I was a Jesuit for eleven years and have some experience with the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius. I did the thirty-day retreat in the novitiate and a 19th annotation retreat when deciding whether to be ordained or leave the Society. Finally, a friend, a secular Jew and a man of deep compassion, asked me to lead his Episcopalian wife through them while she underwent treatment for leukemia. This is that story.
This last experience was profound and, in many ways, signaled that the Exercises, as Jesuit discipline, had escaped the shelter and confines of the Order that Ignatius founded and had been home to them for 500 years.
Daniel Shurman’s wife, Bonnie Johnson, had been diagnosed with Leukemia. She was going to be in isolation for at least 30 days while her immune system was destroyed so that she could receive a bone transplant. She decided to undertake the Exercises while being forced to be virtually alone.
Thirty days became almost 80 days and included several near-death experiences. I suspected that she had a very grave diagnosis and that the chances of her survival might be slim. Her doctors confirmed this as the treatment progressed. This might be more like hospice work than the Exercises as I had experienced them.
It’s a given that a director of the Exercises will have his or her own director. I was then and still am on the fringes of the Catholic community. I reached out for backup and consulted with several Jesuits but decided to use my Zen teacher as my guide rather than any of the directors with whom I’d talked. This was, I suppose, a result of my own needs, but the level of discomfort among the Jesuits I spoke with about dealing with death and the process of meditation was startling. Another factor was my gut told me the best way to do the Exercises exactly as Ignatius indicated (or as best as I could), without any interpretation or adaptation, and just allow whatever grace was available to work through on its own. This is how my teacher and I work with the koans, which are more recondite than the Exercises, traversing language, culture, and time very distant from our own.
Most of the Jesuits I talked with tinkered with the Exercises, substituting their more modern, enlightened take on Ignatius’s straightforward and rigorous approach. It’s impossible to avoid interpreting, adding layers of meaning. Sometimes, this helps, but more often, it gets in the way. My work on the koans leads me to believe there is a level of work that’s like hitting gold—beyond experience and interpretation. It is unpredictable.
In Bonnie’s case, it was a given that she’d interpret. She was a woman of extraordinary accomplishment both in her personal life and her intellectual life, a leader in her Episcopal community as well as someone whose work was highly regarded in the world of Silicon Valley, where she explored the effects of technology from the human side, both in product development and user interface. But even during the strenuous medical treatment, she always returned to the sequence of meditations, the specified number of prayers and meditations, and the examen, as closely as possible to Ignatius’s recommendation.
When she was finally released from Stanford Hospital, the medical team told her that they’d done about all they could and that she ought to go home and get her affairs in order. It was unexpected when her blood indicators showed that she was disease-free after a few months—almost miraculous. During what is called “The Election” in the Exercises, she looked at ordination in the Episcopal church. Within a few months, she began a three-year program at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, worked on the connections between the exercises and the mysticism of Julian of Norwich, asked the well-known author Bill Barry, S.J. to be her spiritual director, edited one of his books about friendship with God, began a career as a lay preacher, and worked as a chaplain in nursing homes on North Carolina where she and Daniel lived on the outer banks. It was more than eleven years before her cancer returned with a vengeance, and she died. Alas, there was no “real” miracle to use for canonization—just the total miracle of life itself.
Although I am still skeptical about the Exercises and what they do, that mindset exists more in the realm of speculation, which is where it should be. I do think/know that Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises come from another source, which is precisely where to look.
When I seek inspiration to work for justice and make a difference, I reread Alinsky’s rules for radicals to get a template. When I want to be inspired by the life of Jesus and search there to discern the Will of the Creator, I turn towards the Exercises. This gift from Ignatius and the Spirit has escaped the bounds of his organization. Exactly right again.
This is Bonnie’s story.
Bonnie’s Writing:
"Finding God in All Things"
https://jesuskoan.blogspot.com/2021/06/finding-god-in-all-things.html
Bonnie Johnson Shurman
Jan. 20, 1944-June 2, 2011
For more of my writing on Father Ignatius’s Exercises, here is a list:
Newsflash! Pope announces changes to the Spiritual Exercises
https://jesuskoan.blogspot.com/2024/01/big-changes-for-jesuit-spirituality.html
Looking at The Particular Examen of Saint Ignatius with Fresh Eyes
https://jesuskoan.blogspot.com/2022/01/looking-at-particular-examen-of-saint.html
Occam’s Razor of Emotional Discernment
Novacula Occami
https://jesuskoan.blogspot.com/2021/09/occams-razor-of-emotional-discernment.html
Head versus Heart, Faith and Reason, Reason and the Emotions
The Discernment of Spirits in the Spiritual Exercises
https://jesuskoan.blogspot.com/2021/10/head-versus-heart-faith-and-reason.html
The Dynamism of Desire, A Book Conversation
https://jesuskoan.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-dynamism-of-desire-book-conversation.html
