Fr Jim's (old) Blog

Any way of prayer or mediation may be considered a spiritual exercise. Just like physical exercise it helps to have a plan, a coach and some discipline. The Spiritual Exercises (notice the capitals) are a series of meditations and contemplations which 16th century St Ignatius of Loyola composed from his own prayer experience, and then taught to his followers, who became the Society of Jesus (The Jesuits). The Exercises are mostly contemplations of scenes in the gospels, where we are to use our imagination to place ourselves within the scene so as to meet Jesus intimately, allowing the gospel account to unfold as we watch, listen, feel and take part. Following the contemplation of the scene is a prayer dialogue with Jesus about whatever we experienced and learned. Woven throughout the program of gospel scenes which Ignatius chose are some specific meditations on sorrow for sin, choosing to follow Jesus, and then giving yourself wholeheartedly to Jesus. The Exercises can be don...

I'm now in the middle of my second term. Life on college campus has a wonderful rhythm here, which for me is 6 wake, prayer, breakfast 8 Counselling skills class 10 Theology of the Spiritual Exercises class 12 lunch, break, study 5   Mass , dinner study, exercise and that's about it! In between there are wonderful conversations in the dorm rooms and hallways,and occasional walks downtown for groceries or an evening stroll. Tuesday night is a 7pm Mass for our whole class group (about 50 people this term) and Friday night is a social dinner. Weekends are free, and I usually go to the 10.30am Mass here on campus. Some people here are getting cabin fever, feeling frustrated and/or bored of the same routine and being with the same people all the time. I like it. I think having spent years in seminary I'm quite OK with an institutional style of life. It feels to me very contained, where all my focus is on the one community of people and in the same direction. In normal ...

Brian Wilson was the brains behind The Beach Boys, who seem to feature in the soundtrack of most people's teenage years. Tonight I went to hear him in concert in Omaha as he played for the 50th anniversary of the Pet Sounds album, a record so groundbreaking that Paul McCartney cites it as inspiration for Sergeant Peppers. I wouldn't have known the concert was on except that The Beach Boys are my room mate Kevin's favourite band. I fell in love with Brian Wilson when I watched the biopic Love and Mercy last year. Wow. What  perfect concert. It was outdoors at sunset, but in a small amphitheater rather than a stadium. As befitting a concert by a 74 year old and attended by hippies of various generations it was over by 9pm so not a long late night (its a school night!) and close enough to walk the couple of miles home. Brian and his 10 piece band played the whole Pet Sounds album including the sublime God Only Knows plus all of the upbeat favourites like Good Vibra...

One thing the US has plenty of is flags. So you can't not notice when they are at half-mast, as they are today. Again. They've been down more than up in the past month. First Orlando. The the two black men shot by the police. Then the five police in Dallas. And now the eighty people in France. And the 250 people in Turkey. And the nameless many who won't even make the headlines for a day. Last weekend when I went to my old parish of St Thomas in Chicago the homily and the prayers were about gun violence. When I was last there eight years ago they often focused on gun violence too. It was awkward and uncomfortable. But it was also necessary to be reminded that if life is good and safe and enjoyable, then this is what God wants for us and it makes him happy, but it is not the way life is for everyone. We need to be reminded of the suffering and tragedy of the world at church, by lowered flags, and by good journalism so that we stretch our hearts in love and reconciliati...

The first week of this second term has flown by. It seems much easier than last term. I'm not sure whether it is actually a lighter workload, or if it is the combination of being back in the swing of reading hundreds of pages and writing essays again, and that unlike the first week of last term I'm no longer jetlagged, getting lost and going to orientation meetings one after the other. It's a pleasant space anyway, and I want to make the most of the remaining three weeks here. I'm running occasionally, about 10km at a time, but at night, because even then it's quite hot. We're spoiled for choice with several masses here each day but I'm mostly going to the quiet 5pm weekday Mass and the beautiful, upbeat 10.30am Mass on Sundays.

I spent the weekend in Chicago with my friends TC & Romana whom I lived with in 2007. I've visited them once since, but not since they've been married. They now have a 6 month old baby too. It was a great weekend. You often hear people say of old friends "we just picked up where we left off" or "it was just like old times". This wasn't. It was better. It was wonderful to see TC married, happy and settled, all the things he wasn't 5 years ago. For me it was a wonderful bit of nostalgia, to see the old building we used to live in, to walk along the lakefront of Lake Michigan where I used to jog in the snow, and to go to Mass at St Thomas' Church which I attended while I was studying. Still, I'm equally happy to be back in Omaha, with the new friends I've made and the new opportunities this coming term holds. And as I have 8am classes tomorrow I'm signing off and going to bed now.

This is the end of term 1. Last night was the graduation Mass and dinner for a dozen of the final year students who have taken between 3 and 6 years to complete the course. It was a touching evening, seeing the bonds which that cohort had developed, and wondering ahead to how that might be my group in two years' time. The testimonies were powerful, and always came back to the same theme of spiritual growth and personal transformation. One man spoke about the event in Mark 2 when a paralysed man's friends lower him through the roof to get to Jesus. He said that of the hundred times he's read or thought of that account, he always saw himself as the healthy helpers, not the man on the mat, until coming to do this course, and discovering all the healing and forgiveness and growth that God wanted to do in him. A powerful night. So this weekend many of the American students will leave, having finished the first term. The overseas students like myself, including from Vietnam, Ho...

Today is American Independence Day, the 240th anniversary of the original 13 US colonies declaring their independence from Britain. This is a piece of our Australian history too, as the US stopped receiving convicts from Britain, and after awhile of leaving prisoners in crowded ships moored in the Thames, Britain decided to send them elsewhere: Australia. So last night we went down to the baseball stadium to watch the celebratory fireworks. Unlike New Years Eve in Sydney where you need to camp out all day, we just walked down, found some grass and sat. I've never been so close to fireworks before (not since "Cracker Night" was discontinued in the 80's). Not only did we get a great view, we could feel each explosion resonating in our chest cavities. It was loud! By contrast we had a very quiet night a couple of nights ago. We had a dinner for the whole group, then everyone retreated back to their rooms to work on essays (this is the final week of first semester an...