Planets, stars and New Year’s resolutions
Television advertisements can serve as a helpful almanac: we know the year is turning when ridiculous perfume ads give way to ones for holidays, diets (with ingredients and psychological insights delivered to your door), exercise regimes and gadgets, apps for decluttering and for monitoring healthy habits… All are trying to sell us the possibility of a ‘new year, new you’. I gave up making New Year’s resolutions a long time ago, though. They never lasted, and I know I’m not alone in that, so why do some people keep on doing it? I suspect it’s because of that tempting yet pernicious lie that with enough willpower (and, often, cash; often too by competing with others) we can achieve the feat of transforming ourselves into whoever or whatever we want. We can become masters of our own destiny; ‘you will be like God’, and where have we heard that before?
Margaret Silf and others have written of a spiritual ‘Copernican revolution’, in which we realise — perhaps with something of a shock — that we are not at the centre of our universe, with everything else revolving around us. We are planets, not suns, but seeking to base our lives on this truth can quite literally make us ‘eccentrics’ in the eyes of the world. It is all so subtle. The notion of ‘Dry January’, for example, is sometimes lamented as a misplacing of the Advent fast, so that the seasons for fasting and feasting are swapped round. But there is a deeper difference. Why do people choose to cut down on food and drink? To be healthier, more energetic and productive, more beautiful, and claim success as their own work… but if we choose to fast in Advent and Lent we do it not for our own sakes, but so that we may love and follow Jesus more closely in gratitude for what his kenosis and Passion have done for us.
Or do we? As spiritual directors we are often asked to suggest new spiritual practices, sometimes with a subtext that the directee’s current way of praying seems not to be producing results, such as making them holier or wiser. We might hear that someone is unhappy in their local church because they are not personally ‘getting anything’ out of the worship there. And how do we respond? We can so easily get drawn into believing that we have an obligation to fix, or to make better, and when we can’t do either we feel like failures. As a supervisor I often hear things like ‘I tried to get her to…’, or ‘I really want him to…’, spoken in tones of disappointment. The truth is that in the spiritual direction room, the director and directee are both planets; there is one Sun. We can no more change things for our directees, and they can no more improve their own spiritual lives, than we can make the clouds outside the window part to reveal a ray of the physical Sun. But we can notice when it happens, and we can then say ‘look…’
I was saddened to hear of the death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI on New Year’s Eve. One of the greatest theologians of our age, among his widely acclaimed writings is the three-volume series Jesus of Nazareth. It was especially poignant this year to take up the final volume, The Infancy Narratives, as I often do in Christmastide. What struck me particularly this time was his examination of the text of Luke’s story of the shepherds. Benedict considers the difficulty of making an accurate translation of the angels’ song, pointing out that we often read it as ‘glory be to God on high’ — a command or instruction to the listeners — whereas the original Greek says simply ‘glory to God…’ He comments: ‘“God’s glory” is not something to be brought about by men (“Glory be to God”). The “glory of God is real, God is glorious, and this is truly a reason for joy; there is truth, there is goodness, there is beauty. It is there — in God — indestructibly.’
So our task as directors (if, given what I have been saying, ‘task’ is the right word) is to pay attention to where and how God is. To catch glimpses of God’s glory between the words, in the silences and in the eyes of our directees, and to let our interventions become a song of reminder that God, and God’s indestructible glory, is. Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote of Mary that she ‘this one work has to do / let all God’s glory through’. This is also the one work of both director and directee, rather than problem-solving or self-help: for us directors the work is to let all God’s glory through by our simple presence, and point out where we see God’s glory being let through in our directee’s life, and encourage them to focus on that too.
Unlike Mary in our fallenness, we will probably never manage in this life to let ‘all God’s glory through’. Through ego or clumsiness we will often get in the way. But, as Ignatius advises, we can hope and pray that each one of our life-choices will be for what is more for God’s glory. A little more each time; but that will be by God’s grace, not the strength of our own resolution.
Dr Antonia Lynn
Antonia’s role is to oversee the ongoing formation, support and membership of spiritual directors affiliated to the Centre, and to assist those looking for a spiritual director. Her work for us is informed by her experience as an Ignatian spiritual director, supervisor and practical theologian. She is Co-Director of the Ignatian Spirituality Course, and teaches Ignatian spirituality and the art of spiritual direction.