What is a book? When is a book not really a book?
Before now, I thought I knew; that doesn’t seem like a terribly complicated question after all.
War and Peace is a book. So is Thus Spake Zarathustra. So is Go, Dog. Go!
But what about a lengthy instruction manual for a Television? It’s bound like a book, and is longer than many things which are obviously books. Is it a book or is the category “Instruction Manual” not contained in the set of things called “books”?
The question is prompted by The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius.
I enjoyed reading this…what do I call it?…that is where I get stuck. It looks like a book; I thought it was a book. But, it is an instruction manual. It is much more like the instruction manual for my television than like anything I have in my office. (Well other than itself—technically it is most like itself).
Ignatius sets out a series of exercises which he believes will, over the course of weeks, draw one closer to God. It is a pretty rigorous set of exercises—hours a day for roughly four weeks.
Broadly speaking, the exercises would fall into the category of prayer, but here again we run into a definition problem. For example, one of the exercises is to spend the hour (Ignatius is really insistent on the fact that you need to spend an hour at a time doing each exercise) imagining the Last Supper.
Picture where everyone is sitting, what they are wearing, what they are saying to one another. Imagine the room and the food on the table. (Is there a dog?) Fill in all the details. This is all part of a reflection on the Last Supper.
This sort of imaginary thought experiment is quite common in the Exercises—there are lots of things to picture here. So, is that prayer? Again, I am not sure.
(Thinking through the types of prayer described in the Zaleskis’ excellent book, Prayer: A History:
Parts of the Ignatius exercise fit cleanly into the category of devotional prayer. But, I am not sure if a meditation on hell (week 1, fifth exercise) counts as prayer or not.)
What I am sure about is that I would not make a very good Jesuit. Not only would I have a hard time spending an hour imagining the details of the Last Supper or most of the other things in these exercises, I have a really hard time even imagining the act of imagining them.
Clearly some people find such exercises meaningful and profound and worthy of their time. Is it a failing that I think I would get nearly nothing out of the attempt to follow these exercises? Is it possible I am wrong when I read them and think, “Not for me”?
In other words, are the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius for universal application? Ignatius does note that not everyone is ready for the whole series of exercises—some people may not graduate from week one to week two, but does that mean week one is suitable for everyone?
If I spent a month in the summer at a Jesuit retreat going through these exercises, would I learn something and become a more Godly person? I don’t think so, but how would I know if that is just being shortsighted?
As I said above, I am glad I read through these exercises, but the only point in rereading them would be to actually go through the exercises.
Now you have now been warned—don’t pick this up expecting a book.
Leave a Reply