THE MUSICIAN’S SPIRIT
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Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam (for the greater glory of God)—praising God and dedicating oneself to
• participate in God’s healing work in the world flexibility and adaptability—respecting people’s lived
• experiences union of minds and hearts—listening for the God Who is present among us and admitting no division.
Ignatian Spirituality and Discernment
Ignatian spirituality has long been associated with discernment—the art of discovering how best to respond to God in daily life. For centuries, people have used St. Ignatius of Loyola’s rules for discernment to help make wise choices and sound decisions. Ignatian discernment rests on the conviction that God speaks directly to each of us. We can have confidence in our own experience of God as we develop eyes to see and ears to hear.
According to Ignatian spirituality, God wants to play a role in our decisions and, through discernment—a prayerful process of seeking the will of God in our lives—we can make decisions that are aligned with God’s will for us.
Ignatian Spirituality and Imaginative Prayer
Ignatius encouraged an approach to prayer that included a reliance on the imagination and the senses. Tis imaginative prayer involves selecting a story from Scripture and choosing a character to “be”—using one’s imagination to walk right into the scene where Jesus heals someone, delivers a teaching, or feeds thousands, using all our senses to ask ourselves what we see, hear, smell, taste, and feel. We can choose to be a main character in the story, or to simply be a bystander or even a character that we invent for this prayer.
In imaginative prayer, it is important to not allow oneself to get distracted by trying to be historically accurate—this is not about interpreting Scripture in a scholarly way. Te point is to encounter Jesus. In imaginative prayer, we ask the Holy Spirit to guide this very spiritual function, the human imagination, to where we need to go.
Te Ignatian Examen
I’m fond of saying that God is most often recognized in the rearview mirror. In other words, we seem to be more capable of recognizing God in past events than in the present. St. Ignatius of Loyola thought along those same lines, which is why he promoted a simple prayer called the Daily Examen.
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