Among the many aspects of these years, three basic themes and developments stand out from the work of promoting Ignatian spirituality with individuals and groups. For me, these three themes capture some of John English's ideas and developments: 
 

   Like many other colleagues in the work of personal spiritual direction, we soon discovered the significance of the less-than-conscious because people making the Spiritual Exercises in the personally directed retreat format frequently worked through very significant material from the less-than-conscious areas of their psyches. This often became evident when we helped directees to notice their own interior reactions taking place during the prayer exercises. The variety of prayer exercises, with the stress on allowing the scriptures to take hold of their imaginations and memories, helped to bring some of these less-than-conscious reactions and images to the surface. Thus, we realized, in practice, that personal perceptions, attitudes and behaviours are influenced by less-than-conscious reactions and images of God, self and the world. Through these prayer methods, in conjunction with personal direction, one's deepest yearnings for God surface and one's deepest desires are revealed. While these deeper realities are being revealed, inordinate attachments and the deceptions of one's life become more evident and one's relationship with the world is ordered. Consequently, a conversion of one’s operative images takes place as one continues to be transformed in Christ. Through such processes directees would often reach the kind of spiritual freedom that is the context for Christian discernment and decision-making. 

            By 1985, many spiritual directors around the world admitted the significance of the less-than-conscious in their work, but thirty years ago, my colleagues with whom I directed the Spiritual Exercises were not as convinced about this as they are now. I had no trouble believing this from the very beginning. I had gone through some therapy in the late 1950's and had become well aware of how consciously we can be operating on one level while, at the same time, how unconsciously we can be operating on another. Through my own therapeutic experience, I came to appreciate how profound and determining the effects of the less-than-conscious areas of one’s psyche are on one’s memory and imagination and, thus, on one’s choices. And so it was easy for me to appreciate how and why the Spiritual-Exercises methods used imagination and memory to help open one’s psyche to the influence of grace. That is why every single exercise that Ignatius offers as a prayer exercise contains the use of imagination and memory. Imagination and memory are intimately connected with the less-than-conscious. Use of imagination in prayer opens up the door to our depths and allows the "movement of spirits" to take place. It is through these movements that discernment is made possible. 

            These less-than-conscious reactions, for the most part, have their origin in our personal histories. Such influences come from family, school, church, and from larger cultural environments to which we belong. For this reason, John English created some remembering exercises to help people gain a deep appreciation and knowledge of how God relates uniquely to them. He communicated this particularly in his practice with individuals and groups. Some of these, he recorded in his manuals and books. By the mid 1980's, many practitioners were using these graced history methods as a preparation for the Spiritual Exercises and more importantly for discerning personal decisions. We finally appreciated the insight that John articulated in Choosing Life: To fully possess one's own identity, one must appropriate in faith the consolation of one's own history.
           For John English this principle was of a different order than simply being in touch with one's own roots or one's own personal history. Even the phrase, "being in touch with one's own charism," does not capture its meaning. The phrase, "the consolation of one's own history," denotes a felt, faith perception by which one is graced after contemplating one's own history. As John himself wrote:

The approach to one's personal history is that God is present to all of our life experiences. It is from the perspective of being the beloved of God that we can approach all of our life as graced history. This means that the dark, sinful events and suffering aspects of our lives can be understood as part of our graced history as well as the light, joyful and hopeful events. In tune with Romans 10, we can pray with our life story in the same ways that we pray with scripture. I have come to appreciate how important this topic is for a person's claiming one's true identity. ⁽¹⁵⁾

            From the very beginning of the directed retreat movement in Canada, John English always insisted that the Exercises were written from a decision-making mode which he later came to name the "call mode." Like all practitioners of the Spiritual Exercises, he witnessed that people received the grace of the Exercises in many different ways according to many different individual and unique needs. Nevertheless, he continued to remind collaborators that it is with the impact of a significant decision that one develops an experiential knowledge of the movement of spirits. Why was this so important? Because he wanted to train potential spiritual directors who needed to have such an experiential knowledge for their work with others. It was only in the early 1980's, when I began to train people for the Loyola House Staff Associate Internship Program, that I finally got two basic insights with respect to conscious decision-making:

• Without conscious decision-making, a directee does not experience the ebb and flow, the "agitaciones" of diverse spirits, which in turn require the explicit use of the Guidelines for Discerning Spirits ⁽¹⁶⁾ .
• Without conscious decision-making, the mature Christian can not exercise the freedom and responsibility that one's human dignity presumes.

            I have come to appreciate how many people resist making discerned choices. Many people like to leave all their options open; others are so frightened of possible options that they make decisions too quickly and put closure on the process before discernment is possible. In our culture, many people shirk this imperative in preference to allowing circumstances, others, or their unconscious to make decisions for them. Ignatian Spirituality is a spirituality of choice, and the willingness to make spiritually-free, conscious choices is a way of exercising one's intimacy with Jesus. Ignatius writes that love consists in deeds rather than in words; that God, the lover, shares with the beloved what God can and the beloved returns love in the manner that one is able -- by the exercise of responsible choices.

            John stressed the importance of the decision-making and discernment process in working with small faith groups. ⁽¹⁷⁾ He was convinced that small faith groups in our culture would not tend to fall apart if they made communal decisions for tasks beyond the group itself. I have come to believe this also. A group may need to look inward for certain purposes at certain times. But sooner or later it needs the challenge of something outside itself. Intimacy of romance, of special friends is deceptive when it becomes the only underlying expectation for group life. John often insisted that in our first-world culture only those faith groups that make apostolic decisions together have the hope of staying together! Making decisions together in the context of experienced communal spiritual consolation disposes us for a different kind of intimacy.

            Later John applied this same insight in the creation of the Canadian formation manuals for Christian Life Communities (CLC). They include discernment exercises both personal and communal decision-making at each stage. Canadian CLC members in formation were encouraged to make the full Spiritual Exercises according to Annotation 19, and, after this personal formation, to continue in the practice of communal discernment.

           Other foundational ideas came when John collaborated with Jesuit colleagues in developing communal events which combined the dynamic of the Spiritual Exercises with basic social/faith and justice themes. These events, along with the growing awareness by the church at large, convinced him and many of us that the call to justice is integral to the call of faith for all mature Christians. Since sinful social structures are complex communal realities, only communally generated decisions can be the carriers of grace for change of these structures. No longer can issues be dealt with from a single point of view. 

            With such ideas it was very simple for John to incorporate an insight that came, in part, by working with George Schemel, S.J. The insight is that the group that makes decisions together with prayer and discernment is a "corporate person." The group experiences the movement of spirits analogously to the way an individual person experiences the movement of spirits. Just as an individual person needs to appropriate the consolation of one's own personal history to know one's identity, so does a group. This helps to ensure that its decisions are in harmony with its own identity. 

            And so John's 1992 book, Spiritual Intimacy and Community, represented the coming together of many different strands and themes beginning with that first Institute of 1969. John English continued to develop his understanding of Jesus' promise, "Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am in their midst." He quoted frequently the aphorism that Jesus may have died as an individual but he rose as a community! 

Intuitions For The Future

            At this point I would like make some further reflections from my experience with John that have something to say for the Society of Jesus in our western culture. This may also have some value for non-Jesuit communal situations. 

            My collaborative experiences with John give us valuable clues for our "western-cultured" Jesuit communities at this point in time. His convictions about collaborative, conscious decision-making in a faith context are very important because there is something unique about our present time that did not exist before. The Spiritual Exercises were originally given in a culture when individuals alone still made a difference. Now confronting extremely complex global issues we experience ourselves as individuals responsible for the situations but individually helpless to do much about them. 

            Yet, like many others of the human family, we Jesuits are called to make significant decisions. The lack of clarity in how we are being called to respond in a new age with diminishing resources is very different from the lack of clarity our forbears had to confront. When we (those of us who are over 70 years old) made decisions in the past (before 1960), we had a good idea about the context in which they would be implemented. We had some sense of what it meant to belong to an institution. We had some sense of what it meant to establish a school or a church and how that particular institution would likely function ten years down the line.

            Now we can no longer predict the future context. We have no idea what things might look like five years into the future. However, there is one thing we do know about the new context. It is no longer sufficient for us to respond as individuals; we are being called to respond communally. Before, an educated individual had sufficient information and data to go about the decision process and impact one's world. Now it often feels as if many of the institutions to which we belong are disabled. We have no idea what is needed to mend them, no idea what decisions are necessary. 

            In some sense, our corporate tasks as Jesuits always included some forms of deciding and working together. In our board rooms, team meetings and group enterprises, many of us have been strong individuals working together, each doing one's "thing" within the common institutions that defined for each one what was expected. Most of us followed Robert's “Rules of Order” and we could work together as teachers in a secondary school work together through the principal. The hierarchical structures, with the working policies and procedures, were carried out by highly individualized persons, each doing his thing working contiguously, side by side, but not necessarily interdependently. I have often experienced group meetings being held to parcel out bits of the work and to determine the external working order of things, but hardly ever to work through our common approaches. Our Jesuit experience of the corporate enterprise was that of individuals, working as individuals, side by side, but not communally.

            My own sense of what communal collaboration actually means came from my experience of the first ten years of the personally directed retreat movement with John English and others in Guelph. None of us knew exactly how to structure and develop the enterprise we had begun, but we had a vision together under the charismatic leadership of John English. The weekend retreats were not doing much of anything. We were in debt. We could not afford a proper support staff. And so, in conjunction with developing the directed retreat process for that first thirty-day retreat in 1969, we had to write and answer letters, we had to get more directors, we had to come up with a way of proceeding that allowed us to learn from each other as we went along. We cleaned, washed and painted the retreat house together. We made the beds. Our one secretary (Valerie Zaduk) answered the phones, responded to mail, welcomed retreatants at the door, cooked lunch for us and, at times, for retreatants. We prayed together. We shared our vulnerabilities and fears with each other. We fought and argued. We did theological reflection. In short, we collaborated. It was exciting. It was new. And we had a sense of our own weakness while at the same time doing what we discerned to be grace-filled. Such an experience was so different from the usual “communal” experiences I had had before or have had since that time!

            This experience was so different from usual work experiences with my colleagues who like myself operated as individuals in hierarchic systems. This individualistic way of working together is not surprising because to be private, to be a highly trained individual, to be able to function and be trusted as an individual was something that Western culture – aided by a privatized religion and fostered by our spirituality – communicated. The pioneering system that confronted North America as a thing to master and tame was made up of strong individuals. The RC church in southern Ontario was built up and developed by such stalwart Jesuits travelling by train and horseback all the way from New York. Such individualism for us Jesuits, as well as for most people in our Western culture, has become "Habits of the Heart"! We ourselves have become very highly conscious of our own individuality and specialness. Unfortunately the directed retreat movement may have contributed to this individualism by making us even more conscious of our own unique interior movements and fostering a discernment that depended to a large extent on the expression and knowledge of these movements. 

            We have been moving quickly into a totally different situation now. This is the moment to apply an image that McLuhan gave us over thirty years ago. We can no longer move forward looking through the rear-view mirror! The future of our planet depends on whether we have the courage to put our individualism aside and to act in new ways, together with a kind of interdependence that few of us have known – to place aside our private agendas and deal with more pressing communal agendas. Our human environmental and social problems, with their underlying spiritual problems, can no longer be dealt with significantly by individuals working as individuals. There is hope only when persons work together in mutual collaboration with each other – an image that is the reverse of the biblical story of Babylon! This implies making careful decisions for the sake of the whole human family and beyond the good of any one individual or group over another.

1. "Guelph Centre of Spirituality' was the name (between 1969 and 2001) that included Loyola House, Ignatius College and the Farm Community at Guelph, Ontario, Canada. Loyola House was the retreat house where John English was the director for several years and where he and I were staff members for much of the time between 1969 and 1997 (when John was assigned to the Jesuit community in Winnipeg). Ignatius College was a Jesuit residence and novitiate. At one point during this time it housed the Institute for Communal Life which was a separate entity from Loyola House and was dedicated to the promotion of Communal Spirituality. The Farm Community was made up of volunteers, Jesuits and challenged persons requiring supervision; this grouping lived according to a L'Arche style and worked on the farm as a vehicle of personal growth. At the time of writing this article many realities had changed at this location. This change has been reflected in its changed name -- Ignatius Jesuit Centre of Guelph.

2. Sometimes we refer to these various ways that persons experience the Spiritual Exercises as Healing, or Identity, or Call Modes. To further understand this terminology read Chapter 30 from Orientations Vol 2B by clicking here:

3. For a discussion of how to adapt the Exercises for a person in the healing mode click:

4. This workshop was for persons who had completed the full Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius under personal direction. It was intended for those who are interested in acquiring a greater practical understanding of the Spiritual Exercises and their application in today's world. It presumed that the applicants would come having had some experience of discernment and decision-making according to the principles and practice of the Exercises. In fact in preparation they were asked to bring with them a serious decision which required discernment. The workshop included a practicum during which the participants were to receive spiritual direction and were to give spiritual direction under supervision. To support these efforts to achieving its goals, this workshop was conducted in an atmosphere of prayer and reflection. And the three day directed retreat within the practicum was conducted in the same silence as required during the full Spiritual Exercises.

5. The full manual for the Week Of Directed Prayer can be found by clicking:

6. Information about the world-wide CLC can be found by clicking:

7. The first set of disposition days can be found by clicking:

8. Information on these books can be found by clicking here:

9. For two different methods for helping individuals to pray over their "Graced" history click here: bob/page7.htm#109 ; here

10. For information on the late George Schemel click here 

11. This is the title of a manual which resulted from an ongoing communal project from the late seventies through most of the eighties. It brings together the dynamics of the Spiritual Exercises with the dynamics of organizational development theory and various psychological dynamics of group life. The late George Schemel, S.J., one time director of the Jesuit Spirituality Center, Wernersville, Pennsylvania and, later, director of the Spirituality Center at the University of Scranton, Penn. USA led the project which gathered together many practitioners of the Spiritual Exercise to further its goals. Besides Judith A. Roemer and Jim Borbely, John English continued to collaborate with the project until its completion. Information on this project can be found by clicking http://www.isecp.org/ from which site you can get contacts to follow up your investigations.

12. The Management Design Institute website is: 

13. I personally found the experience heart changing and certainly it helped me to shift some personal paradigms.

14. For an example of what one of these workshops looked like click here:

15. A quotation from John English's tentative preface for the reprinting of Spiritual Freedom -- 2^nd Edition, Revised and Updated, in a completely new format and with several new chapters published by Loyola University Press, Chicago, 1995. 

16. The literal text of the Guidelines For Discerning Spirits can be found here:

17. For an example of an application of this process used for small faith groups click here:

18. Gregory Baum, Theology and Society (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), Chapter 15, "The Retrieval of Subjectivity," p.261ff.