1. Pedro Arrupe argues that falling in love with God in an absolute way is the most practical thing one can do, as what you love will affect everything in your life. 2. Loving God can transform one's desires and lead them to take risks like Mother Theresa serving the poor or Ignatius founding the Society of Jesus. 3. Both human love and spiritual love of God involve elements of pleasure, intimacy, and transformation, and exploring the relationship between these can provide insights for spiritual direction.

1. Falling in Love with God: Integration and Transformation through the God-Human Relationship Janet K. Ruffing, RSM July, 2009

2. Pedro Arrupe Nothing is more practical than finding God, That is, than falling in love In a quite absolute way. What your are in love with, what seizes your imagination, Will affect everything. It will decide What will get you out of bed in the morning, What you will do with your evenings, How you spend your weekend, What you read, Who you know what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love, And it will decide everything.

3. Arrupe Makes the connection between human love (falling in love) and love of God. Falling in Love a quite absolute way directs all of our energies and passions toward the object of that love. At the core of Ignatian spirituality is discernment our desires what do we love? Is it big enough? And where will it take us?

4. Falling in Love is Risky Business Falling in love with God takes us to unimaginable places Falling in love with another human being is just as risky Yet we do both with on a regular basis

5. A New Way of Loving: Apostolic Life It led Mother Theresa to the huts of the poor It led Marilyn Lacey to refugee work It led Arrupe to the Japanese mission It led Ignatius to found the Society It led Gary Smith, SJ to the homeless and then to Africa It led to countless pastoral projects

6. For Most people most of the time It leads to mutual attraction and the richness and fruitfulness of shared life in family, in parenting, in community of one kind or another

7. All Desire Recognized or not Encompasses the desire for God as well as for meaningful human relationships and great passion for service to the human community

8. Understanding the relationship between desire Both erotic and spiritual and our human and divine loving

9. Retrieve positive attitudes toward desire and pleasure Explore how God’s love for us and our love of God are similar to or different from our human loving

10. Notice What stirs in you in response to this song and these texts? How do you relate to these invitations? Are they like or unlike anything you experience in your directees?

11. Come Sweet Love Johna Peterson Come sweet love In silence and in words Come in wonder Come in beauty And in fear See…listen to the whisper Love awaits us! Love awaits us! Open up the doors of tenderness Love is Come! In your face I see Rivers to move me Encircled in your arms I know caverns I have not been. As one who has grown silent Tenderness bowed in Rising now in silence and song Alights its rest in you. Let then this be said: May we joy in this unfolding May we breathe in the fragrances here Tremble sweet tenderness.

19. Share with one other person your response to the song Or Something one of the images evoked in relationship to your experience of God

20. John S. Dunne Mystic Road of Love

21. A double rainbow The primary rainbow =the trajectory of love flowing from God to us and back again to God. Much of the time, he can only see this primary rainbow opening up before him all the way to death. The secondary rainbow, larger and fainter than the primary one = human love and is derivative from the primary rainbow of divine love

23. Not necessarily always available in Consciousness sometimes, he can only see the human rainbow of love at other times, only the rainbow of divine love and still at other times only the spring of the arch and not the whole arch explore

25. What is the Relationship between love of God and love of human beloveds? Is God’s love a reflection of human love? Or is our love of God a reflection of God’s love and is our love of one another a reflection of our love of God and God’s love of us, a double reflection therefore?

26. Loss of Love or Absence of the Beloved Obscures the secondary rainbow and one only sees the primary rainbow. This loss tends to compel us to turn to God, to wonder about God’s friendship Yet because of the absence of human love we still feels bereft.

27. Two Parallel Movements How to go on in the experience of absence? Resolved by discovering one is not alone on this mystic road of love—that God is continually present with us on the journey and a movement from restlessness to repose or rest.

28. Turning to God despite the Loss or the Absence of a Partner Brings us to a peace to repose of heart in God This repose (contemplation =presence of God) brings us wholeness and healing

29. John Dunne’s Progression of Love Eros passion for the individual (eros) To Friendship with God (philia) To ecstasy in contemplation– love that is of God (agape) The progression often needs a guide: Dante had Virgil then Beatrice Dunne names Virgil then Ayasofia (Wisdom, Sophia)

30. Eternal Friend Vladimir Solovyov I met you Dwelling in a human heart; I found and lost you, And I lost and found My soul in the lost hills; and we shall meet again As child and child, And heart shall speak peace Unto heart. A human face And your face in the azure light, A human soul And your soul of a universe, And we shall meet again, Face to face, And heart shall speak peace Unto heart. To let friends befriend And soul besoul, To let be And be heart-free And heart-whole, And we shall meet again As friend and friend, And heart shall speak peace unto heart.

31. Dunne’s Reflection He discovers he has trouble differentiating between Sophia and her human embodiments. “ Sometimes I read in your eyes a sorrow too deep to express, a long lonely road that flickers through your being at the moment of our parting. Sometimes I think you aren’t really even seeing me at that moment, but that you are communing with someone else.”

32. Bernard of Clairvaux Sermons on the Song of Songs

33. Qualities of love for Christ Sermon 20 Carnal = suggesting fully embodied affections, attaching to Christ instead of another love object, transmuting sensual as in erotic. Rational = the mind is illumined and strong in faith, exerts more control, discretion, less “ardent, vehement” and Spiritual = constancy and vigor of the spirit

34. Transformative Process the love of the heart is in a certain sense, carnal Whatever form this image (of Christ) takes, it must bind the soul with the love of virtue expel carnal vices, eliminate temptations quiet desires. He wanted to recapture the affections of carnal men [and women] who were unable to live in any other way, by first drawing them to the salutary love of his own humanity, and then gradually raise them to a more spiritual love

35. Seven Reasons to Seek the Word To whom she is conformed to beauty To whom she is wed for her fruitfulness To whom she owes her virtue To whom she consents for correction By whom she is illuminated for her knowledge By whom she is reformed to wisdom Whom she enjoys for her bliss (Sermon 18)

36. Bernard of Clairvaux: Itineraries of Progress Contemplation Wisdom and knowledge Bride Mutuality (Mary) Kiss of the Mouth One spirit with Christ Devotion Son Familial, service Friendship (Martha) Kiss of the Hand raises (virtues) grace that follows good deeds. Progress Contrition/ Confession Mercenary “ hired” (Lazarus) Kiss of the Feet Forgiveness conversion On Loving God Slave dependent Sermon on Song of Songs

37. What are the implications for Spiritual Directors that Love develops and that amor/eros provides the energy for love all the way to mystical union?

38. Attitudes Toward Pleasure: Sensual and Spiritual How does God use spiritual pleasure (consolation) to attract us and transform us toward mutuality and equality with God? What are the positive aspects of sensual pleasure? How is sexual pleasure similar to or different from either spiritual pleasure or other sensual pleasures? Does God “pleasure” us erotically as well as spiritually?

39. A Way of Understanding Pleasure Pleasure is a premoral good Human well-being thrives on limiting pain as much as possible and maximizing pleasure Healthy life-styles satisfy the human need for pleasure No one kind of bodily pleasure is necessary Body, Sex and Pleasure: Reconstructing Sexual Ethics by Christine Gudorf

40. Possibilities: Vigorous outdoor exercise and activities Beauty of nature Sex Art Music, dance, etc. professional massage Cuddling babies Frequent hugs and touch from friends/family Appetizing foods

41. Sexual Pleasures Participates in the beneficial effects of the simple pleasure of human touch Is experienced in the physical body (arousal, etc., leaves sensory memories) May be involuntary (maybe painful, depending on circumstances) May be shared (partnered) or solitary (self-pleasuring) Pleasure of Passion Pleasure of emotional Intimacy and bonding are dependent upon mutual sexual pleasure Relief from loneliness Initiate and sustain relationship Comfort and security of closeness Relief from boredom; distraction from pain and anxiety Comfort in the face of death God can be experienced in the ecstatic experience of orgasm– one’s unitive experience with one’s partner may also be an experience of intimacy with God simultaneously.

42. Spiritual Significance of Sex For many persons, their primary experience of inclusive love, of openness to another, of being accepted and enhanced, of being empowered by love to reach out in love to others, is sexual. (for some, important religious experiences occurred either with one’s partner or in giving birth.) For many, the primary experience of Divinity itself as well as of God’s intention for the reign of God is sexual. Gudorf, 118

43. Symbolic Power of Sex Represent life Victory over death Generation of life Sustaining of life unitive and bonding Creation of community Vision: insights into community, close friendship opens new horizons, Source of energy for social change and community

44. Pedro Arrupe Nothing is more practical than finding God, That is, than falling in love In a quite absolute way. What your are in love with, what seizes your imagination, Will affect everything. It will decide What will get you out of bed in the morning, What you will do with your evenings, How you spend your weekend, What you read, Who you know what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love, And it will decide everything.