Fr Jim's (old) Blog

One of the things I love about being here in Omaha is the opportunity to go to Mass and sit & kneel in the pews, rather than be up front presiding, much as I enjoy that too. I think we all, when visiting a new parish, can tend to praise or criticise the way Mass is done there, be it the music, the homily, the proclaimers of the Word, the priest or other people in the congregation. Indeed, sometimes these are the reasons people change parishes or make decisions about which Mass they'll go to. It's particularly easy as a priest to be critical of other priests' ways of preaching and presiding at Mass, perhaps as a chef might critique other people's cooking. On weekdays I usually go to the 5pm (there's 7am and midday as well) and on Sundays I go to 10.30am. You never know which priest you're going to have, because there is a whole community of Jesuit priests here who take turns, each with their own unique style.  So it's easy here to be distracted by the...

As you can imagine, I have a few books to read. These are my books for my four subjects this term: Discernment and Spiritual Direction last term, and Contemplation and Social Justice this term. Fortunately the three large books on Christian Spirituality are recommended, not required so I will only use some chapters. The rest, yep, cover to cover. I'm going to have some heavy bags coming back....

Each weekend here is needed for writing the papers which are due the following week. But the weekend between the first and second terms was completely free, so my room mate ( a US term meaning flat mate) and I headed out country for the weekend to go camping. I wasn't quite sure what we were going to. Remember that Nebraska is flat and Iowa is even flatter, so magnificent mountains weren't on the cards. One of my classmates cautioned us to not get trampled by a cow.  But what we did find was Hitchcock Nature Centre in Iowa, which was a small national park with some low hills and nice wooded areas. It's also part of a north-south bird migration corridor, so there was plenty of bird life, and even observation towers where serious twitchers go to survey the numbers of particular birds at key migration seasons. This was unlike my usual multi-day distance treks. We found a little campsite to pitch the tents, and unlike most Australia national parks in summer could make a fir...

It's the Fourth of July, US independence day. It's big deal here in the US. American's don't really need an excuse to wave the flag, but it is also a public holiday, and it is just wonderful to have a day off from classes, after all weekend was spent writing the end of term papers. There's still reading to be done for class tomorrow, but I was able to go and do some of it in a hammock. I also appreciated the irony of the organist who played God Save the Queen before Mass. I don't think many people noticed... I'm looking forward to the fireworks tonight, which unlike Sydney's NYE show I just wandered down to last year and I stood closer to any fireworks I've ever seen before, feeling the percussion of each firework go off. I've been inviting my classmates to come watch the display with tonight, but a couple of my classmates from Africa told me they don't like fireworks. Why not? Because the sound reminds them of gunfire from back home, ...

This is another exercise I did for the Discernment of Spirits class, this time applying Ignatius' Rules for Discernment to a time when I experienced the presence of God, which Ignatius calls consolation. While it mightn't all make sense if you haven't studied all the rules, it might give a sense of how we can firstly use the rules to interpret our experience, and then to make good decisions.  "I woke up at 6am on my first day at Creighton this year after a broken night’s sleep from jetlag. I decided not to stay in bed and to try for more sleep, but to get up and to start the day in prayer. I sat down facing the window, and even before I my prayer began I experienced a rush of joy and excitement, and my imagination opened up with the realisation that this was the place where I would sit for prayer every day for the next eight weeks. I entered into prayer joyfully and renewed my commitment to start each day with an hour of prayer, knowing that my time at Crei...

One of the unique contributions of St Ignatius of Loyola to the spiritual heritage of the Church is his Rules for the Discernment of Spirits. Ignatius takes seriously that both God (whom he calls The Good Spirit) and forces opposed to God (the flesh, the world and the devil whom he collectively calls The Bad Spirit) influence us. We remain free to choose, and Ignatius gives rules for understanding and choosing how to act. One of our assignments this week has been to identify a challenging time in our lives when we were influenced by both the good and bad spirit. I wrote about my awful jetlagged retreat here in Nebraska last year, which I'm sure I told many of you about already last year. The references in brackets are to the various Rules. "Last year I arrived at Griswold Retreat Centre keen to begin my 8 day retreat prior to the first term of CSP. I had been in the US for several days already to begin adjusting to the timezone. However on the first night I f...