Jesuits, Drama, and Foolish Wisdom

Back in April, I had the privilege of serving as a leader on a retreat with Charis Ministries, the Chicago-based Ignatian retreat ministry for young adults. On this retreat, called “Spirit@Work,” I was blessed to work briefly with Charis’ founder, the oh-so-talented Fr. Michael Sparough, SJ. A spiritual director, writer, lecturer, actor and stage director, Fr. Michael has blazed trails in the arts and ministry, using his gifts and passions to help people encounter the power of the Gospel. (There are few priests out there who can incorporate two stage falls and an apple-juggling routine into a talk and THEN offer a profound Reconciliation experience to boot...just saying.) Therefore, I was beyond excited a few weeks back to hear that Fr. Michael would be presenting on the history of Jesuits and drama as part of the Loyola University Museum of Art’s Tea with the Jesuits series. 

Fr. Michael began with a story about the Shakespearean idea of the itinerant fool embodied in former Jesuit Ken Feit. Feit’s storytelling, sound poetry, and “foolish wisdom” creatively eased tensions and conveyed truth during difficult times. In fact, Sparough was able to experience Feit’s tactics firsthand back in the 1970s as Jesuits dealt with the potential closing of a certain (now thriving!) high school that is particularly close to my heart these days.

Sparough said that something had leapt in his soul that day, like John the Baptist in Elizabeth’s womb. “I didn’t know what it was, but I knew I had to know this man and what he was doing.” Foolish wisdom was a different experience of God’s grace than the heady, logical understanding he had known previously, and he yearned to go deeper.

Sparough then brought us back into the life of St. Ignatius himself, a man of his age who valued logic...as well as womanizing, gambling, and dueling, of course. Beyond his intellect, though, and as his life was transformed, Ignatius gained an awareness that in God, all things, all gifts, are good. Ignatius’ view of our giftedness in Christ can be found in John 10:10: “I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly.” He had a mystical knowing that there is unity and harmony in the world.

Without feelings and imagination, art is meaningless. Likewise, Ignatian spirituality calls people to engage both feelings and imagination to come into God’s presence. How can we, for example, encounter Jesus in Scripture? Ignatius challenges us to put ourselves into the stories and write our own scripts. T.S. Eliot writes, “We had the experience, but lost the meaning.” How can we become more aware of the meaning in our daily experiences? How can we know where the Spirit is working throughout our days? We can do an Examen, a way of looking back over the past 24 hours and doing essentially what Sparough asserts is the process of art: sifting and sorting, remembering and savoring, feeding it back and saying, This is what it means to me.

For Sparough, theatre is a vision of the Body of Christ. Unlike many other modes of art, theatre is not something that can be done alone. It is about collaboration and seeking unity. Theatre can be a reflection of the Trinity, divine unity and separation of personality. Yes, God is in all things, but as you come to find God, Sparough cautioned, don’t do it alone!

Sparough also stressed the Jesuit ideal of excellent education. Our education is not just about us, he explained; it’s about the magis. He traced the history of the earliest Jesuit dramas in 1551 and their spreading throughout Rome in 1565. By 1599, Jesuit pedagogy made participation in drama compulsory for students. Plays were performed in Latin, with music and dance and an emphasis on visual and technical sophistication. Through 1773, missionaries used drama to evangelize and teach. Drama and music both provided an accessible framework to help people come to know God.

Sparough shared about his transformative experiences in Rome at the Jesuit Institute of the Arts, which was founded by Jesuit author, historian, musicologist and linguist CJ McNaspy, SJ. McNaspy had a vision to call Jesuits from around the world who are involved in the arts to collaborate during summers. He stressed the importance of making the arts more accessible to “common folk” and prized the development of the human instrument over expensive theatre. During this time, Sparough also was impacted by the musicals Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell, through which he encountered Jesus as the Holy Fool.

Through the Institute, it was determined that the Jesuits have five primary goals in their work in the arts (paraphrased):
1) To illustrate AMDG (ad majorem Dei gloriam -- for the greater glory of God)
2) To teach/evangelize humanity
3) To lead young people to Christian lives
4) To lead artists to a Christian lives
5) To focus on Christ as the inspiration and goal of all art

At a meeting with the Jesuits in Rome, Pedro Arrupe, SJ proclaimed, “You [Jesuit artists] are the fortunate ones. You speak and all listen, all understand. More than the preacherʼs word, it is the musicianʼs touch that is bringing the youth to God again. More than the politician, it is the folk singer who draws the races hand in hand. Heart speaks to heart in mysterious ways, and it is the artist who holds the key to the mystery. He can touch the wellsprings of the human heart, and release energies of the soul that the rest of the world does not suspect.”

As Sparough shared about the beauty of his years working with high school drama students, I am reminded of ways in which I can and hope to incorporate my love of drama into my ministries with young people. As I think about my own experiences in the arts and in ministry, I know the stir to which he referred -- the leaping in the soul that says “I don’t know exactly what this is yet, but I know there’s something in it for me.” So in this phase of excitement, confusion, and possibility, I will engage the gifts of prayer and discernment that Ignatius left for the fool in me.

Fellow YPTW alum and TONY AWARD NOMINEE JOSH YOUNG

Stay tuned for more on Fr. Michael’s screenplay of the book The The Gift of Peace, which chronicles the life of beloved former Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago, Joseph Bernadin.

© 2012 Katie Davis

"On Beauty and Being Just," Part One: "On Beauty and Being Wrong"

This week, I began reading On Beauty and Being Just by Elaine Scarry, Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value in the English department at Harvard. In her 1998 lecture, Scarry defends beauty against common arguments that it is subservient to people who are privileged and that it distracts people from more important issues, especially in the political world. Scarry seeks a revival of beauty in every arena, from the classroom to the home, by arguing that beauty in fact moves people toward a greater sense of justice rather than blinding them from it. She draws on her lived experience as well as the work of renowned thinkers and writers, such as Homer, Plato, Marcel Proust, Simone Weil, and Iris Murdoch, to substantiate her claim. As I made my way through Part One: "On Beauty and Being Wrong," I was reminded of several of my own educational, artistic, and personal experiences as well.

Scarry begins with the assertion that beauty prompts a copy of itself; that is, once beauty is experienced by the senses, people long to replicate it, whether through writing, music, or visual art , to comment on it, and to find new ways to make the original beauty more evident, more intensely experienced. She goes as far as to say that beauty is the cause of begetting children; the whole body longs to reproduce a beautiful human being. She writes, ”This phenomenon of unceasing begetting sponsors in people like Plato, Aquinas, and Dante the idea of eternity, the perpetual duplicating of a moment that never stops. But it also sponsors the idea of terrestrial plenitude and distribution, the will to make ‘more and more’ so that there will eventually be ‘enough’” (5).

Likewise, the desire for education, in Scarry's view, is a result of beauty. People are willing to move from place to place in order to be in the path of beauty. We submit our minds to teachers whose insights might "increase the chance that one will be looking in the right direction when a comet suddenly cuts through a certain patch of sky” (6). Looking at my own journey so far, I would definitely affirm connection between beauty and education. Most of my major life decisions have been guided primarily by my (or my parents') commitment to a particular academic institution or educational goal. For instance, my parents sacrificed a great deal of money and time (40 minutes each way every day) to send me to Merion because of our shared belief in its mission. I followed my desire for "more" to Catholic U in D.C., to work at Cristo Rey in Houston, and here to Loyola Chicago, all for continued education, and I have been incredibly blessed by the remarkable teachers who have pointed me toward those "comet sightings," both internal and external. It has been my yearning for connection to the Divine through learning that has determined my path.

Scarry analyzes parts of Homer's The Odyssey and gleans three primary realities of beauty from Odysseus' encounter with Nausicaa when he washes up on shore:
1) Beauty is sacred.
2) Beauty is unprecedented.
3) Beauty is lifesaving (17-18).

She also clarifies the ways in which beauty is bound up with truth:
1) It is associated with the immortal.
2) Its “clear discernability” provokes our longing for truth without satiating it, since beauty also reveals to us our ability to make mistakes (22).

”The beautiful, almost without any effort of our own, acquaints us with the mental event of conviction, and so pleasurable a mental state is this that ever afterward one is willing to labor, struggle, wrestle with the world to locate enduring sources of conviction—to locate what is true” (22).

A key question for Scarry is whether or not the metaphysical referent -- the belief in beauty's connection to the immortal -- is necessary to confirm beauty's abundance and relationship to truth (23). If the realm of the sacred is not believed in or aspired to, then a problem arises for beauty: how can something beautiful be so without some sort of metaphysical explanation? What is the reason for the weight and attention we give it otherwise? "If [beauty] calls out for attention that has no destination beyond itself," Scarry suggests, "[it] seems self-centered, too fragile to support the gravity of our immense regard” The possibility that beauty and the immortal (or the Divine, as I most comfortably refer to it) are not necessarily connected can leave people feeling bereft and void of meaning (32-33).

Looking back, I struggled through this confusion while determining my post-undergraduate plans. After fifteen years of encountering God in the music and theatre I was performing and studying, I began questioning the life trajectory for which I had always planned (you know, Broadway and all). Bereft indeed! If beauty is self-centered, then what the heck have I been doing with my life?! The most difficult aspect of my JV year was feeling disconnected from my artistic outlets. I felt a deep sense of loss and desire to reconnect, and I am still negotiating the way that desire can play out in my life today. I am convinced that music and theatre can be modes of spirituality for some people. In the beauty of a Bernstein Score or an Arthur Miller script, God is there. And I know I am not alone in that belief.

Referring to her spiritual experience with Matisse's art (, Scarry posits that "beautiful things...always carry greetings from other worlds within them...What happens when there is no immortal realm behind the beautiful person or thing is just what happens when there is an immortal realm behind the beautiful person or thing: the perceiver is led to a more capacious regard for the world.” (33). The question seems to be, then, not whether or not the Divine is present in beautiful things or people, but whether or not the viewer is able or willing to name it as such. I am immediately drawn to relating this to the "God in all things" notion within Ignatian spirituality, among other spiritualities, I'm sure. (To be honest, it also might just be a more multi-layered way of expressing that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder"...)

THE PALM TREE by HENRI MATISSE

In addition to the impulse toward begetting, Scarry includes the tendency toward error as a key attribute of being in the presence of beauty. What happens when something that used to be beautiful to you ceases to be so? And conversely, what happens when something you failed to appreciate emerges as remarkably beautiful in your sight? She writes, “This genre of error...has the peculiarity that when the beautiful person or thing ceases to appear beautiful, it often incites the perceiver to repudiate, scorn, or even denounce the object as an invalid candidate or carrier of beauty. It is as though the person or thing had not merely been beautiful but had actually made a claim that it was beautiful, and further, a claim that it would be beautiful forever” (36).

Lastly, Scarry sides with Kant, who observed that pleasure we take in beauty is uniquely inexhaustible; no beautiful thing, no matter how enduring, could outlast our yearning for beauty itself (36-37). Like many people, I have always struggled with the grief of transitions; I tend to invest my whole heart into experiences, relationships, artistic and ministerial endeavors, so moving on from them can take a real toll on my spirit for awhile, regardless of my excitement about and confidence in new adventures. Leaving my community and students in Houston as well as my most recent departure from my youth group kids in Cicero offer prime examples of this ache in recent years. During these times of change, my mom always reminds me that experiences and relationships last as long as they are meant to, as we grow into the people we are called to be. "Yeah, I know, Mom, buuuut..."

FUERZA YOUTH GROUP on my final night with them, 08.06.12

I could not help but think of Col when I read Scarry's assertion that “...the work that beautiful persons and things accomplish is collectively accomplished, and different persons and things contribute to this work for different lengths of time, one enduring for three millennia and one enduring for only three seconds” (37).

And so it is with our own crazy, beautiful life stories. We cannot compose them on our own; they are accomplished collectively. Different persons and things contribute to them for different lengths of time, as mysterious and sometimes painful as that reality can be sometimes. And in the midst of the beautiful and not-so-beautiful (or not-perceived-as-beautiful?), the clearly Divine and the covertly Divine, we come to know the God in ourselves, in others, and in the "something more" that is simultaneously present, yet always out of reach.

Work Cited

Scarry, Elaine. On Beauty and Being Just. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1999. PDF.
          http://tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures/documents/scarry00.pdf

© 2012 Katie Davis

Bit by Bit, Putting it Together

When I first moved to Houston to begin Jesuit Volunteer Corps three years ago (gulp!), I began sending epic monthly(ish...) updates to friends and family, chronicling in far-too-great detail my experiences in Texas. As I navigated my journey living in intentional community with five strangers-turned-family and working at Cristo Rey Jesuit College Preparatory School of Houston, I was eager to process and share stories. In retrospect, I recognize that I was feeling compelled to communicate the ways in which I felt God working in my life with the amazing people who had revealed that love to me at home, in high school at Merion, and in college at CUA. "Blogging" via e-mail helped keep me connected to my loved ones in a unique way, and I always was deeply grateful for the responses I would receive from folks who wanted to offer their support and their own stories; in the midst of an incredibly beautiful, transformative year, I stilled missed people a great deal.

While I continued a similar pattern throughout another major transition into my first year in JVC Magis in Chicago (with KD's Windy City Blaga; blog + saga = blaga, of course), the balancing act of graduate school, 30 hours a week of Youth Ministry, and community life eventually took a toll on my commitment to sharing my reflections regularly. While I often thought about getting back into the swing of writing and sharing, in my mind, I made the task seem far too daunting to catch up on!

These past few months, however, have been full of transition, excitement, challenge, and JOY, and I am finding myself drawn to processing in this fashion once again, this time with a few particular goals in mind. Regarding transition, I recently finished my two-year commitment in Youth Ministry in Cicero (about which you surely will hear more in later posts!). I still am grieving the loss of the wonderful community of young people with whom I was so blessed to work; they have been such a gift in my life these past two years. Nevertheless, I am thrilled to be spending my final year in Magis in the ministry department of an incredible high school, surrounded by bright, passionate, and supportive colleagues. The "honeymoon phase" continues for now, but so be it! Additionally, my awesome community mate with whom I have lived for two years has graduated and moved on, and we have welcomed a lovely lady to join our new, all-female community for this year. Change is upon us, and life is good!

The component of my life that most directly brought me to blogging is my final year of the Master of Divinity program at Loyola University Chicago's Institute of Pastoral Studies. Last week, I passed my candidacy exam, a process that allowed me to look back over my first two years of grad school and ministry, identify areas of growth, challenge, and significant insight, and more clearly articulate my ministry focus for the remainder of the program and beyond. As you can probably tell from the blog's title (and if you know me, from my strange little journey so far), I am interested in exploring connections among the arts, spirituality, and social justice. This semester, I will be doing a guided study around those themes, a survey course that I hope to use as a springboard for my final M.Div. project as well as future ministerial and academic endeavors. I hope that this blog will be a primary venue for me to brainstorm, flesh out, and integrate my course readings, lived experience, and past and present ministerial encounters. For those of you who might be interested, here is an excerpt from the course description that I co-created with my professor:

"This course is designed to explore the intersection of the arts (theatre and music specifically), spirituality, and social justice, especially as that mix is relevant for passing on the faith. Narrative, ritual, transformation, vulnerability, sacrament, liberation, history, aesthetics, psychology, and education all emerge as critical components of this mix, and as lenses through which this the combination can be harvested in service to the new evangelization. The task of this guided study is to name more specifically how each of these discourse arenas is relevant to further exploration at the intersection of the theatre/music, spirituality and social justice in order to create a heuristic for further study. In doing so, I also intend to discover the cross-fertilization that has already occurred with regard to these various fields."

So there's that.

In any case, I am excited to do some reflecting/journaling here, to get some feedback from anyone who'd be interested in sharing, and to keep working toward some sort of understanding of this connection that I know in my gut and heart and mind to be very real and very powerful. If you don't believe me, check out this tried and true gem.

Just kidding. Or am I? Stay tuned to find out!

Additionally this semester, I will be taking two other courses in which our professors have encouraged creative modes of reflecting and sharing with fellow students and colleagues -- Foundations of Social Justice and Hearts on Fire, a course on Ignatian Spirituality -- as well as a class called Social Context. So I am hoping that this blog will be a place where I can starting putting it together.

Lastly, since it's me, I probably will be sharing some fun and/or ridiculous personal anecdotes and updates as life moves forward. As of now, my amazing sister Allison has been a JV in Sacramento for three weeks, and I could not be prouder of the great work she is doing with Sacramento Loaves and Fishes' Friendship Park. I am also ridiculously excited about the upcoming nuptials of my best friend Christina and her fabulous fiance Thomas. Best of all, I will get to spend Thanksgiving with my family and celebrate pre-wedding festivities with the bridesmaids that weekend. P.S. When did I get old?!

I hope this blog will provide an opportunity to connect or reconnect with some of you who I have been missing as life speeds by! Please feel free to leave a comment or shoot me an e-mail privately. Thanks for reading! Have a wonderful week.

Peace,

KD

© 2012 Katie Davis