1. The everyday as training ground for spiritual living
2. Contentment as center of spiritual living
3. Praying that connects the everyday to spiritual life

• Prayer of loving attentiveness
• Meditation before and after an event
• Creating prayers of repetition

A basic rule in the life of meditation is to experience the detail in the whole and the small in the large.  From this perspective we cannot overestimate the value of daily life as a testing ground which offers many opportunities.

The very "normal" and often "gray" appearing everyday is an important practice field for the realization of our spiritual life.  Here our high flying plans and principals are "grounded" and bound up in the reality of actual life.  Now and then there are outstanding heights and unexpected depths in the spiritual life.  The actual inner growth, however, is accomplished in large part under the "sun, wind and rain" of the everyday happenings, tasks and relationships.  The everyday is the place of training for the great decisions of life.  It is the place where the once-in-a-lifetime decisions are realized day after day.

Therefore, this has to do with "tuning in" our plans and desires again and again to the will of God in matters large and small.  In this connection Willi Lambert  used the image of "seasoning to taste".  When we select a particular food it can be seasoned in many different ways, with some seasonings being rejected immediately.  In this manner the large and small decisions of  life can be "seasoned" according to the will of God.  Important life time decisions are never a once-for-all act making them a finished matter.  Every significant decision unfolds in the living out of life.   It flows on and on in the small decisions of the everyday and shapes them.  Alongside that there is another experience.  In carrying out the small daily decisions we grow and prepare for the great decisions of life which will most certainly stand before us one day.  Everyday decisions are the training ground for the great decisions of life and these are realized in everyday living.

This is closely connected with another matter.  Nothing that we think, hear or read influences us as powerfully as what we do, yes, what we consciously practice.  This is the concern of the exercises of this entire book that through practice we give ourselves to the process of growing in love, becoming more aware of the process and how to deepen it.

Growing in love is possible as long as a person lives.  Response to the love of God, in whatever way it is given, is a life long process: the way of discipleship.  It has already been said that discipleship is not imitation. We live under different internal and external circumstances than Jesus Christ did in Palestine and we also live under different circumstances than the person next to us.  Our life and all that goes with it is the "material" which  forms our discipleship.

In order to better understand this allow me to share a personal experience.  In a sermon I heard long ago it was clearly stated that as human beings we have absolutely nothing, that we can offer God.  To explain this further, the pastor used the example of a child.  The child cannot give anything to the mother other than what the child has already received from the mother.  With this image an inner resistance stirred in me which I could not explain.  Why this image didn't ring true for me I understood only after I had my own children.  Every mother and father have experienced when a small child wants to give something, the adults must first provide the "material" - then the child "makes" something out of the material itself.  Perhaps the child sews a small covering, paints a picture or buys something from its savings.  It is all done with great joy showing how much the child invests of itself in such a gift.  So I often see my own life given to me daily in large and small pieces out of which I may turn out a gift of love, albeit unfinished.  From this comes an experience that is always full of mystery for me.  As the child concerns itself with giving something to the parent, its love for the parent grows and deepens.  Love grows in giving, in concerning ourselves with others.  Many parents who have cared for a handicapped child can testify to this.  And this inner law is valid also for the response of our love to the love of God.  In our very attempt to give a response of love, love grows.  Here our spiritual house is built on a rock as Jesus says (Matt. 7:24 ff.).  So this section brings us to a crucial place in living out a spiritual journey of love.

When it is only our everyday that provides the "material" for giving our response of love, this everyday with its large and small happenings, tasks and encounters gains a meaning hitherto unrecognized. When we seek to make fruitful some of these possibilities for our spiritual life, then many new ways open up.  This eleventh week provides an abundance of materials offered in three variations with the accent differently placed: (1) acceptance of our personal destiny, (2) coping with the everyday tasks and (3) personal relationships.  These variations can supplement each other, but each can also stand alone.  In daily life these dimensions cannot be separated.

On this basis we must decide for ourselves what "is good" (Ignatius) for us. Should we undertake all of the material for this week, should we limit ourselves to one of the three variations corresponding to our basic decisions or should we select two related exercises whose themes "speak" particularly to us at that moment.  (Keep in mind that the other exercises can be taken up at another time.)

Further Elaboration:

Why was this form chosen for the eleventh week which deviates from all the other weeks?

 In no other place in the original correspondence course did the experiences of the participants differ as widely as with this material  embracing the everyday.  While many participants acknowledged that the meditations on the themes had by contrast less depth for them then the previous weeks, others wrote that in these weeks they experienced the goal and core of the entire course.  Here, finally, they found the union of prayer and life. How do we explain these different experiences?

- The first possibility I see is in the different starting points: "There are people who live from above, and there are others who live from below", we were told  by a retreat leader in a meditation course.  These words were based on the rich treasure of personal experience and from the experiences of people  with whom the retreat leader had worked as a spiritual companion.   He stated his opinion more precisely:  The spiritual life has to do with integration of the whole person.  Whoever "lives from above" has the task of integrating more and more the entire area of the earthly, as well as life's destiny, tasks, and relationships into one's spiritual dynamic.  That is often a more difficult and protracted process, indeed, even a painful one, because such  people experience "external" things as obstacles in their way.  They must practice growing into wholeness precisely with these apparent obstacles.

 On the other hand, whoever "lives from below" is acquainted with the heights and depths of life.  Here is their world.  Their task is to see earthly circumstances item by item as transitory and to transcend them to their ultimate significance and deepest meaning.  Thus in their own way they can encounter God in deeper ways and so mature more and more into wholeness.

 No one chooses their way of being.  That  is a given.  Therefore, with our decision lies no value judgment.  Nevertheless, it is possible that these different ways  lead to very different experiences with the same exercise material.

- The second explanation I see lies in the material itself: "How can we continue to meditate on  encountering a person when from the outset we don't know if we will meet anyone that day?" asked a participant.  In the materials there are situations that each person must experience and work out in their own way, but it does not necessarily mean at the moment the exercise is "due".  That can be a disadvantage if at that moment the situation is so distant from us that we cannot enter into it at all in a genuine meditation.  But it can also be an advantage: in emergency situations, for example, we can often be so deeply and emotionally involved that we are not capable of real meditation.  Then it is good to reach back to earlier learnings and experiences we have had in the protected space of emotional equilibriu.

Whether we have in mind particular events, tasks or personal relationships, daily life can only become the "material" for our response of love if we take this material as "a given" and not resist it.  Therefore, our first task above all else is to acknowledge that God has given us a very specific life.  Obedience which places God ahead of everything else means to accept our life as given and assigned by God as it has grown and developed up until now.   Our particular life brings together countless components.   It is determined by the time and circumstances into which we were born, by our personal talents and education, and by the people who have shaped us positively as well as negatively.  To this also belongs everything that confronts us daily with joys and disappointments, welcomed and unwelcomed tasks, planned and unplanned encounters.

Here lies the decisive underlying principle for the realization of our spiritual life: that we practice understanding this more and more not as "blind fate" but as unique, inexchangeable material ordained by God.  Only by accepting our life as gift and responsibility will we find our way of following Jesus.  Only when we are in, with and under the realization of our life can we shape our life according to God's plan.
Therefore, it is important to clarify a common misunderstanding.  When we accept life in the way mentioned above as from God, that is not an attitude of fatalism.  It is precisely this acceptance that makes us vigilant in deciding what we can and should change.  What remains beyond that we receive as personally entrusted to us by God and as important for the building of God's kingdom.  These are important tasks from which no one can relieve us.  As long as we resist this or flee to some imaginary world, we take away the possibility of cultivating the material assigned to us.  This is not a resigned attitude, but a sober "so it is".  This gives us the predisposition to act in accordance with the facts and thus give a true response of love.

With that another word comes to mind from the thinking of Meister Eckhart  and the Mystics influenced by him: Gelassenheit, an attitude of letting go with trust.  Only when we "give" ourselves to God with everything that we are and have, indeed with all that we encounter will we be given the gift of God's abundance.  Only when we receive what happens to us with trust in God's love, and accept that our life in its "so", "here" and "now" is God's gift and task for us   only then will we be led step by step into the realization of the place God wants us to be with our uniqueness.  It is in this place we will be given the gift of God's abundance.

The abundance of God, the focus of the tenth week, can overwhelm us without being able to identify the reason.  It can also be that in the gradual process of maturation we grow more and more into a fullness without being aware of continuous progress in any given time.  With God it is different, very different.  Above all, the only thing we find helpful to experience and deepen inner  growth is regular prayer which does not exclude the everyday, but draws it is.

• Prayer of loving attentiveness

The basic component of a spiritual journey is the inner posture of awareness, like people waiting for the Master so they may be open to him when he comes and knocks (Luke 12:36). The call to wait runs through the entire New Testament.  Christians are waiting people.  Waiting does not need to be limited to the return of Christ in the last days.  Whoever waits for Christ  (who always comes differently than we imagined. See Matt. 24:23-27; 42-44;50) is being trained in waiting and watchful attention for the Lord who meets them in, with and under the daily events of their life.  Meister Eckhart used the image of different clothing with which God comes to us.  Sometimes it is joy, other times sorrow.  Today God meets us in the fullness, tomorrow in the emptiness.  Meister Eckhart warns of the great danger of confusing the "clothes of God" for God's self.  Only love can prevent this confusion.  The deeper a person's love grows the easier it is for him or her to recognize Christ in the various ways in which Christ meets them.  This has to do with life long training, "to break through things and ...  to grasp the God therein" .  For that a form of prayer can help which Willi Lambert  designates as "the prayer of loving attentiveness".  It is the one form of prayer which - outside the daily set prayer time - we can practice again and again throughout the day and which promises rich fruit.  Whether it be five or ten minutes or a short interval between assignments, it helps to insert a brief "buffer zone" between the main tasks of the day so the day can be clearly structured.  Otherwise the various tasks grind upon each other just as vertebrae do when the discs are damaged.  A brief look of loving attentiveness toward God, a brief assessment of what we have just done and a brief focus on what still lies ahead, constitutes the meaning of this prayer and its various possibilities.  It can help us experience daily life more and more in the light of God.

In conjunction with this exercise Willi Lambert takes up the Jesuit tradition of "examen", the fifteen minute reflection in the middle of the day which for Ignatius was "the most important" in the spiritual life.  Different words specified in this quarter hour give clear indication of what it is about and where the accents might lie:

When it speaks about evaluation, then a conviction is being expressed that everyday life itself, that every experience has a value concealed in it that one can overlook or acknowledge, unearth and treasure... When the focus is about the prayer of responsibility that means... it has to do with a silent listening, speaking, conversation event... dialogue...

In the prayer of responsibility the position of a person is determined by being in the presence of God.  When the focus is the consideration of life that means the subject of attention is our whole life vis-a-vis others and God.  The prayer of loving attentiveness... says that the mystery of life is disclosed only in loving attentiveness.  Looking to the amazing attentiveness of God enables us to be attentive to love .

Whoever concerns themselves with this form of prayer and practices it, I can promise without reservation, that their spiritual life will acquire greater depth.  Therefore, different possibilities are offered in these exercise weeks.  Explore what seems to fit you and put aside that with which you are uncomfortable.  Above all discover for yourself genuine possibilities for this prayer to permeate your entire day.

Many years ago I was returning home by train from a retreat.  On the train I was attempting the form of prayer we have just spoken about, when a young man rushed by me.  There was a "rip" and the loop for hanging my jacket was torn off.  Should I get angry?  Should I wait for him to apologize?  Or should I inquire further? ... Dear God, what are you saying to me with this?. . When do I also rush by people inconsiderately without realizing something has been damaged?  Or, why was the loop of my jacket torn?  It was already well worn and if I were to fix it,  I would discover other places as well on the jacket in need of repair.  Is it not good to occasionally check worn out places? ...What had happened?  I had a completely everyday experience, but the situation had led me into a quiet follow up meditation and into recognizing the potential application of this event for my life and for it becoming something fruitful.

Situations, tasks, and personal relationships often fill up the day without pause.  One thing presses upon the other with scarcely any time for an event to reveal its potential spiritual depth.  Therefore, from time to time, it is well to take an event from the flood rushing by into the protected space of meditation in order to experience its spiritual depth, its "message for me".

This can also happen in another way with preparatory meditation.  When we slowly and attentively meditate on work that lies before us or imagine the process ahead of time or in meditation prepare to receive someone coming to see us, then we can, in such sheltered space of meditation, "grasp" what lies before us in its symbolic depth, application and spiritual meaning.

Such preparatory meditation releases strength for doing.  It allows me to the degree that I keep myself open to what has occured in the meditation to encounter another person from my center.   For this an additional form of prayer can help.

Who has not experienced that during times of prayer significant insights arise that are of such importance that we take them into our daily living.  However, in the course of the day new impressions drown out what was so strongly perceived earlier that it disappears as if blotted from memory.  Or we read a book that says something essential to us, yet we quickly forget what we have read!  Is there a way we can take important insights into ourselves so they become a part of us, permeating and shaping us?  In these situations I have personally experienced self formulated, repeated prayer as helpful.  I formulate a "phrase" for a repetitious prayer  that appears important for me for the coming days.  I also use this form when I want to retain something that is important to me such as an insight from a book.  Therefore, I separate the essential from the unessential and formulate words that can penetrate to the level of meditation.   In this personally developed form I repeat the prayer frequently throughout the day.  Indeed, the fact that it is already formulated means I reach for it at any time when I find myself in a situation which requires these prayer thoughts.

I encourage you to formulate such prayers again and again yourself.  This practice bears much fruit.