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Spiritual Exercises
Greetings Faithful Readers and New Friends. It’s been awhile since I’ve posted. Someone attacked me on Facebook and brought up a blog post and referred to this humble repository as a little read blog. It has had its ups downs for sure, but I am working it more into my plans and you will see regular content through 2026. It promises to be a momentous year and I want to develop this leadership.
I’ve struggled a bit this year which curbed my joy and my productivity and my relationships more than I am comfortable with. I’ve taken a moment to reassess and identify what I’m bringing to the situations that are causing me trouble. To that end I am committing myself to 4 weeks of stoic spiritual exercises.
Two years ago, after stepping away from the directorship of a nonprofit I put together and implemented 4 weeks of spiritual exercises I developed while on an epic road trip through the Southwest. It cleared my palate of the stress I had been carrying and helped me develop the focus to both write and publish a book but also address my obesity and overall lack of physical fitness.
Two years previously, after completing my third term on the Columbia, Missouri city council I had gone on an epic road trip and completed a bastardized version of the spiritual exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, bookended by Crowley’s Book 4 exercises from part 1 (basically Buddhist meditation).
For those exercises they are completed 2-5 times per day with prayers and readings and 5 senses meditations (think visualization but with all 5 senses). Its ordered around the life of Christ as moral teaching and also involves colloquys (imaginary conversations with God, Jesus, and the Virgin Mary).
Most significantly it involves a conscience check. I used the time to work on my ego. Whenever I would note an egoistic thought I would touch my heart. Taking a month and focusing on the content of your heart and striving to be better is powerful. I see why the Jesuits do it annually.
I had tried them once before in the early 2000s while backpacking in Big Sur and was also profoundly impacted. That time I had powerful colloquys and I felt that if I continued down that path I would irrevocably break with consensus reality and that that was not being asked of me.
I wrapped them up after 2 1/2 weeks, called my dad and learned he was passing through Fresno and hitchhiked over to meet him for one last ride in the big rig. I correctly guessed it would be my last chance for a ride along with The Popster and it was. I’ve never regretted it.
The 2021 version wasn’t mystical at all. I’d had some of that during my COVID homelessness organizing and these exercises were more of an act of discipline and sober reflection. I “received” 2 messages: to get a job and live humbly and to make a small lifestyle change, which I did.
I came out of that a lot more keyed into philosophy and less interest in mystical experiences. I continued to deepen my study of stoicism and other ancient philosophies over the next couple of years.
I felt that I had gotten what I needed out of discipling myself to work humbly for a board of directors. I again thought a major life change should be road trip and spiritual exercises. I thought of reworking Ignatius’s system to stoicism.
I realized though that the stoics already had a system. Leaning heavily on Pierre Hadot’s What is Ancient Philosophy I organized them around the 4 virtues: Wisdom, Justice, Bravery, and Temperance.
I had morning mediations where I set goals for the day. Unread from primary texts: Epictetus’s Discourses and Enchiridion, Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, and Musonius Rufus and nothing else. I also memorized verses for each virtue and used the Ignatian conscience checks.
Wisdom involved a focus on study and reflection. Justice emphasized pro social interaction and philosophical conversation. Bravery involved physical exercise. Temperance involved vegetarianism and rigorous portion control.
I grew more focused and disciplined and kept that self motivation through writing The Practical Guide to Building a Better World. With setbacks and gear shifting I again am called to take on spiritual exercises. This time, no road trip but to be made real in my home environment.
I am also going to open them up to the public as a shared project with my community. I will be posting about it here and there will be an IRL version in Leavenworth and an online version available everywhere. More details to follow and I’ll be looking to start early in the new year.
If you are interested in my book it’s not too late to get it before Christmas direct from my publisher. https://breadandrosespress.com/products/the-practical-guide-to-building-a-better-world
Keep following for details as well as my traditional Holiday Letter coming soon.
Happy Easter
It’s been a great long holiday weekend visiting with family and friends. Even with a doctor’s appointment and some work it’s been nice to focus on family and connection and making memories. Most significantly I finished the final edits on my manuscript and The Practical Guide to Building a Better World will get its layout and final design this week. Very exciting.
We’ve also had a tremendous spring this year and we found time to visit with the Spring ephemerals. With a long frost free period with rain the flowering trees have put on a show and are mostly supported by the budding hardwoods.
Easter is a time of new beginnings. The Spring renewal. I thought I might share my Easter poem/song I wrote some years back. We know of the eponymous Eostre only through the writings of the 8th century, I think, ecclesiastical historian the Venerable Bede. As a super nerdy kid I have been a fan since high school.
He records her name and that the preconquest European indigenous honored her at this time of year. That’s it.
Looking at religious origins of European religions the spring nature goddess Eostre was likely a close cousin of Assana/Astarra. Their stories are better preserved. Her hares ate the dark covering that surrounded the sun, freeing it for the first sunrise. Thanks for the dawn Easter Bunny!
Eggs are of course a symbol of life. Think The Great Egg of Euphrates. With that laid out here’s my Easter ditty.
The Venerable Bede was a friend to me
‘Cuz he told stories
Stories of the way things used to be
Before the great genocide of Europe
That came with the coming of Christianity.
Eostre/Astara/Asana was the goddess of fertility
She sent her swift hares to guide us
From the darkness to the light where we can see
And water drawn on Easter morn is holy
Eggs represent the Earth’s fecundity
And Easter’s really about Eostre
The forgotten women erased from history.
Be peace today. Get outside and see the beauty. Recommit to a life worth living.
The Secret of Overwhelm
There are a couple of secrets to dealing with feeling overwhelmed. Our fast paced modern life often feels like far more is expected of us than we can actually deliver. Overwhelm can result in frenetic activity that doesn’t bring results, like spinning your wheels, shutting down and not doing anything, or perhaps worse yet getting the “fuck it’s”, where we start doing behaviors we ordinarily would never do.
Learning to handle overwhelm with grace has been a skill I have been forced to develop. I remember when I was leading a multidisciplinary team working with hard to serve individuals in a behavioral health program and my Manager said: “You look like you feel overwhelmed”.
I said: “I don’t feel overwhelmed, I am overwhelmed.” The issue was not my emotional regulation it was the material factors of the job I was assigned to do.
My first tip is differentiate, is this a feeling or is it a situation that truly exists? If it’s a feeling we use our reliable feelings management skills of taking a moment to slow and deepen our breath. Note any tense areas, I carry my stress in my neck and shoulders, so stretching and relaxing those areas are a must for me.
Note your thinking. Question and challenge any thinking that is contributing to the feeling. Can we look at something differently to get a different result? In addition to challenging negative self talk launch some positive self talk to encourage and soothe yourself. If those helpful and comforting thoughts don’t immediately come to mind, think about what you would say to a friend.
If it’s an actual situation of being overwhelmed then prioritizing and strategically addressing the confounding issues is the key. I rank what I have to do and mostly tackle the most important things first. When you’re taking action you focus on that task with your whole attention and let the rest go until it’s their turn.
We can only do one, or sometimes two things at a time. Don’t try to tackle more than that. Make your list and work through it, most important things first. That’s it. Manage your feelings and strategically work your way back to control.
That one was for me today friends. Time to get back at the immediate concerns of the day. Thanks for reading.
Incorruptible Body
Back on Memorial Day weekend I started seeing news stories about an incorruptible Body drawing large crowds in Missouri. It seems an elderly nun had died 4 years ago, not embalmed and buried in a pine box was disinterred and found to be in pretty good shape. I was intrigued enough to find a story of her life and that had pictures and she did look pretty good, all things considering.
As I lay in bed Sunday night I decided to map out how far Gower was and if it was less than an hour I’d road trip over there. How often do you get to see a full on miracle?
I usually get up with the sun and I learned Gower was only 45 minutes from Leavenworth. The convent requested you not arrive before 8:00 am, people live there, for God’s sake, and they were going to inter her in a glass coffin in the afternoon so I really had my last chance to see her aur natural.
It was a pretty drive through the country. The loess hills of Western Missouri and Eastern Kansas aren’t really appreciated for how beautiful they are. My first sign there was spectacle ahead was an LED light sign saying watch for stopped traffic in the middle of nowhere.
There was parking in a field across the street and a long line snaking out of the entrance when I arrived at 8:00. It definitely had a carnival vibe with volunteers pointing where to park and volunteer fire department directing traffic. People were excited to ask where you came from but it was mostly Kansas and Missouri with a smattering of Iowans.
The line started to move a little after 8:00. I listened in on the folks around me. There was a group older Filipino ladies behind me who had been on a lot of pilgrimages and visited other incorruptibles. They were pretty charming as they talked about their adventures on the tour bus to Petra. General impression was “it’s hot there”.
Ahead of me was a Catholic mom and her teen and grown kids. They had a lot of talk about Catholic schools and the brother who didn’t make the trip, apparently because he smokes a lot of weed.
There were a lot of canopies with water and fruit and donation jars for area churches. Mostly staffed by big families of conservative dressed kids. Not a lot of solicitation but some QR codes to support the cause. The newly built chapel which led to all the fuss looked sharp. Before you entered there were teen girls with skirts and scarves for the bare legged and bare shouldered. Yoga pants count as bare legged I learned. It was hot so I had worn shorts but I wasn’t offered a skirt.
Sister Mary Willhemina Lancaster had a compelling story even before she died. She was born in 1924 and grew up in a Black Catholic family and when her Catholic school segregated her dad started their own.
She became a nun in the oblate order and at 76 started the order in Gower. This might be a good time to mention I am going to post a couple of pictures of the body.
After the womenfolk were appropriately clothed we entered the chapel where folks mostly followed the admonishment on the sign to be quiet. There were some super geriatric Knights of Columbus complete with sword and sash as an honor guard and also serving as ushers.
I’d seen pictures in some of the stories so I wasn’t surprised to see a pretty good looking corpse. I don’t know what the typical decomposition is in 4 years but I think you’re mostly bones at that point. I watched season 1 of Dexter and a two year old corpse was bones and stringy meat, assuming the show runners did a little research.
People were coming up in groups and families. It hasn’t struck me that I was the only one who had arrived solo. People were kissing her face and heads and draping her with rosaries and medallions, sometimes a goodly string of them. Everyone would kneel and the usher would take a photo with someone’s camera in a posed kind of way. People stuck to the 45 second rule posted without a lot of promoting. There was a lot of emotion in the room.
At my turn I took some rushed photos and kneeled for a bit. I might have tried to pray, I was more taking it all in then putting it out there. 15 seconds tops, was plenty for me.
After the visit I went to the gravesite and got my teaspoon of grace diet. There was a pretty good sized hole it was hard to reach the bottom. There was another Filipino lady just shoveling it in a bag. She got admonished for breaking the teaspoon rule but she said she was with a group so they let her have a few more solid scoops.
I went over to St Joseph and went for a bike ride and hike on trails, the waterfront and downtown. It was a cool and surreal Memorial Day.
So what does it all mean? Was it a miracle? As I get older I get less and less interested in deciding what I believe about things. Things just are, regardless of what I believe. The folks I was with, without exception treated it as miraculous. Even with the crass and objectified relic hunting it was a sincere expression of belief and kind of beautiful.
There was nothing I saw that was incompatible with a miracle. An admirable life of someone who appeared worthy of esteem and an incorruptible Body. When I talked to my sister who is crazy for the miraculous and my Catholic coworker who is pretty devout it was easy to convey I bore witness to a miracle.
But also I suspect that corpse deteriorate on a bell curve. Probably moisture content and exposure to oxygen, insects and who knows what else are drivers of variability. Some corpses decompose very quickly and some very slowly and most at the typical rate. We note the exceptional and the countless typical examples are not noted. I felt no need to research, hypothesize or explain. Just to bear witness to a phenomenon I had proximity too that interested me
When I told my brother about it he suggested vampirism. I didn’t argue against that either. There was a Christian rock song in the 80’s called Renaissance Man that had these lines: ” How does it help you feed the poor? How does it help you love your wife? Tell me Renaissance Man…” Those questions have stuck with me and what I believe or don’t believe about the apparently miraculous don’t really mean that much.
Multiconstruct 
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