Private Graces

During many a waking moment in the past twenty-four hours, I've been reflecting on the wealth of experience that filled my participation in the Spiritual Exercises over the past five days. As a member of the retreat team, I was invited to offer a reflection, conduct a brief prayer service, and preach at a liturgy... occasions which necessitated no small amount of prayerful preparation and practice. As a spiritual director, I shared daily conversations with five students throughout the retreat, endeavoring to guide them through the landscape of thoughts, prayers, frustrations, ideas, and emotions that they sought to navigate. At the retreat's closing liturgy, in place of a homily, students and spiritual directors alike were invited to briefly share a significant grace that they had received during the retreat. This session moved me as deeply as many of the wonderful reflections offered by my fellow directors, and were as strikingly personal as the conversations I shared in confidence with each of my five directees.

This presents me with a challenging question: is the substance of that "shared homily" appropriate for a blog? It's obvious to me that revealing anything from spiritual direction is clearly inappropriate; even when describing such conversations in confidence with another Jesuit who supervises me in such ministry, I use no specific details and speak instead of my own responses and reactions to what I hear and what I say as a spiritual director, especially as one still developing this pastoral skill. Yet our retreat community– nearly 60 of us– shared some of our respective graces rather publicly with one another, and there was much poignancy in the depth of what was shared.

Much of what occasions this very question is rooted in my constantly shifting and evolving attitude towards the virtual, textual medium of a blog. When I discussed the retreat with my fellow Jesuits over dinner last evening, I felt comfortable relating some of the specific graces that were mentioned, though I made sure to provide no contextual details that could connect a given comment to a given student. I envision myself feeling comfortable doing the same in the company of a friend; in the context of a face-to-face conversation, it would be much more natural to share something that made a particular impact upon me. I worry that the blogging medium dilutes this.

A fascinating book that I'm reading in preparation for an academic talk and some related projects in the coming weeks shed very helpful light on this situation, offering guidance in addressing the very question that it raised. Alone Together by Sherry Turkle (well worth looking up and reading) addresses intriguing philosophical, moral, ethical, and social questions raised by increasingly advanced robotic technology that pushes concepts of personhood and relationships, as well as the increasingly questionable effects of social media on community, socialization, and isolation. The author is coming to campus in a few weeks, and it's been a long while since I've been so excited for an academic talk. In a chapter about the hyperconnectivity made possible by mobile devices and wireless networks, she relates a man's disgust when, amidst a dinner party he was hosting, a woman with whom he is conversing takes out her Blackberry and begins "blogging the conversation" (The entire episode is recounted in a fascinating paragraph on page 162 of Alone Together).

One of the things students initially find difficult about the retreat is the silence, and the detachment from cell phones and computers that is insisted upon. (In fact, several directors– myself included– had to loan students watches or alarm clocks, because their phones are their only timepieces.) Yet each found a certain comfort in stepping back from constant connectivity and settling into a vastly different realm of connection. Though perhaps frustrated by the inability to talk with one another, they quickly adapted ways of constructing and maintaining a community in the silence. They smiled at one another when passing in the hallways. They walked more slowly, held doors for one another, and approached thresholds between rooms slowly, aware that there could be someone on the other side. Most of all, they respected one another's silence, in a way that showed much more interpersonal engagement than simply walking past each other on campus while speaking on their phones, texting, or listening to their iPods. It seems that "blogging the retreat" is quite contrary to the spirit of the experience, even though having done so after a retreat of my own became one of many helpful exercises for further integrating what I experienced.

So, with some mixed feelings, I've decided to respect the sacredness I ascribe to the graces of the retreat by writing about and posting only those that I directly witnessed and experienced. Those that the students shared– likely even more inspiring than what I've written here– are theirs to share as they desire. That being said, I'll still feel comfortable relating them– with all due considerations to confidentiality– within contexts where I can trust in that same discretion, namely, personal conversations with those with whom I've established a strong mutual relationship in which such themes are appropriately reverenced. Perhaps that insight, that conviction, and that drawing of a certain boundary is itself another grace flowing from my past five days of retreat; one that I can honestly share, though I'm not entirely certain how well it can be understood if you don't hear it from me firsthand.