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Empowerment through poetry
This presentation invites the hearer to a bonsai experience of the Spiritual Exercises through the presenter's poetry. It is intended that the poetry invites those present to engage with their own perspectives and reflect on their individual graced places with the one we call God. Through inviting hearers to this experience, I show the way poetry can accompany a person either giving or receiving the Spiritual Exercises, and in spiritual direction generally. The most important thing in this presentation is not me, nor the poetry I read, but the hearers' disposition towards what God might offer through these few words. This disposition is called being present to the gaze of God. Robert Marsh says that God is looking at you looking at God. There is something, both disarming and exquisite in that thought; something personal and holy. How could we help but be enamoured of a God with such affectionate attention.
The journey of the Spiritual Exercises invites all into the Kingdom
of God, to experience the privileged relationship of that and the
responsibility which comes with it. John Dominic Crossan's offers a new
terminology for the Kingdom of God. He calls it the 'companionship of
empowerment'. I think this term aptly describes the nature of the
journey of the Spiritual Exercises with an appropriate companion, and
the quality of companionship which poetry can bring.
At the end of each poem, one minute's stillness is offered to
reflect personally on what has touched those present.
Marlene Marburg is currently at the Melbourne College of Divinity
engaged in PhD research about the relationship of poetry and the
Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius. She is a poet, spiritual director
and formator at Campion Centre of Ignatian Spirituality.
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