most part to
resolutely practical counsel: let your feelings out, take time for yourself,
socialise more. I imagine that the site, and the kind of information it
provides, could be of real service to those who consult it. But why, I
wonder, did its author choose to include the word soul in the title?
Thomas Casey, an Irish Jesuit teaching philosophy at the Gregorian
University in Rome, has written an accessible book which asks what sense
we can make of the concept of soul in contemporary thought. He starts
with the irony that, while orthodox Christians are talking about the soul
less than they used to, New Age practitioners are giving it a higher profile
than it has enjoyed in decades. So is it possible to employ the notion of
the soul today in a way that stands in continuity with Christian tradition,
without ending up in a disembodied, unworldly faith, at odds with belief
in a God who chooses to become incarnate?
Throughout the book Casey tries hard to avoid a dualistic view that
would understand soul and body as two radically separate substances
which, in human beings, are simply added together in an external way
like butter and jam in a sandwich (p.16). He wants to argue for the
immortality of the soul, and therefore recognises that the soul can have a
separate existence independent of the body after death. But this is, in his
view, an impoverished existence (like that described in the Jewish idea of
Sheol, a shadowy underworld). Only with the resurrection of the body will
we be restored to that fully human existence which the book of Genesis
depicts as Gods original intention for this part of the divine creation.
Recent Books 111
To arrive at his own view, Casey first considers two expositions of the
soul that he regards as partial. The fortress soul, a product of the
Enlightenment, is (or aims to be) strong, self-contained and secure from
doubt. This is the reasoning self that Descartes established as the
foundation of his philosophy. The fragile soul is, by contrast, acutely
aware that human beings are interdependent, and cannot exist in
isolation. Here Casey draws on the writings of a contemporary Jewish
thinker, Emmanuel Levinas, whose own experience of the Holocaust
convinced him of the fundamental need for people to take responsibility
for each other, even when this does no more than reveal humanitys
ultimate powerlessness. Casey himself searches for a model that can
combine the strength and the passion of the fortress with the vulnerability
and risk of the fragile.
This model is expounded in the last two chapters of the book, which
characterize the soul as both loving and utopian. The former
characteristic leads Casey into a consideration of the nature of human
love that has much in common with Pope Benedicts first encyclical. In
considering the latter characteristic he looks particularly at the Sermon
on the Mount in Matthews Gospel, finding there a utopian vision of a
kind that human beings need if they are to achieve their full, God-given
potential. The book ends with a personal testimony to the value of the
human soul and its almost infinite capacity for renewal. It is the hope of
inspiring such renewal that provides Caseys ultimate motivation in
writing.
So how do you understand the make-up of a human being? Are we no
more than higher animals, to be fixed when things go wrong with the help
of the appropriate medical and psychological information? Or is there,
within each individual, a mysterious element breathed in by God, an
element called to grow in its response to God by showing love to every
other individual? If you incline towards the latter answer, Life and Soul is a
valuable guide to making sense of this idea in a contemporary intellectual
context.
Paul Nicholson SJ
112 Recent Books
James L. Wakefield, Sacred Listening: Discovering the Spiritual

Exercises of Ignatius Loyola (Grand Rapids, Mi: Baker Books, 2006).
0 8010 6614 X, pp. 208, $12.99 US.
How do people respond to the experience of having made the Spiritual

Exercises? One common way is to try to pass on to others something of
the benefits they feel they have gained. If directors were thick on the
ground, this objective might be achieved without difficulty. On
completing the Exercises, you could recommend the experience, and a
suitable director, to all your acquaintances. But (perhaps through Gods
providence!), good directors are not that common. So how can the fruits
of the Exercises be made more widely available?
Between the late sixteenth century and the mid-1970s this would not
have been thought of as problematic. The key themes of the Exercises
were routinely preached to large numbers. In James Joyces Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man there is a descriptionamusing or terrifying,
depending on your outlookof the Ignatian vision of Hell being passed
on to a class of impressionable schoolboys. But the rediscovery of the
value of individual direction since then has led people to look for other
ways of making what the Exercises have to offer more generally accessible.
Sacred Listening represents one of these attempts.
James Wakefield, the author, comes from a Protestant background, and
thus originally approached the Exercises with great suspicion. Even after a
good experience of being guided through them, he considered that the
Ignatian text posed many problems for a Protestant readership. He
therefore offers an adaptation,
for contemporary people with little or no formal training in spiritual disciplines.
This adaptation accommodates a regular work schedule, highlights the scriptural
inferences of the original Exercises, incorporates small revisions to avoid
unnecessarily alienating Protestants, and allows for use with small groups. (p.16)
The result is a kind of work-book for a retreat in daily life which might
be followed by an individual, with or without a listener, or taken up by a
group. The text is divided into four movements (by analogy with a
symphony), and each movement into units. Each unit has material that
might take a week or so to pray with, and typically includes a descriptive
theme, a grace to be sought, and then scripture to be worked withthis
under the classical headings of contemplatio, meditatio and oratio. Wakefield
recommends keeping a journal of the retreat experience, and finding
someone with whom you can talk it through periodically.
Recent Books 113
Read from a Roman Catholic perspective, this presentation represents

in some ways a significant impoverishment of the Ignatian Exercises. The
role of Christs mother, Mary, is curtailed. Though during the nativity
contemplation we are told, bluntly, Using your imagination, be Mary,
Wakefield simply omits the triple colloquy: a central repeated petitionary
prayer in the Exercises where you are invited first to approach Mary, then,
with her, to pray to Jesus, and only then, in the company of both, to come
to God the Father. And the scene in which Ignatius sees Mary being the
first disciple to whom the risen Christ appears (saying, in effect, Isnt it
obvious that this would be the way it happened?) has likewise
disappeared. So too have the Rules for Thinking with the Church,
guidelines that Ignatius offers for thinking through how the experience of
the Exercises can be lived out in a particular community of faithwith
the result that Wakefields presentation renders the Exercises even more
vulnerable to the charge of individualism.
At the same time, Wakefields book contains useful material not to be
found in its parent text. There is a chapter on what a prayer guide might
be listening out fora resource that might be really helpful if there is no
trained director available. There are also some useful and detailed
instructions on how to keep a journal that would deepen the experience
of the Exercises. And because Wakefield has clearly read widely, his notes
and bibliography present a useful, up-to-date introduction to the more
easily accessible literature in this field.
Ideally, someone wanting to make the Spiritual Exercises, whatever
Christian Church they belong to, will find a skilled director to lead them
along the lines put forward by Ignatius text. Anything else is always going
to be, in some sense, a second-best. But there are times when second-best
is all that will be available, and the result can still be a powerful and even
life-changing experience. Sacred Listening tries to strike a delicate balance:
to give enough material for comparative beginners, while also encouraging
those making the Exercises to trust their own experience, and thus to
react in freedom when the unexpected happens. Wakefields tendency to
err on the side of the prescriptive would perhaps be softened by the
empathetic listening and accompaniment that he recommends. And for a
reader rooted in Catholic approaches to the Exercises, it offers the gift
that Robert Burns prayed for: to see oursels as others see us.
Paul Nicholson SJ
114 Recent Books
Philip B. Wilson, Being Single: Insights for Tomorrow's Church

(London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2005). 0 232 52592 7,
pp. xv + 239, 14.95.
What is it really like to be single in todays Church? This is the question

asked by Rev. Philip B. Wilson, a single minister of the Presbyterian
Church in Ireland.
His first two chapters provide social and historical background,
describing how, not so long ago, the unmarried were in a minority, a
special interest group of oddballs in a couple-dominated society. Back
then there were two main stereotypes: the altruistic soul devoted to high
and worthy duties, and the boring, self-centred hermit with no social
skills. Within Catholic Christianity the practice of vowed lifetime celibacy
was widespread; but the Reformation had led to marriage being
understood as both a vocation and the norm in the Protestant Churches.
Single lay people did not really fit in with either tradition. Apart from
isolated figures such as John Wesley, some notable single women
missionaries, and some groups such as the Shakers, few resisted the urge
to marry. What single people there were had little option but to remain
dependent upon their birth families.
Today finds Britain in a very different situation, for by 2010 single
households are likely to account for 40% of all homes. More people
remain unmarried into their mid-thirties, and still more are becoming
single for the second time round, some with children. A new stereotype of
the single person has emerged, perhaps even further from the truth than
the old one: the wild party animal, having many sexual liaisons and the
freedom of a large disposable income. In reality, what might be a lifestyle
option for some is for others an uneasy and not always transitory state, not
of their own choosing. To understand the change requires us to explore
what is happening in contemporary culture. Wilson rather suspects that
many of our Churches fail to appreciate this point, and therefore provides
a lively account of postmodern Britain. It is not helpful, he argues, just to
bewail how attitudes to marriage and the Church have changed since the
1960s. The truth is that huge economic shifts and the technological
revolution are leading more people to become work-alone, live-alone
personalities.
For the purposes of Wilsons study, a single person is someone who is
neither married nor cohabiting nor casually dating. His three central
chapters of qualitative analysis were based on interviews with 15 people
aged 25 to 70, some single and some not, several of whom were in serious
relationships. For the value of their previous experience, two older but
Recent Books 115
recently married couples were included. This was a relatively small group
for research purposes, perhaps, but it allowed individual in-depth
conversations to be conducted with reflective people, producing a variety
of insights. The group included Protestants and Evangelicals, plus one
young Catholic, but Wilsons findings and conclusions have wider
ecclesial applications than this constituency would suggest. Only one out
of the fifteen claimed to have had a totally positive experience of being
single in his Church. The rest reported varying degrees of church pain
and church stress, summed up in one womans feeling: Church for me is
the loneliest place of all.
The author believes that the younger church-going singles experienced
their problems most keenly, with the Churches perceived negativity about
sexual relationships being particularly problematic for them. But the older
people, struggling alone with difficult issues and their continuing need for
intimacy, did not seem to have fared much better. Interestingly, none of
the fifteen felt called to be single and, of the four who had recently
married, all reported feeling more fulfilled as a result. This tends to
confirm previous research which has shown the emotional, financial and
psychological benefits of marriage.
One of the strengths of the book is that, while empathizing with the
disadvantages that single people face, the author also throws down some
challenges. Could it be that singles feel excluded because they themselves
are exclusive? Are some of us the products of an economic system that
prizes individuality over community? Various studies recognise the value
and benefit of individuals belonging to a social group that requires
something of them and from which they in turn can benefit. The Church
could be such a group, but is it currently equipped to provide what is
needed? Not yet, according to most of Wilsons interviewees. At worst
they experienced ostracism, and at best they attended services laid on by
professional service providers, with friendship not being seen as very
important. Can the Churches turn this state of affairs around? The author
believes that genuine community, characterized by openness and
truthfulness, needs to replace endless prohibitions and taboos. Only then
will people understand what to believe and how to behave.
The two final chapters envisage a radical new Christianity, leaping
backwards to a time before both the monastic era and the Reformation to
re-root itself in New Testament values. Writing from a Protestant
perspective, Wilson cites texts in the Gospels in which the unmarried and
married alike enjoy friendship with Jesus and are called to discipleship,
and there is richness in his exegesis. However, in my experience, Catholics
who are involuntarily single can find themselves in a draughty corridor
116 Recent Books
between the recognised vocations involving vowed celibacy on the one

hand, and marriage and family life on the other. In some Catholic circles,
the scriptures which Wilson can use to call all church members to holiness
and commitment are more commonly used in connection with celibate
priesthood or consecrated life. Single lay people pick up a sense of
unhelpful exclusivity.
Wilson contends that the Church, empowered to befriend and support,
potentially offers the best forum in which the single life can be discussed,
assisted and faithfully lived out. But for this it must cease to be an
institution for families and operate as a family, with all kinds of members.
As the single population grows, anything less would be poor pastoral and
missionary strategy.
This is not just another self-help book for single Christians, claims its
author, but rather a work of practical theology which he hopes will make
compelling reading for anyone concerned about the Churchs mission,
authenticity and community. Nevertheless it contains much that is
helpful and heartening for the single persons spiritual development, as
well as a good bibliography and some unobtrusive endnotes to guide
further exploration.
Margaret M. Sheldon
The Bible in Pastoral Practice, edited by Paul Ballard and Stephen R.

Holmes (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2005). 0 232 52611 7,
pp. xxiii + 316, 17.95.
One of the questions that today face thoughtful Christians (a category

which clearly includes readers of The Way) is that of whether and how we
can properly make use of the Bible. Hidden beneath this question, and
contributing to its formulation, lie anxieties of various kinds. Modern
biblical scholarship, dependent as it is on critical historical method and on
various forms of literary criticism, seems to inhibit our reading the Bible as
believers. There is also the grim fact that even believers do not know the
Bible as well as once they would have done, and therefore lack confidence
about it. There is, too, the increasingly complex link between pastoral
theology and the social sciences. Given all these things, this book is
welcome: it is part of an admirable three-volume project coming out of
the School of Religious and Theological Studies at Cardiff University, in
partnership with the Bible Society. It deals head on with an important set
of issues.
Recent Books 117
There is not space here to speak of all eighteen essays in this rich and
diverse book, but people who read The Way, and who worry about the
proper use of Scripture, really ought to know about the questions that are
raised within this book, even though easy answers are not forthcoming.
The papers that compose this volume are distributed between three
parts. Part I is a more or less chronological presentation of the use of the
Bible in the history of Christian practical theology, from the beginnings to
the present day, and across the three main divisions of Christianity. The
theme is caught in the title of this section: Listening to the Tradition.
Part II considers the problems raised by contemporary biblical scholarship.
Part III casts its net rather more widely, and looks at how the Bible has in
fact been used in certain pastoral contexts. All the articles in this volume
are, in their very different ways, worth reading for the light they shed on a
difficult issue. Some of the authors are better known than others. Among
the more eminent is Walter Brueggemann, whose admirably clear
contribution is a magisterial piece making a compelling distinction
between thick and thin readings of the text. A joint piece by Zoe
Bennett and Christopher Rowland offers an intriguing series of glimpses of
contextual and advocacy readings and of the power that they can exert.
Readers of The Way will be particularly interested in a characteristically
careful contribution from the editor, on how Ignatian approaches to
prayer place us within the movement of the biblical text.
Four observations may serve to locate the significance of this collection
of papers. First, from all of them, taken together, it becomes clear how
pastoral theology and practice form a hermeneutical circle. Through
history, and across the variety of Christian traditions, it is possible to see
that practitioners of pastoral theology often speak from a shared context,
even those who might have been expected to reach widely different
conclusions. Second, all the essays show, in their different ways, that we
do not just read the Bible. We read it always in a particular context, or
rather in several overlapping contexts, including the intellectual and
ecclesiological ones in which we find ourselves. Moreover our reading
always takes place against the background of contemporary history.
Thirdly, the refreshing assumption that the Bible is and ought to be
nourishing for Christian faith runs throughout this book; but the
elaborations and implications of that assumption vary markedly from one
contributor to the next. Finally, and perhaps underlying all the foregoing,
is an insight which surfaces frequently in one form or another: the Bible is
a story or set of stories, and needs to be read as such. The implications of
this notion will vary widely among the authors; but it is a point to which
118 Recent Books
they return again and again. The problem, of course, is which story? Not
just any story will do, and some stories are better than others.
This is a book that readers of The Way will find very stimulating, even
if more for the questions that it raises than for the answers it gives.
Nicholas King SJ
The Bible, the Church and Homosexuality, edited by Nicholas Coulton

(London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2005).
0232 5260 60, pp. x + 136, 10.95.
Opening Up: Speaking Out in the Church, edited by Julian Filochowski

and Peter Stanford (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2005).
0232 5262 49, pp. xvii + 284, 14.95.
Many Christians today find themselves facing a dilemma regarding

homosexuality. On the one hand, they want to support the person who
has found love in a long-term partnership with a person of the same sex.
On the other hand, they are told that the Scriptures clearly condemn any
physical expression of homosexual love. Even the orientation itself is
described by some influential voices as a disorder. The Bible, the Church
and Homosexuality is a collection of essays, largely from Oxford, addressing
this dilemma. The central theme is twofold: the first point is to advocate a
responsible attitude to the Bible, one that does not ignore some parts and
highlight others. How are Christians to treat a Bible which applauds
Israelite genocide of neighbouring Canaanites or, in the Psalms, the
beating out of the brains of Babylonian babies? The second is the
importance of being attentive to the Spirit at work in the Church today.
Nicholas Coulton, the editor, introduces the discussion, which is
important for the Church. In spite of changes in the law, there is still
widespread prejudice, hostility and intolerance towards homosexuals. The
high suicide statistics indicate significant pressure and cruelty
encountered or feared by young gay people Physical attacks on
homosexuals occur frequently. What is perceived to be the Churchs
official disapproval of homosexuality lends encouragement and sanction
to such attacks. (p.7)
In a masterly essay, Christopher Rowland discusses the way in which
Christians today should weigh the authority of Scripture alongside what
they believe they see the Spirit doing in the world. He does not discuss
directly the scriptural texts that have been at the centre of the
Recent Books 119
controversy. His central question is: what is the role of the Bible in
enabling followers of Jesus Christ to discern what it means to be true to
their calling? It is a mistake to equate the Bible directly with revelation. It
must always be read in the light of the mystery of Christ and the Holy
Spirit. Rowland argues that understanding the divine will is less about
textual exegesis and more about discernment. And Christian discernment
must be informed, not only by the insights of Scripture and Tradition, but
also by the ways in which God meets people in everyday life, especially in
human relationships. He shows that right from the start of Christian
history mere appeal to what the Bible says was never thought to be an
adequate ground for the Christian life. In Pauls dispute with Peter in
Antioch, Pauls opponents had the best arguments from the Bible on their
side, but Paul brushed these aside. Similarly, in the account of Peters
journey to Cornelius, the instruction to sacrifice and eat cut across the
teaching of the Bible. What Peter and Paul were doing here was to
relativise the place of Scripture in the light of the experience of the Spirit.
In doing this, they laid down an approach to their ancestral Scriptures
which should be central to Christianity. Christianity has never been a
religion of the book. (p.29) They were showing that Christians should not
treat the Bible as a code of law, and act as if they did not have a doctrine
of the Spirit.
Marilyn McCord Adams shows how societies have invented
institutions to control sexual expression and explores how institutions
respond when taboos start to change. She argues that taboos are enemies
of discernment, because they make an idol of the status quo and tend to
make change unthinkable. Jane Shaw describes ways in which the
Churchs attitudes to sexuality, marriage and celibacy have changed over
the course of 2000 years, and asks how we are to locate our current debate
within that history. Another essay, by Margaret Bedggood, offers a
perspective derived from the theory, practice and experience of the
modern human rights movement (p.80)..
A more philosophical approach is taken by Robert Merrihew Adams,
for whom the argument that sexual intercourse between people of the
same sex is contrary to nature does not stand up to rigorous analysis. It
presupposes judgments made on otherperhaps not very goodgrounds
about what is good and right in discerning divine purposes in nature. The
fact that God has a procreative purpose for human sexual intercourse does
not imply that God absolutely forbids sexual intercourse where
procreation is impossible. The Bible itself (Genesis 2:23-24) speaks also of
a unitive function for the sexual relationship. John Drury discusses what it
means to be a good reader, observing that we are all prejudicially selective
120 Recent Books
readers, and that we should be critically self-aware about this at all times,
but especially in our reading of the Bible.
This is a book that should be read by anyone interested in the
homosexuality debate. The essays are well-argued and contribute fresh
thinking. They approach the question from a variety of angles, and they
argue persuasively that a change in the Churchs approach to
homosexuality would be consistent with the Churchs understanding of
Scripture and its traditional ways of working with doctrine.
The second book, Opening Up: Speaking Out in the Church, is a
collection of 21 essays, most of them by Roman Catholics, written to mark
the sixtieth birthday of Martin Pendergast, who was co-founder of the
Catholic AIDS Link charity in London, and active in the setting up of the
Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement. Here, however, the focus is
broader than the Churches debates about homosexuality. Instead, a
variety of questions facing the Church are openly discussed. Timothy
Radcliffe describes those who are excluded by being on the margins of
society to whom the Church offers a Eucharistic wisdom. In the face of
modern violence and brutality, the follower of Jesus is to act in ways that
signifiy peace and justice. Eucharistic wisdom reminds us that our
community is gathered around the altar in the memory of one who was
cast out. Jon Sobrino stresses that the option for the poor is still absolutely
necessary because poverty is still a scandal; the poverty he is discussing is
not only economic poverty but also the condition of all who are isolated,
despised, ignored or excluded. Enda McDonagh notes how theology has
taken marriage beyond a simple contract in canon law to the more human
and Christian category of a community of love. This has important
consequences for sexual morality in both homosexual and heterosexual
loving. He also underlines the importance of not attempting to restrict
unduly the freedom of voters and legislators to follow their conscience.
The same point is discussed more fully by Aidan ONeill in his essay, Can
a Catholic Be a Good Democrat? Julian Filochowski describes the
enormity of the problem of poverty in the world: half the worlds
population, three billion people, live on less than $2 a day(p.164). It is
imperative that Christians face this crisis in a constructive way.
Kevin Kelly, in the last essay, Do We Need a Vatican Three?, recalls
that the religious authorities of his day rejected Jesus because of his
teaching that the sabbath was made for humankind and not humankind
for the sabbath. Are there sabbaths in the Church today, Kelly asks, to
which we can be tempted to subordinate the good of human persons? He
lists a number of such modern-day sabbaths that are in need of open
discussion before the Church will be ready for Vatican III. Among these
Recent Books 121
are: a fundamentalist approach to homosexuality, lay participation in the

life of the Church, general absolution, intercommunion, divorce and
remarriage, and birth control. Open dialogue within the Church about
such questions, giving primacy to the human person, must precede the
calling of another general council.
In both of these collections of essays problems facing the Church are
openly discussed in an interesting, informed and refreshing way. They
provide good bases for the constructive dialogue we so badly need, and so
rarely find.
Clarence Gallagher SJ
David Brakke, Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat
in Early Christianity (Cambridge, Ma: Harvard UP, 2006). 0 674
01875 3, pp.ix + 308, 31.95.
This intriguing book examines the evidence, mainly from Egyptian

sources, of the spiritual combat to which the monks of the early Church
submitted during the course of their quest for perfection and above all for
self-mastery.
The book divides roughly into two halves. In the first, entitled The
Monk in Combat, the initial chapter deals with the general theme of the
monk as a fighter of demons. The next four chapters consider in turn
Athanasius Life of Antony, Evagrius Ponticus, Pachomius and Shenoute,
with his stinging attack on hypocrisy in general, and in particular on the
duplicity of the Christian governor Gessius, who was detected reverencing
pagan temples.
Part 2 bears the arresting title War Stories, and is more concerned
with the general themes which run through the whole period. Chapter 7
deals with Ethiopian ideas about demons and explores the relationship
between the monastic self and the diabolical other. Chapter 8 concerns
gender in combat, and deals with manly womena familiar Gnostic
themeand female demons.
An afterword, The Inner Battle, has much to say about the way in
which the wisdom of Egypt, above all that of Evagrius, found its way to
the Westespecially through the Institutes and Conferences of John
Cassian (360-435). This is exemplified by the appearance in the West of
the eight (later seven) capital or deadly sins. The list owes its inception to
Evagrius and became canonical through its adoption by Gregory the Great
in his Moralia on Job of about 585 AD. This development illustrates a
122 Recent Books
central thesis of the book: what begin as demons, as external spiritual

forces with which Antony wrestles and to which Ephesians 6:12 refers,
eventually become inner spiritual forces.
How and why did this change take place? It would be a great mistake
to suppose, as the author perceptively points out, that what may seem to
us the more simplistic account of the demons was the result of a lack of
culture or education on the part of the early monks. Antony himself was
by no means stupid or poor, though the Life admits that he had no
education; his conversation with the pagan philosophers, recorded in
chapters 72-80, is not a fiction. And it was not only the ill-educated who
were convinced of the power of demons, that is of heavenly powers who
have fallen from a condition of bliss. Origen, in Contra Celsum 4:92,
writes: We hold that there are certain evil demons who have become
impious towards the true God they creep into the most rapacious wild
beasts and other animals. Antony has much to say on the subject of
discernment of spirits, and for him spirits almost always mean external,
invasive spiritual powers, determined to distract the monk from the
purpose for which he left the world. For Evagrius, however, the terms
demon and thought (Greek logismos) are used interchangeably, with the
emphasis falling on the thought.
Another crucial term for Evagrius was apatheia, an aim which the
ascetic sets himself as a necessary stepping stone on the journey to
contemplation. This need not mean the destruction of feeling, but can
simply be regarded as a control over wayward spiritual emotions. The
difficulty in interpreting what Evagrius (and others) meant by it is, as
Brakke aptly points out, the difficulty of deciding what philosophy
underlies the understanding of pathos. It could be an intellectualised
Stoicism, for which apatheia would mean something external to the soul,
or Platonism, for which apatheia would be the ill-disciplined character of
the aggressive and acquisitive parts of the soul itself.
This is a fruitful book which deserves attentive reading, above all in its
exploration of the nature of spiritual combat as seen by fourth- and fifth-
century ascetics. Little is said in the book, or in the texts that it discusses,
about liturgy. Was it assumed or regarded as an optional extra? Perhaps
there is no simple answer.
Anthony Meredith SJ
Recent Books 123
Lisa Sowle Cahill, Theological Bioethics: Participation, Justice, and

Change (Washington: Georgetown UP, 2005).
1 58901 075 2, pp. x + 310, 16.95.
What is theological bioethics and how does it differ from any other type
of bioethics? Lisa Sowle Cahill, a prominent moral theologian and
professor of theology at Boston College, tells us that theological bioethics
is a form of participatory or public bioethics. The adjectives participatory
and public are important, as they distinguish Cahills approach from
others advanced in similar publications. Such approaches usually amount
to either theoretical presentations and normative judgments regarding
clinical issues, or demonstrations of moral commitment to, for example,
the protection of embryos and foetuses, of the kind to be found in the
literature of pro-life movements. Although Cahill acknowledges the
importance of a theory and a moral stance, she goes beyond these and
proposes to view theological bioethics as a form of activism which takes
part in a global social network of mobilisation for change (p.3). Her book
is about engagement, not theory. It is informed by the common good
tradition of Roman Catholic social thought and the insights of liberation
theology. Justice and solidarity, claims Cahill, are the most important
concerns and priorities of theological bioethics. When she talks about
justice she usually means distributive justice, understood in terms of global
access to health-care resources. By solidarity she means a sense of unity
with the poor and outcast as exemplified in the healing ministry of Jesus
something to which all Christians should be committed.
The book works on two assumptions: (1) bioethical decisions about
individuals cannot be separated from social ethics; (2) despite the
particularity of moral practices and perspectives, many common moral
values regarding life and health can be defended across cultures.
Regarding the latter Cahill refers to initiatives in which Jewish and
Muslim scholars join Christians in formulating cooperative projects of
participation in health-care matters. This well-researched book is
enlivened with practical applications to enduring controversies. When
discussing, for example, aging and the decline of abilities, she does not
simply focus on the arguments of those who advocate physician-assisted
suicide or on the opinions of those who advocate keeping patients alive
indefinitely with artificial nutrition and hydration. Central to Cahills case
is a claim that the arguments on both sides of the standard debates reflect
an overly technological and overly individualistic approach to decline and
death. Cahill is more interested in how to integrate the elderly and the
terminally ill and dying into their communities so that they can live more
124 Recent Books
fulfilling lives and continue to participate in those communities as far as

they are able. Some of the cases she discusses are specific to her own
context, the USA; nevertheless they do convey points that are common
to all modern Western cultures which are informed by narratives of liberal
individualism, scientific progress and the market. Even though the US
leads the world in spending on health care, it does not ensure basic access
for all citizens (45 million US people lack health insurance and this
number continues to rise). The issue of access to health care is a world-
wide problem which Cahill links to inequalities in other areas of social
access, namely education, gender and market economics. To overcome
these inequalities, Cahill calls for progressive religious thinkers and
believers to join in the effort to reclaim the best of their traditions through
engaging political forces at local, national and international levels.
The first two chapters offer an interpretative history of the field of
theological bioethics and propose an understanding of its role in changing
social relationships and institutions. They offer a theoretical grounding for
specific issues which are then addressed in the final five chapters in the
following areas: aging, decline and dying; health-care access reform;
AIDS; and beginning of life technologies.
The work is grounded in a deep and wide scholarly reflection, with
references to authors such as Edward Schillebeeckx, Jim Wallis, Robert
Schreiter, Paul Ramsey, James Gustafson, Richard McCormick, Margaret
Farley, Karen Lebacqz, James Childress, Charles Taylor and Beverly
Wildung Harrison. It draws on the experiences of organizations such as
the Catholic Health Association, Catholic Relief Services, Christian Aid
the SantEgidio communitiesall of which exemplify participatory
theological bioethics.
Even if not every reader will agree that theological bioethics must go
beyond intellectual engagement and become a form of activism, Cahills
book will leave few resting comfortably with the current world-wide state
of affairs regarding health care. A thoughtful reader will be convinced
that theological bioethics is about developing a more compassionate
attitude and about alleviating the social conditions that create inequalities
in matters of health. This book offers a vision and a voice that enriches
the field of bioethics and invites the reader to take specific practical steps:
actions that will eventually become true democratic activism, both locally
and globally.
Anna Abram
Recent Books 125
Stephen Schloesser, Jazz Age Catholicism: Mystic Modernism in

Postwar Paris, 1919-1933 (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2005).
0 8020 8718 3, pp. xiv + 450, 55.00.
Revisionist accounts of the Second Vatican Council, from all sides, are
now regularly appearing. One effect of this is that the contribution to the
conciliar renewal from French theologians and thinkers is being
appreciated more fully; in the Anglophone world particularly, there has
been a series of new translations and editions of their works. Thus
Stephen Schloessers study of French Catholicism in the aftermath of
World War I, le dsastre, could not be more timely. It is impossible to assess
appropriately the work of Congar, Chenu, Danilou or de Lubac without
reference to the philosophical and artistic Catholic renewal that arose
from the devastation.
In France the power of the Church had initially been broken by the
Revolution, and before World War I many citizens of the eldest daughter
of the Church perceived Ultramontane Catholicism as incurably
reactionary, wedded to Pius IXs repeated condemnations of modernity,
and to an intransigence which found its shameful apotheosis in the
Dreyfus affair. The 1905 laws of lacit appeared to many as the triumph of
the state over the Church. Twenty years later, however, Jazz Age Paris
witnessed the emergence of a Catholic intellectual lite who proclaimed
their religious faith as modernitys truest expression. Moving Catholicism
from the margins of culture to its centre, this postwar renouveau led to an
unprecedented flowering of French Catholic intellectual life, involving
both recent converts and established apologists.
Schloesser makes a major contribution to our understanding of this
phenomenon. It emerges from the national sense of bereavement, on a
scale previously quite unthinkable, after World War I. France went
through a crisis of mind; it was as though civilisation itself had perished
in the trenches. In his study of the philosopher Maritain, the painter
Rouault, the novelist Bernanos and the musician Tournemire, Schloesser
offers examples of how Catholic identity and self-understanding shifted,
becoming marked by a rage against the modernity of liberal rationalism
a rage which it shared not only with Surrealism and Dadaism, but also
with Fascism and Communism.
The books erudition is challenging; it is not a text for the faint-
hearted. But its wealth of fact and interpretation cannot fail to fascinate.
The many currents and counter-currents in French political and cultural
life at the turn of the twentieth century are well described, as are the
suffocating tensions in French Catholicism at the time of the Modernist
126 Recent Books
crisis. As we follow Jacques and Rassa Maritain in their intellectual and

spiritual odyssey, we move from free-thinking republican socialism to the
nationalist proto-fascism of Maurras Action Franaise. Schloesser does not
shrink from the paradoxes and contradictions in the Maritains journey,
and well conveys the complex process through which Jacques Maritain
transformed Catholicism into ultramodernism. His famed exchanges with
Jean Cocteau both gained and lost him admirers, as did his submission to
Romes condemnation, in 1926, of Action Franaise. For our generation,
much of this context is lost in a mist of failed memory, and Jazz Age
Catholicism will make us aware of the complex twentieth-century ancestry
of contemporary Catholicism.
Schloesser does not give us a survey of Rouaults work, but presents his
paintings as an expression of Catholic renewal, and shows how their
dialectical juxtaposition of the sacred and the monstrous provoked sharply
divergent reactions among critics. A painter whose works shocked,
disgusted and fascinated in equal measure, Rouault depicted the profane
and the sacrilegious as masking religious mystery. Maritain, at one point
Rouaults neighbour, perceived splendour and privileged interior reality
bursting out of the raw, miserable figures of Rouaults clowns and
prostitutes.
Like the chapter on Rouault, the chapter on Bernanos does not discuss
the subjects work as such. Rather, by looking at contemporary reactions
to Sous le soleil de Satan, Schloesser traces the emergence of the Catholic
novel, and its redefinition of the notions of Catholicism, religion and
human existence through its dialectical realism.
A fourth main chapter looks at the music of Charles Tournemire.
French music of this period, like the philosophy, visual art, and literature
of the period, needs to be seen in the wider French context, both religious
and political. The point applies also to the revival of plainchant led by
Dom Guranger and the abbey at Solesmes. Moreover, like other aspects
of French culture, music became radically politicised by the Dreyfus affair.
A pupil of both Csar Franck and Charles-Marie Widor, Tournemire
entitled his monumental cycle of 51 organ masses for the liturgical year,
Lorgue mystique. Combining as it does plainchant with modern
chromaticism, his music was a deliberate attempt to forge a hybrid
language, or, as Schoessler describes it, an intersection of incongruities, a
semantic vertigo in which the eternal and the modern are both
juxtaposed and fused.
Schloesser claims his book is a modernist desecularization project and
an exploration of cultural Catholicism, and it is indeed both those things.
The only disappointment is the abrupt end, which allows for little
Recent Books 127
reflection on the period in its totality. Nevertheless, for most readers Jazz
Age Catholicism will be a fascinating and insightful window into a world
whose significance was largely engulfed by the subsequent catastrophe of
World War II, and by the yet further profound changes in Catholic
religious thought and culture which followed.
Gemma Simmonds CJ
The Worlds We Live In: Dialogues with Rowan Williams on Global

Economics and Politics, edited by Claire Foster and Edmund Newell
(London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2005). 0 232 52614 1,
pp. ix + 129, 10.95.
This book reproduces four public dialogues with Rowan Williams, the
Archbishop of Canterbury, held in St Pauls Cathedral during September
2004. Williams is joined by politicians, academics and activists of diverse
backgrounds in dialogues about world governance, global capitalism, the
environment, and health issues. In the first chapter, David Owen and
Philip Bobbitt debate the future of the nation state, while Williams
adverts to the transformative potential of non-government institutions,
Churches, and people of good will. In the second dialogue, Is there an
Alternative to Global Capitalism?, economist John Kay gives a vigorous
defence of the free market, going somewhat against the grain of the
collection as a whole. The fourth dialogue, Is Humanity Killing Itself?,
takes up such issues as population growth and the controversial role of
Western drug companies in the face of the worldwide AIDS epidemic.
The third dialogue, Environment and HumanityFriends or Foes?, is
perhaps where Williams is best able to bring a Christian perspective to the
issues, but it is also the most frustrating chapter of the book. Mary
Midgley paints in excessively broad strokes when she accuses early
Christianity of seeing the earth as something that stands in our way when
we try to get to heaven (p.72). Williams is right to correct her
interpretation: early Christians also understood the world as sacramental,
as a system of (God-given) meaning (p.76); the hubristic imposition by
human beings of their own meaning thus takes on blasphemous
proportions. Salvadoran activist Ricardo Navarro vividly portrays the
destruction of the earth and its enormous implications for human
existence, but he is prone to rhetorical exaggeration, particularly in his
anti-US invective. Williams combines the sublime with the homely in his
vision of humanity exercising a priestly role in creation, and in his call to
128 Recent Books
engage with the limits of the natural world by walking more, getting wet,
and digging gardens (p.93).
In the afterword, Williams notes: The dialogues were in no way
designed as an exercise in Christian apologetic (p.129). He resists quick
answers, and happily accepts qualification and correction from his
interlocutors. Theology undertaken in such a spirit of humility and
openness, but with full confidence in the perennial relevance of the gospel
message, has a great deal to say to the modern world, rife as it is with
fundamentalisms both religious and secular. One hopes that such
dialogues continue, and not only under the dome of St Pauls.
Mark L. Yenson

461 The Way

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THE WAY

a review of Christian spirituality published by the British Jesuits

January 2007 Volume 46 Number1

The Composition of Place: Creating Space for an 7-20

The Terrible Sonnets of Gerard Manley Hopkins and the 23-37

Poetry and Prayer beyond Words 39-52

Gwen John: Her Art and Spirituality 53-64

The Spirit in Contemporary Culture

The First Method of Prayer: Prayerful Self-Monitoring 77-90

From the Ignatian Tradition

Book Reviews 101-128

Billy Hewett on the collected essays of Joseph Veale, the noted

E XPERIENCE OF GOD IS AN ESSENTIAL ASPECT of Christian life. Even if

It should be noted here that for contemplation or meditation about

The Way, 46/1 (January 2007), 7-20

imagination, and to consider, that my soul is imprisoned in this

In their analysis of this passage most commentators have focused

It is true that in these preludes we should not dwell too much on

Even when the composition is described as something positive it tends

In the composition of place, a person makes himself present, as it

In the composition of place the exercitant should remember that

Gonzlez also draws a parallel with Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite

In the composition of place, the one meditating should make

to prevent the mind from wandering aimlessly by giving it

But then the tone changes:

However, many persons spend a lot of time uselessly dwelling on

Many people find it quite hard to make the composition of place,

This composition of place is a great help toward concentrating and

Towards the end of this quotation explicit reference is made to

Dangers to be avoided: lastly, care should be taken not to dwell

One finds that modern commentators also tend to be reserved

place, and mentions spiritual writers such as Jean-Joseph Surin (1600-

although there is great benefit to be had from contemplating

The Changes of Place, Mental and Personal

The overall composition of each engraving is so arranged as to

immediately moving to the central scene (E), one is required to go first

A colloquy, properly so-called, means speaking as one friend speaks

Encounter and Relocation

Occasionally when he was on the point of meditating on the

Nicolas Standaert SJ is a professor of Chinese Studies at the Catholic University

Liturgy, prayer and spirituality

Sexuality and social justice

Reform of Church structures, including the role

Contemporary dialogue between faith and

Features include: Notes for preaching; Chronicle of

Subscriptions are payable in advance to:

Back numbers and advertising rates are available

The Way, 46/1 (January 2007), 23-37

poets. For many years I was plagued with depression related to

Was Hopkins Depressed?

To seem the stranger lies my lot, my life

This is a threefold alienation. First, Hopkins is alienated from his

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall

The house where Hopkins lived in Dublin

tiredness, lack of energy and inability to complete anything he took up,

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.

Here Hopkins is describing his own experienceWith witness I speak

Not, Ill not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;

It is remarkable how often Hopkins manages to use not in these four

I am gall, I am heartburn. Gods most deep decree

It seems likely that Hopkins was clinically depressed when he wrote

are most clearly read by following the map of St Ignatius

That Ignatius rules for discernment, particularly in the hands of a