Part 4 of 4 in our 2023 Advent Series. Bo Karen Lee discusses how Ignatian spirituality, contemplative prayer, and meditating on the loving gaze and deep compassion of Christ—a love that suffers with—can be a transformative experience to heal trauma, pain, and deal with powerful emotions.
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Part 4 of 4 in our 2023 Advent Series. Bo Karen Lee discusses how Ignatian spirituality, contemplative prayer, and meditating on the loving gaze and deep compassion of Christ—a love that suffers with—can be a transformative experience to heal trauma, pain, and deal with powerful emotions.
About Bo Karen Lee
Bo Karen Lee, ThM '99, PhD '07, is associate professor of spiritual theology and Christian formation at Princeton Theological Seminary. She earned her BA in religious studies from Yale University, her MDiv from Trinity International University in Deerfield, Illinois, and her ThM and PhD from Princeton Seminary. She furthered her studies in the returning scholars program at the University of Chicago, received training as a spiritual director from Oasis Ministries, and was a Mullin Fellow with the Institute of Advanced Catholic Studies. Her book, Sacrifice and Delight in the Mystical Theologies of Anna Maria van Schurman and Madame Jeanne Guyon, argues that surrender of self to God can lead to the deepest joy in God. She has recently completed a volume, The Soul of Higher Education, which explores contemplative pedagogies and research strategies. A recipient of the John Templeton Award for Theological Promise, she gave a series of international lectures that included the topic, “The Face of the Other: An Ethic of Delight.”
She is a member of the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women, and the American Academy of Religion; she recently served on the Governing Board of the Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality, and is on the editorial board of the journal, Spirtus, as well as on the steering committee of the Christian Theology and Bible Group of the Society of Biblical Literature. Before joining Princeton faculty, she taught in the Theology Department at Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland, where she developed courses with a vibrant service-learning component for students to work at shelters for women recovering from drug addiction and sex trafficking. She now enjoys teaching classes on prayer for the Spirituality and Mission Program at Princeton Seminary, in addition to taking students on retreats and hosting meditative walks along nature trails.
Show Notes
Production Notes
Evan Rosa: For the Life of the World is a production of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. Visit us online at faith.yale.edu.
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Blessings, my friends.
Bo Karen Lee: So contemplative prayer has lots of different definitions. In some streams, it's primarily apophatic. It's the removal of words and images. But for Ignatius, contemplative prayer is both apophatic and cataphatic. I welcome, I receive these vivid images and words that come to me in my prayer. I don't need to push them out in order to be a contemplative.
In fact, his definition of contemplative prayer, which I happen to now prefer, is "gazing upon the God who gazes upon me with love." That is contemplative prayer.
Evan Rosa: This is For the Life of the World, a podcast about seeking and living a life worthy of our humanity.
Macie Bridge: This is For the Life of the World, and I'm Macie Bridge here with Evan Rosa.
Evan Rosa: We're doing our Advent thing again.
Macie Bridge: Yes, final week.
Evan Rosa: And it's almost Christmas as it happens. That's the way Advent came through this particular year. Today, we're talking about love. There are four themes in Advent, and we're using the podcast episodes from the past to take a, just a different vantage point on each theme of Advent, which are hope, peace, joy, and this week, love.
Macie Bridge: So this week we'll be turning to, um, a past episode with Bo Karen Lee and Ryan McAnnally-Linz talking about actually trauma in spirituality. And in this episode, they're speaking about God's loving gaze and the way that God gazes at us with love, just as we gaze at God with love. And I think this is particularly relevant to Advent.
I think a lot about the maternal relationship between Mary and Jesus's coming into the world and what that relationship was like. And Bo Karen Lee uses the example of a mother and child and the need for that mutual gaze of love.
Evan Rosa: Yeah, that attachment relationship is profound, and that's one of the things that I enjoyed about this particular episode as well.
And thinking about the bond between Mary and Jesus as infant is beautiful. It's this beautiful expression about the bond between humanity and divinity as well. And so that loving gaze is phenomenal. I think it also just is a reminder that Christmas is about love, that the Incarnation event is a loving event, and it's one mechanism that, that, by which God doesn't merely gaze, um, of course the gaze is important, but doesn't merely gaze, but enters into human reality in its fullness.
Macie Bridge: Yes, in many ways it feels like a breath of relief. We've been waiting for it with hope and peace and joy. Ah, and now we have love made whole.
Evan Rosa: That's right. Yeah, it's a beautiful consummation. That's awesome.
Well, thanks listeners for walking through Advent with us this far. Macie, thank you for being a part of it as well. This has been really fun.
Macie Bridge: This has been fun.
Evan Rosa: And Merry Christmas to everyone. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Bo Karen Lee.
Macie Bridge: Merry Christmas.
Bo Karen Lee: So the spiritual exercises by Ignatius of Loyola, I think one of the distinctive gifts of Ignatian prayer is that it is fully simpatico with the use of the human imagination in meditation. Being able to use your imagination to revisit your own life, Lectio on life, but then also to visit a scene. Lectio Divina is now coupled with Lectio on life.
I inhabit the scene that I'm reading, not only by meditating on it and imagining what it looked like, back in the day, but by becoming one with it, by entering into it and seeing myself there, placing myself there. Ignatius says, "Place me with your son, place me with your son in that passage, but place me there."
I've just seen too much hope and too much beauty and too much healing walking through the spiritual exercises that I can no longer despair that trauma has the final word. I've seen too many examples of healing and hope where the shock of one's pain from the past or even the present is no longer impossible to bear because it's being borne by another.
And I not only am in solidarity with Christ as I walk with him through the stages of his life, but as I share in this fellowship with the Christ figure, Christ is now in solidarity with me and offers me companionship and offers me this deep, intimate knowing of my pain.
Ryan McAnnally-Linz: Maybe you could, you could start right at the beginning and just say quickly, who was Saint Ignatius and where did the spiritual exercises come from?
Bo Karen Lee: So I'm informed by a stream of spirituality, which was founded by a young soldier in 16th century Spain, who was hit by a cannonball that put him on mandatory convalescence.
Ryan McAnnally-Linz: As it would.
Bo Karen Lee: Yeah, but he was so vain, he didn't like the way his leg healed, the way it looked in his tights, that he asked the doctors to re-break and reset his leg without anesthesia. The vanity of this young soldier.
And as was his want, he asked for romance novels during his convalescence, but he was only offered two books. They only had two books. And one was called Vita Christi, "The Life of Christ," by Ludolf of Saxony, which is a popular 14th century bestseller.
And that one really grabbed his attention. The other book was called The Lives of the Saints, which is also also interesting to Ignatius. But the other, the first book, The Life of Christ, it employs a method of imaginative reading that invites the reader right into the scene. And that's when Ignatius first encountered, for him, the living Christ, and he dropped his arms, he dropped his military garb and military profession and started to pursue a new kind of glory.
The motto of the Jesuits, A-M-D-G, Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam, for the greater glory of God. And so he started to put his insights into a manual called The Spiritual Exercises. And it's actually a manual for spiritual directors who are accompanying others in their journey of prayer. But it's so chock full of insight that people translate this manual for actual retreatants as well.
Then it invites people into that imaginative journeying with Christ through the four weeks. The first week is just, who are you as a beloved human being who's also profoundly broken? Both because my relationships are broken, but also because the world around me is broken and inflicts pain upon me as well.
Mutual harm. I harm others and, and, and myself, and others harm me. The second week I walk with Christ through his life and ministry. The third week I walk with him through the way of suffering. In the fourth week have I witnessed the risen Christ. And it has been life changing for me. I can't speak highly enough of the gift of this form of prayer.
It may not be for everyone, not everyone enjoys using their imagination or walking with Christ through the Gospels. But if we give it a chance, we might be surprised by what we find.
Ryan McAnnally-Linz: So, I take it there's some sort of continuity between Ludolf of Saxony's Vita Christi and how Ignatius recommends praying. What's the connection?
Bo Karen Lee: He reinterprets Ludolf's work in his manual by taking this method of the imaginative reading and turning that into your prayer. So your meditation is this imaginative placing of yourself into the scene. So contemplative prayer has lots of different definitions. In some streams, it's primarily apophatic.
It's the removal of words and images. But for Ignatius, contemplative prayer is both apophatic and cataphatic. I welcome, I receive these vivid images and words that come to me in my prayer. I don't need to push them out in order to be a contemplative. In fact, his definition of contemplative prayer, which I happen to now prefer, is "gazing upon the God who gazes upon me with love." That is contemplative prayer.
I can do that while I'm biking. I don't have to sit for twenty minutes in a dark corner in order to be a contemplative. I, I like that I can contemplate in nature or on my bike or in the swimming pool.
Ryan McAnnally-Linz: So that, yeah, that sort of contemplation moves with us. But its, its kind of home base in Ignatian spirituality is this engagement with scriptural text, right?
Bo Karen Lee: Yes, however, you become so experienced with imaginative prayer that you're no longer wedded only to Scriptures. So you might be out in nature and just having a dialogue with God. This is called colloquy, intimate conversation between one friend and another, and you imagine yourself talking with Christ.
And I had one moment in my prayer trail where it wasn't anchored in Scripture, but I could hear the words of Christ to the particular details of my life, not even inspired by Scripture in that particular moment. But in real time, the mystery of God's presence was revealed in part to me.
Ryan McAnnally-Linz: So, "gazing upon God who gazes upon me in love," how does that work healing?
Bo Karen Lee: Such a good question. And my first thought, which may not answer the question, is that when I ponder, even people in ministry, the, the level of burnout is so high. The Great Resignation is hitting pastors too. And I think often, even in ministry, we identify ourselves with various measures of success, and we forget our core identity, and we forget the way God looks upon us.
I look upon myself with a much, much harsher gaze, or sometimes I look upon myself the way I imagine others to be looking upon me, which is the way I understand it, as Jean-Paul Sartre put it, "hell is other people." If I'm parasitic upon other people's approval of me, and I'm not sure I'm getting that, well, I'm in my own self made hell.
But the way out of hell, of alienating relationships, this constant need to perform and prove, the way out is to know how I am already gazed upon. There's this beautiful image, well, it's actually horrifying at the same time, the Still Face Experiment of Edward Tronick, and he invites the mother to lovingly interact with and gaze upon her infant or toddler child, and they're gazing upon one another with love.
And suddenly the psychologist says, okay, now I want you to offer the child a still face, just go stern and blank. And when the mother puts on the still face, the child is in such shock because there's no interaction. The gaze has become hardened, and the infant is so distressed, tries to get the mother's attention, tries to get the soft gaze, but you've only got the hard gaze. And their body starts fidgeting, and then they start shrieking and crying because the gaze has become hardened.
And I think most of us live with this hard gaze around us because that's how we perceive others looking on us or that's how we look upon ourselves. And so the gaze of love, there's evidence for this even in infant psychology, that we need for our security and our safest attachment to other human beings, we need that gaze of kindness, love, and compassion.
We were made for it. We were made to be loved and to love. And when I don't receive that, I become much less of the flourishing human that I've been invited to be. So I think trauma is really the opposite of human flourishing. But it's not the end of the story.
So there is something called earned secure attachment. I may have grown up with, you know, this weird parenting style that has created insecure, avoidant, ambiguous, ambivalent, anxious attachments. But if there is something or someone that offers security and safety over time, then I develop what's called the earned secure attachment and can then be in loving, healthy, trusting relationships with other human beings because this attachment style carries over into adult relationships. And similarly, spiritually speaking, I can grow in my confident awareness of God's love and gaze upon me, even if I didn't grow up with that originally.
So that can be learned through meditation, through prayer, through spiritual community. Now, if you were to ask what came first, interestingly, I think because God is incarnate in the world through other human beings, my first images of God often come through my first human relationships. But, in that circular fashion, if my relationship to God is healed, then it also starts healing my relationships to other human beings.
So what came first, the chicken or the egg? Well, the harm first comes through humans. The healing can come first through humans, but it doesn't always. But the healing can come through direct relationship with God, regardless of whether or not the humans in life treat us properly.
And so once I experience the, the loving gaze and compassion of God that I can return to human relationships less parasitic, less insecure, less anxious, less avoidant, less ambivalent, and ready to be in a more mature, trusting relationship anchored in my already being loved by that cosmic parent who is no longer a still face, but the gazing upon me with love face.
Ryan McAnnally-Linz: I wonder if I might ask, what has this form of spirituality meant to you personally? How, how has it changed your life?
Bo Karen Lee: Well, there are many different ways it's changed my life. I can give one example, with the wave of violence against Asian American Pacific Islanders just in the past year. I remember especially when the elderly were being targeted and several of them went smashing down to concrete sidewalks and were killed as a result. I remember night terrors and having nightmares of like a lion chasing my parents in the backyard and just so, so afraid for my parents and unable to sleep.
And then Noel Quintana being slashed in the subway, his face slashed and he's saying, "I cried for help and no one helped," Angelo Quinto, and then of course the women in Atlanta. It was too much to bear, and I think if I didn't have grounding in contemplative prayer, I would have just been an angry mess, an angry mess imploding in upon myself with rage.
And I did need a place to express the good and righteous rage. But I think if it weren't for contemplative prayer, I would have just stayed there. I don't feel stuck in that place anymore though. And so one example would be at the height of that season when I could not sleep and, you know, my pillow is drenched with tears, I remember being with my spiritual director.
And sometimes these contemplative prayer moments are by myself in Scripture with a 19th Annotation, sometimes it's in spiritual community and spiritual direction groups. In this instance, it was with my spiritual director, but because I am trained and seeped in this way of praying, it comes into my spiritual direction sessions as well.
And I'm sharing with her my doubt that there could be a God who's holding the world together, because this God certainly isn't holding my world together. So with Ivan Karamazov, I respectfully returned my ticket, you know, I, even if you exist, I don't like the way you're ordering the world, so goodbye. And I was, you know, ready to say goodbye, and she just invited me to imagine, is, is God with you in this place?
Where or how might God be with you? And and I just paused in this contemplative quiet with Sister Julie, and I started hearing the wailing of women, a sobbing, kind of like the Scripture, Rachel weeps, she wails, and she refuses to be comforted for her children are no more. So I'm just hearing the wailing of women like Rachel, wailing for their children.
And I think it's my community, Asian American women wailing for their daughters, mothers, sisters, fathers, grandfathers. And then I see in my imagination, there's a scene of women wailing, and I zero in on this scene, and I realize, oh my goodness, they are at the foot of the cross of this human Christ who was executed 2000 years ago.
And then it zeroed in even further, and I now see Mary holding the collapsed, breathless, executed Christ in her arms, wailing. I keep hearing the wailing. But Jesus, who is now extinguished in his life, he locks eyes with me, and he gazes upon me with like this depth of knowing, this depth of pain, compassion in his expression.
And he says to me, Bo, they killed me too. And somehow, his solidarity, his knowing with the pain of being killed unjustly, of knowing what that feels like. I was companioned in my grief. I was no longer so alone. Christ knew. Not only did he know, but he experienced it. He was in utter solidarity with the hurt that my skin color was experiencing.
It became more bearable to be witnessed and companioned. I mean, it didn't solve it right away. No, I stay with that Good Friday, Holy Saturday moment for as long as I need to. But then new sprouts begin to form and spring up.
Evan Rosa: For the Life of the World is a production of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture at Yale Divinity School. This episode featured theologian Bo Karen Lee. Production assistance by Macie Bridge. I'm Evan Rosa, and I edit and produce the show. For more information, visit us online at faith.yale.edu, where you can find past episodes, articles, books, and other educational resources that help people envision and pursue lives worthy of our humanity.
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