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Finding God in the Dark II: Taking the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius to the Movies
The book offers an approach to developing a spiritual life using the medium of modern movies —the currency of popular culture. It provides an easy-to-follow format and various options for using the material by either individuals or groups, at home, in retreat, pastoral, academic or parish settings.
Approximately fifty per cent of the movies are new and different from the first award-winning edition, along with a few classics. Through the lens of the classic spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, contemporary films are viewed to promote discussion and deeper insight into the films and oneself. Watching these movies the Ignatian way becomes an act of contemplative prayer and self-reflection.
Approximately fifty per cent of the movies are new and different from the first award-winning edition, along with a few classics. Through the lens of the classic spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, contemporary films are viewed to promote discussion and deeper insight into the films and oneself. Watching these movies the Ignatian way becomes an act of contemplative prayer and self-reflection.
328 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 30, 2011
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December 11, 2019Traditionalists, conservatives and classicists beware. This is not a book for you. The spiritual exercises of St Ignatius, as present here, are not intended to reinforce or confirm anything about our knowledge of God. Nor are they intended to reinforce or confirm our inherited habits of belief or knowledge of ourselves as seekers of God's presence in our lives. Rather, this book is intended for the person in contemporary Western society suffering from an inadequate and no longer satisfactory understanding of how God is to be understood in the present time. Emphasis is placed on our subjective understanding of God's gifts to us. What changes is not God, but our understanding of God's presence in our lives. In keeping with the spiritual literature of our time this book is a postmodern spiritual manual that requires time and effort on the part the seeker desiring to deepen the spiritual life. The authors move away from the traditional retreat house as a locus deepening one's spiritual life. Two reasons are given for their decision. One, the retreat house no longer attracts individuals seeking spiritual development and, two the operation of the retreat house is economically unfeasible. The location of our spiritual development today is a secondary consideration according to the authors. Where we learn a new language for our understanding of God, does not need not to be reserved to a retreat house but, can happen wherever our lives happen to be lived. All one must do is reserve the time needed and explore the fictions representing our lives which we have created through the movies. The authors adopt an anthropological and philosophical approach that recognizes that the human animal must act through fictions if it is to be human. No other animal acts this way.
Also, the means by which we learn this new language can occur through the new vehicle of the media - something not available to St Ignatius. However, because this is a new vehicle and somewhat untested approach to spiritual understanding there are may be dangers not envisioned at this point. Watching contemporary movies, as an act of contemplative prayer runs the danger of the rhetoric becoming more important than reason in the quest for spiritual enlightenment. Our non-classical world is constructed around four focal points according to the authors. Security, meaning, liberty, and belonging characterize the construction of our personal worlds in contrast to the world of humanity. Our personal worlds, when properly understood, reveal a change in status between God, as creator, and the person as creature. We become co-creators with God in the construction of our personal worlds. In other words, in this view, the whole acceptance of ideology as a philosophical basis is called into question and further, is abandoned if need be. Our imagination constructs and subsequently presents to us our personal worlds. In the authors' words: "In this personal and sacred space of encounter, the energies of our lives are integrated with the divine energies of God. It is not that we are doing all the creating, or that God is doing all the creating. The creation of the world we contemplate is done by God and us working together" (p. 16).
The 'manual'form of this book follows a very rigorous, pre-ordained structure, very much in keeping with the Ignatian-inspired origins of the Jesuit order. The book itself is divided up into four parts; each called a 'week', which can be dealt with in a calendar week, perhaps less, or more. Each 'week' has a spiritually-inspired title and theme, with the requisite 'exercises' in the form of questions which the reader is encouraged to answer before beginning to watch that 'week's' movies.
The choice of box-office fare which the authors have chosen for the reader's spiritual analysis is quite impressive from the point of view of its sampling of the last decade or so of Hollywood's post-modern production of popular art work: It starts with the sci-fi thriller 'Inception' with Leonardo DiCaprio, and runs the gamut from everything from 'Magnolia' with Tom Cruise, to the 'Social Network', 'The Hurt Locker', 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows', 'Brokeback Mountain', with the late, great Heath Ledger, 'Julie and Julia', 'Toy Story 3', 'Slumdog Millionaire','American Beauty', with Kevin Spacey, 'The Green Mile' with Tom Hanks, 'Billy Elliot', Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice', and lastly, the animated film 'Up'.
There are just over fifty films in all to view for the whole four 'week' program of the Spiritual Exercises. Anybody who takes this lightly or who thinks that this is just pop cultural fluff is seriously mistaken. The questions which are posed after each movie is viewed give strong pause for reflection for those who are the least bit spiritually engaged on their life journey, and may very well be of significant use to those less familiar with the more mainstream or conventional forms of Roman Catholic praxis, be they liturgical, or in this case, contemplative.
In light of the above remarks a more appropriate title for the book might have been, Finding Our Way out of Classical Darkness. The authors write in the Conclusion: "Through the Exercises of St Ignatius, you have gone on a journey where you have allowed yourself to be found by God" (317). The fact is, God has found you in your personally constructed, that is, subjective world view as opposed to finding you in a human, that is, objective world view. The seeker in the spiritual life must now transcend his or her personal world by bringing the love of God into the universal world of humanity, for fear the personal world becomes a private world. (Reviewed in collaboration of Peter Stuart)
Also, the means by which we learn this new language can occur through the new vehicle of the media - something not available to St Ignatius. However, because this is a new vehicle and somewhat untested approach to spiritual understanding there are may be dangers not envisioned at this point. Watching contemporary movies, as an act of contemplative prayer runs the danger of the rhetoric becoming more important than reason in the quest for spiritual enlightenment. Our non-classical world is constructed around four focal points according to the authors. Security, meaning, liberty, and belonging characterize the construction of our personal worlds in contrast to the world of humanity. Our personal worlds, when properly understood, reveal a change in status between God, as creator, and the person as creature. We become co-creators with God in the construction of our personal worlds. In other words, in this view, the whole acceptance of ideology as a philosophical basis is called into question and further, is abandoned if need be. Our imagination constructs and subsequently presents to us our personal worlds. In the authors' words: "In this personal and sacred space of encounter, the energies of our lives are integrated with the divine energies of God. It is not that we are doing all the creating, or that God is doing all the creating. The creation of the world we contemplate is done by God and us working together" (p. 16).
The 'manual'form of this book follows a very rigorous, pre-ordained structure, very much in keeping with the Ignatian-inspired origins of the Jesuit order. The book itself is divided up into four parts; each called a 'week', which can be dealt with in a calendar week, perhaps less, or more. Each 'week' has a spiritually-inspired title and theme, with the requisite 'exercises' in the form of questions which the reader is encouraged to answer before beginning to watch that 'week's' movies.
The choice of box-office fare which the authors have chosen for the reader's spiritual analysis is quite impressive from the point of view of its sampling of the last decade or so of Hollywood's post-modern production of popular art work: It starts with the sci-fi thriller 'Inception' with Leonardo DiCaprio, and runs the gamut from everything from 'Magnolia' with Tom Cruise, to the 'Social Network', 'The Hurt Locker', 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows', 'Brokeback Mountain', with the late, great Heath Ledger, 'Julie and Julia', 'Toy Story 3', 'Slumdog Millionaire','American Beauty', with Kevin Spacey, 'The Green Mile' with Tom Hanks, 'Billy Elliot', Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice', and lastly, the animated film 'Up'.
There are just over fifty films in all to view for the whole four 'week' program of the Spiritual Exercises. Anybody who takes this lightly or who thinks that this is just pop cultural fluff is seriously mistaken. The questions which are posed after each movie is viewed give strong pause for reflection for those who are the least bit spiritually engaged on their life journey, and may very well be of significant use to those less familiar with the more mainstream or conventional forms of Roman Catholic praxis, be they liturgical, or in this case, contemplative.
In light of the above remarks a more appropriate title for the book might have been, Finding Our Way out of Classical Darkness. The authors write in the Conclusion: "Through the Exercises of St Ignatius, you have gone on a journey where you have allowed yourself to be found by God" (317). The fact is, God has found you in your personally constructed, that is, subjective world view as opposed to finding you in a human, that is, objective world view. The seeker in the spiritual life must now transcend his or her personal world by bringing the love of God into the universal world of humanity, for fear the personal world becomes a private world. (Reviewed in collaboration of Peter Stuart)
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