Consider: Reflecting on and Tracking the Spiritual Journey
In last month’s Soulcare MKE Letter of Love, I invited you to CONSIDER: Attending to the Spiritual Journey. I mentioned three beginning steps of this process -
Becoming aware of the spiritual journey
Paying attention to the spiritual journey and
Noticing the spiritual journey by deepening your focus on relevant experiences.
This month, I’d like you to CONSIDER: Reflecting on and Tracking the Spiritual Journey.
St. Ignatius of Loyola,
Founder of the Jesuits.
Source: prayer card from beajesuit.org
St. Ignatius of Loyola, in his profound spiritual wisdom and through keen observation of the human experience of spirituality, recommends in his Spiritual Exercises that people take time to reflect on their prayer period after they are done. He wrote, “After finishing [the prayer period] I will either sit down or walk around for a quarter of an hour while I see how things have gone for me during the contemplation or meditation” (SE 77)*. He then explains that if the prayer period didn’t go well, the person should look for the cause so that they can do better in the future. Should the prayer period have gone well, they should thank God for it and proceed in similar fashion at another time.
This, then, is a foundational practice of spiritual growth. If attending to the spiritual journey helps a person become aware of their spiritual experience, reflecting on and tracking one’s experience will lead to spiritual growth.
I also love that St. Ignatius encourages people to sit or to walk around as they review their prayer period. There is something about engaging in reflection while moving around that, I think, helps to embed the learning in one’s very being. The learning becomes embodied. St. Ignatius was way ahead of his time in his understanding of multiple learning styles. Not only did he encourage people to move around, he encouraged people to pay attention to their emotions, to use their imagination in prayer, and to utilize all their senses as they experience Scripture passages! Truly, the man was brilliant!
But I digress. If you want to learn more about St. Ignatius of Loyola and his Spiritual Exercises, be sure to stay tuned for next month’s Letter of Love!
On to tracking!
I am a BIG FAN of finding a system to track one’s spiritual journey. In a previous Letter of Love I mentioned one benefit of Treasure Maps as a kind of visual tracking of one’s spiritual journey. Others might prefer traditional journaling. Yet others may prefer a bullet journal or a colorful habit-tracking system in the round. There are many possibilities, the key is finding a system that works for you.
Part of what I love about a tracking system for the spiritual journey is that it provides a tangible, visible way to review your growth. The reality of life is that our experience of spirituality will naturally ebb and flow over the course of our lives. Like the rings of a tree, when looking backwards over our lives, we will be able to see some seasons where the “ring is wide” and we experienced a lot of spiritual growth. Perhaps many elements of our lives were in alignment that season. Perhaps we were falling in love, perhaps we were hitting our stride professionally, perhaps we had a consistent pattern of prayer and other forms of self-care. Alternately, of course, when we look back over our spiritual lives, we will see other seasons of “thin rings” when there is barely any evidence of growth whatsoever. Perhaps in those seasons we were overscheduled and overwhelmed, perhaps we were living through a pandemic or other global (or personal) catastrophe and we had barely enough sustenance to stay spiritually alive. In some seasons we don’t feel like we’re thriving, just surviving.
It’s particularly in these seasons of struggle when I have found my own spiritual tracking system to be most helpful. I’m a journaler. I’ve been journaling, off and on, since I was about ten years old. I don’t often review my journals anymore, but when I have seasons of spiritual dryness, I sometimes find it helpful to look back at old journals to see how I weathered similar seasons before. Or, conversely, sometimes I’ll pull out old journals from when I was doing well to remind myself of what worked in my relationship with God. Either way, having a well-established spiritual tracking system in place enables me to remember that all seasons come and go. Growth spurts will come to an end and spiritual stagnation will eventually make way for new growth. Knowing this helps me to remain committed to writing in all seasons. And, quite frankly, having a journal is a great way of recording all kinds of spiritual wisdom to access at later dates: inspirational quotes, guiding Scripture passages, wisdom from elders, prayer requests, as well as various life happenings, both personally and in the world.
Whatever the means, or whatever the method, I hope that you’ll CONSIDER: Reflecting on and Tracking the Spiritual Journey.
Future you will be glad you did.
Gratefully,
Laura
P.S. Mark your calendars for Sunday, September 11th! In collaboration with a few other magnificent Milwaukee women, we’ll be offering an Experience of Confluence in which we can explore the many streams of our lives and the ways they move us… flowing from our past, energizing the present, and propelling us toward our future. Stay tuned for more details that will be revealed in the coming months!
P.P.S. If you’ve enjoyed this Letter of Love and think a friend, family member, or colleague would enjoy it too, please forward it to them and encourage them to subscribe! Thank you!
*Translation by Michael Ivens, SJ, as found in, Understanding the Spiritual Exercises, (Gracewing, 1998), 68.
