Tag: #discernment

Book Tour, Spirituality, Writing

Eric A. Clayton

Christine Eberle

Part of the Thankful Thursday Series

5/28/21, 8:06 p.m.
Dear Eric,

I have been enjoying your weekly emails since my friend Rob McChesney brought them to my attention last summer.  You have such a deft touch, using small, potent images—a pile of Legos, a burnt pot, a smoke detector—to lead the reader to a moment of spiritual insight.  They are like the best kind of daily Mass homilies!

It isn’t often that we get such a clear date stamp on the beginning of a friendship. But since emails are one of the few things I hoard (over 26K in the inbox and counting), I was able to find this gem. I’d been following Eric Clayton’s weekly emails on behalf of the Jesuit Conference (where he is Deputy Director of Communications) since the pandemic summer of 2020, but it wasn’t until the following May that I worked up the nerve to email him, complimenting his writing and sharing my own. Despite obvious demographic differences (he’s a father of young children, for starters), our mutual delight in mining the events of everyday life for spiritual truths led to the discovery of many other shared experiences and enthusiasms.

Eric A. Clayton

Eric is one of the most faithfully prolific writers I know. Those weekly columns keep coming, always using a simple image to unlock a spiritual insight. In 2022, they finally got a name: “Now Discern This.” (You can see them all and sign up here.) He also has a robust presence on Substack, where his “Story Scraps” cover all sorts of topics, including short fiction. 

And then there are the books. In 2022, he published Cannonball Moments: Telling Your Story, Deepening Your Faith, about which I said (among other things), “Using the lens of storytelling, Clayton helps each reader mine the riches of their own story, connecting them with the one great story of God as experienced through saints and strangers, grandmothers and toddlers, ordinary life and extraordinary dreams.” This year saw My Life with the Jedi: The Spirituality of Star Wars, which I confess sits on my shelf unread because I feel a compulsion to watch all nine movies first—in order. (If he’d published a book on the spirituality of Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, or LOTR, I’d have downed it by now.) This week, I preordered his latest, Finding Peace Here and Now: How Ignatian Spirituality Leads Us to Healing and Wholeness, coming in May 2025. Three books in four years; way to go, Eric!

Our mutual delight in mining the events of everyday life for spiritual truths led to the discovery of many other shared enthusiasms.

Eric has been so helpful in linking me to the wider Jesuit world: posting on the Conference website my article about the Ignatian Volunteer Corps; interviewing me on the AMDG Podcast, and inviting me to write for their Advent series for the last three years. (BONUS: click here to sign up for the new series, “Waiting and Wassailing: Daily Advent Meditations on Story and Song,” coming December 1 to an email near you.)

The most life-changing connection, however, was when Eric welcomed me to the Jesuit Media Lab’s Ignatian Creators Summit. During the last two summer gatherings, I’ve formed friendships with so many people who are using their manifold gifts—in writing, art, theater, film, photography, music, podcasting, and more—in the spirit of St. Ignatius, for the greater glory of God.  (It was at the first of these Summits that I finally met Eric in person; at the second, I learned what a wicked-competitive card player he is!) 

Here’s what Eric had to say about Finding God Along the Way: Filled with warmth, humor and a voracious eye for detail, Finding God Along the Way is Christine Eberle’s invitation to each of us to embark on our own inner pilgrimage. Along the way, Eberle promises to help us discover God in places both surprising and familiar. While we can’t all hop a flight to Spain, we can all journey deeper and deeper into our own selves, into those hidden recesses of our very souls, where God waits with delight. By inviting us into key scenes from her own Ignatian pilgrimage, Eberle masterfully weaves stories that both transport us to the land of St. Ignatius while also keeping us grounded in the spiritual reality of our own present lives. If you’re looking for an adventure into the soul, this is your book.

For a kindred spirit whose talent and productivity are equally matched by his kindness, generosity, and humor, I am truly grateful!

Book Tour, Service, Spirituality, Travel, Writing

Brendan McManus, SJ

Christine Eberle

Part of the Thankful Thursday Series

As I prepared to walk the Ignatian Camino—knowing I was planning on writing about it—I tried not to read many other Camino memoirs.  I wanted to reach my own insights, free from the risk of parroting someone else’s. I made an exception, however, for Irish Jesuit Brendan McManus’ marvelous work, The Way to Manresa: Discoveries Along the Ignatian Camino. I’m so glad I did!

Brendan McManus, SJ

The book narrates the experience of a priest who had walked the Camino as a young man and set out to do it again after an exhausting stint of suicide-bereavement ministry.  His hopes were thwarted when he fell and sustained a serious injury on the second morning of his solo journey. He pressed on (with the approval of a medical center) for several days until pain forced him to abandon the walk. He used public transportation to visit highlights of the Way before returning home, where the search for answers continued. 

While it may be hard to imagine getting a whole book out of a pilgrimage cut off at the knees (no pun intended) on Day Two, McManus’ account of the spiritual wrestling match brought on by pain and disappointment makes this a worthwhile read for anyone dealing with an unexpected and unwelcome turn of events.

McManus’ account of the spiritual wrestling match brought on by pain and disappointment makes this a worthwhile read for anyone dealing with an unexpected and unwelcome turn of events.

I later learned that Fr. McManus is a prolific author, and that most of his books have to do with the “other” Camino—the famous one, the Camino de Santiago (Way of St. James). He is currently based at the Manresa Spirituality Center in Dublin, but spends time each summer back in Spain, supporting other pilgrims through the Camino Companions program.

His latest book, co-written with Katherine O’Flynn, FCJ, is called Living the Camino Back Home: Ignatian Tips for Keeping the Camino Spirit Alive.  Publication date is December 5, but if you’re free tomorrow afternoon (Friday, November 15, 2:00 Eastern) you can see McManus in conversation during a live book launch event.  I just registered (at no cost) and hope you will too!

Brendan McManus could not have been kinder or more encouraging when I reached out to him about my book.  Here’s what he said:

Christine has done a wonderful job of distilling the essence of pilgrimage and integrating Ignatian Spirituality into a wonderfully engaging narrative. With a lovely light touch she manages to capture the daily struggles and challenges (bags, beds and blisters!) that make for the essential inner journey that mirrors the outer journey in Ignatian Spain. This book beautifully illustrates Ignatian themes of trust, freedom and listening to the Spirit. A great Ignatian pilgrim read!

For this living witness that “everything has the potential to call forth a deepening of our life in God” (a la Ignatius), I am truly grateful.

Spirituality

All that Glitters

Christine Eberle

The rays of sunset over the bay angled their way between condominiums all the way to the ocean, casting golden beams along the shoreline. I had gone for a walk to clear my mind and prepare for a book discussion the following week. As I enjoyed the enthusiastic remnant of people, dogs, and birds with whom I was sharing the waning beach day, a colorful glint from the surf caught my eye.

I’m not much of a shell collector, but this one was a color I’d never seen. Such a vibrant blue—could it be just a trick of the lingering light? Or was it not a shell at all, but a piece of sea glass revealed by a receding wave? The shops in these towns are full of sea glass souvenirs; could I finally be spotting one in its natural element?

Breaking my stride, I walked over to investigate. The royal blue color held. I dug it out of the wet sand, and discovered that the brilliant object in my hand was indeed glass. Broken glass. (Probably a shard of some pricey water bottle, judging from the color.)

Had I been in a different mood, this would have prompted quite the internal rant. Why does a company waste precious resources creating such a thing? Why does anyone buy it? But if they must, why not at least recycle it properly, instead of doing whatever led to this fragment’s washing up on shore, just waiting for some little kid to slice a foot on it?

These thoughts did cross my mind (obviously, since I just wrote them here). But as I held onto my disappointing treasure, it occured to me what a potent metaphor it was for the need for discernment.

How many shiny things catch our attention each day? From objects no one needs to own, to arguments no one needs to have, the distracting temptations are limitless. Then there are life’s bigger choices. Who hasn’t fallen for a sparkly person only to discover that he or she is far from the partner of our dreams, or pursued a job opportunity that seemed lucrative only to be felled by its soul-crushing day-to-day tasks?

These dilemmas of decision-making were on my mind because so many choices lie ahead of me right now. Two weeks into my “encore career,” I have left behind a steady paycheck and daily routines to pursue the dream of a freelance existence. Invitations are beckoning; a quick glance at my Speaker Page will reveal only some of what’s on the horizon. I’m also preparing an online class that starts at the end of this month, and pondering possibilities for 2020 that could take me as far as Nome, Alaska or northern Spain. (And of course everyone keeps asking me if I’ve started my next book . . . do I even have time for that?) How do I choose what do do with my hours, my days? How do I—in the words of a poem I jotted on an art retreat at Cranaleith this summer—

resist
with tender patience
any false
fierce urgency of
Now
that would fill
the arms of my
datebook
with everything that
raised its hand
First?

My sunset walk didn’t answer these questions, but I’m hanging on to the shard of “sea” glass. (And not just to save a child’s foot.) I want to keep it before me as one small reminder of the need to pause in the face of shimmery possibilities . . . to investigate, pray, ponder, discern. What is God really inviting me to? What’s just an accident waiting to happen?

To the One who is endlessly communicating—even through trash on the beach—I give endless thanks.

And to the wonderful women of the Cornerstone group at St. Anne’s Church in Fair Lawn, NJ–whose invitation propelled me on my beach walk–thank you for such a warm welcome and engaging conversation (not to mention astoundingly good coffee cake)!

May your ordinary days be extraordinarily blessed.