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It's almost St. Ignatius's feast day. Here's something that I first read when I was making that online retreat "in everyday life". It's written by John Veltri SJ but is meant to be thought of as a letter from Ignatius of Loyola. Here's what Fr. Veltri wrote about the letter ...

This letter is written in the name of Ignatius of Loyola for the person who desires to make the Spiritual Exercises journey according to notation [19] .... I composed this letter in the early eighties as a result of reading "Ignatius of Loyola Speaks to a Modern Jesuit" in Ignatius of Loyola (London: Collins, 1979) by Karl Rahner, S.J., and translated by Rosaleen Ockenden, pp.11-14. The first three pages of my composition (pp.270-273 in this manual) were adapted from Ockenden's translation of Rahner's work and in it I have used some of her very effective rhythms and phrases which capture well Ignatius' spirit and his deep conviction in God's desire to communicate personally with us. My present letter was initially formatted by Ruth McLean. -- John Veltri

The original letter at Fr. Veltri's site has a lot of hot links and is quite long, so it would be worth a visit to read the whole thing. It expresses so well what I like best about Ignatius -- his belief that God wants to and will interact directly with us. Here's just the beginning of the letter ....

****

To You . . . From Ignatius

As you know, my great desire was always
to tell people about God and God's grace,
and about Jesus ... both crucified and risen,
so that my brothers and sisters
would experience
the freedom of God.

I wanted to bring the same message
as the church had always brought
... and yet,
I felt I could put this in a new way.

Why was this so?

I had a direct encounter with God,
particularly during those months at Manresa,
where, as I told you in my autobiography,
God personally taught me like a school boy.
Yes, I, Ignatius of Loyola, Inigo as they called me,
I knew God ... Father, Son and Spirit ...
nameless and unfathomable,
mysterious and yet near ...
bestowing themselves upon me in a manner
beyond all concrete imaginings.

I knew God clearly in such nearness and grace
as was impossible to confound or mistake.

God, God's very self ...
I knew God,
not simply human words describing God.

I knew the Divine Majesty.

I knew God,
as you would say in your modern world --
experientially,
even if knowing God face to face, as I do now,
is again different ... and yet ...
somehow the same.

This is grace ... gift ...
I believe that God ... Father, Son and Spirit ...
desires to give this gift of God's self
to all who desire to be open to it.

This grace that I received during those days
at Manresa,
was not something that I considered
a special privilege
for myself or a chosen few.
Therefore, I set down the structure of this experience
in a little manual which I called
The Spiritual Exercises.
I gave these exercises to anyone
for whom such an offer of spiritual help
might seem profitable.
I did this as a lay person,
long before I went to school
to learn theology for ordination.

I gave these Exercises on the conviction
that God desires to communicate directly
and personally
to the generous person,
eager to discover God's will
and ready to act responsibly in the world
with deliberate choice.

Over the years, it has been observed
that, if persons are willing to dispose themselves generously
according to the directives of these Exercises,
in time ... God personally leads them.

God can and does communicate personally to human creatures
who are open-hearted.

A person knows God truly when this happens,
and that person
will experience the sovereign power
of God's freedom in one's own life.
This very simple and yet
stupendous conviction of mine
is a key to my spirituality ..........

*****

Here's some stuff I've come across recently:

* found what looks to be an interesting book, which I've sent for from the library ..... Angels and Angelology in the Middle Ages by David Keck. It can be found at Google books too.

* this video of 50 academics talking about God, courtesy of Feminist Philosophers. There's a list of who's on it, but I'll just mention it includes Oliver Sacks, Peter Singer, Bertrand Russell, Stephen Hawking, David Attenborough, John Searle, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Carl Sagan, and Brian Cox (a bit depressing, as most think belief is dopey) .....


* an interesting paper (you can find it here) -- "Resurrection, Reassembly, and Reconstitution: Aquinas on the Soul," in Die menschliche Seele: Brauchen wir den Dualismus? Bruno Niederberger and Edmund Runggaldier (eds.), (Ontos Verlag, 2006). Here's just the beginning of it ....

"In his entry on the immortality of the soul in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Richard Swinburne calls our attention to a problem often raised in connection with the Christian doctrine of resurrection. He says: [...] if I come to live again, the question arises as to what makes some subsequent human me, for [at death] my body will be largely if not entirely destroyed. If the answer is given that (most of) the atoms of my original body will be reassembled into bodily form, there are two problems. First, many of the atoms may no longer exist; they may have been transmuted into energy. And second, what proportion of the atoms do we need? Sixty per cent, seventy per cent, or what? If it is mere atoms which make some body mine and so some living human me, then no body will be fully mine unless it has all my atoms. Yet some of my atoms, even if not destroyed, will have come to form other human bodies."

* here's a paper I saw by John Courtney Murray SJ -- The Issue of Church and State at Vatican Council II

* and fianlly, the flying mouse :). My sister sent me this photo and story from National Geographic about this cute little Hardwicke's woolly bat and i's symbiotic buddy, the carnivorous pitcher plant ...

The GOP made up this crisis all by themselves in order to push a very perverse agenda.

It is no secret, this debt limit crisis is all smoke and mirrors; we have in the past done it without any agonizing or without much controversy. Dozens and dozens of times it has been done and nobody ever put up a fight. It was routine and it was necessary.

America has to pay the bills of the debts it has already contracted…no ifs, no buts…to do otherwise would be economic suicide. Now, the Republicans know this and that is the reason they came up with the brilliant idea to drive the country to the brink of economic disaster (for the second time, once during Bush) and then blackmail the President and hold the American People hostage.

Don’t even consider this to be a valid argument, there is no budget crisis, what there is for sure is a job crisis and a revenue problem.

This is what some respected experts have to say on this issue:

ROBERT B. REICH

Don’t Fall for the GOP Lie: There is No Budget Crisis. There’s a Job and Growth Crisis. robertreich.org — “The federal budget deficit has no economic relationship to the debt limit. Republicans have linked the two, and the Administration has played along, but they are entirely separate. In economic terms, we will not “run out of money” next week. We’re still the richest nation in the world, and the Federal Reserve has unlimited capacity to print money. Nor is there any economic imperative to reach an agreement on how to fix the budget deficit by Tuesday. It’s not even clear the federal budget needs that much fixing anyway. Yes, the ratio of the national debt to the total economy is high relative to what it’s been, but not as high as it was after World War II. If and when the economy begins to grow faster — if more Americans get jobs, and we move toward a full recovery — the debt/GDP ratio will fall, as it did in the 1950s, and as it does in every solid recovery. Revenues will pour into the Treasury, and much of the current “budget crisis” will be evaporate. Get it? We’re really in a “jobs and growth” crisis – not a budget crisis.”

PAUL KRUGMAN

The Centrist Cop-Out nytimes.com — “The facts of the crisis over the debt ceiling aren’t complicated. Republicans have, in effect, taken America hostage, threatening to undermine the economy and disrupt the essential business of government unless they get policy concessions they would never have been able to enact through legislation. And Democrats have gone a long way toward meeting those Republican demands. As I said, it’s not complicated. Yet news reports portray the parties as equally intransigent; pundits fantasize about some kind of “centrist” uprising, as if the problem was too much partisanship on both sides. Making nebulous calls for centrism, like writing news reports that always place equal blame on both parties, is a big cop-out — a cop-out that only encourages more bad behavior. The problem with American politics right now is Republican extremism, and if you’re not willing to say that, you’re helping make that problem worse”.

The issue is even more severe than most people realize; either way,, the American people and the American nation will come out as losers. If in one hand we give in to the Republican-Teahadists are demanding we will see a recession even worse than the one they created and we are still trying to overcome…but if we don’t and we default on our debt, then the crisis is assured and perhaps just as severe if not worse…one that America will not be able to recover even if the best prosperous years are to follow.