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1. Remembering Experience. Recall your own experience of the Pandemic, especially after the Holy Week Retreat. What would be 3-5 stepping stones, key experiences that have brought you to where you are at this time since Holy Week. What impact have these experiences had on you, whether they be joyful or consoling, or painful and desolate?

2. It is said that one grace that this COVID situation has brought to us all is it helped uncover or reveal to us what is truly essential and what are peripheral in terms of value to us. Thus, these months and days would have revealed to us invitations to shed off, to be stripped of or or areas in which to die to self.

This is similar to what the Greek athletes called "askesis" that which the athletes choose to say "no" to or to forego so that they may say "yes" to the championship. "Askesis" is the root word of "asceticism"--the art of letting go of things so we can be free and focused on "the one thing necessary"

Examine yourself then: At this point of the Pandemic times,

a) what have you been invited "to let go of," to say "no" to, to die to yourself in?

b) what have you been called to embrace or say "yes" to?

c) what have you been called to let go of, but are not ready to surrender yet? what have you been called to receive and embrace, but are still not ready to embrace as of yet? Please write these out, one padlet for each of the three columns--Letting Go, Not Ready, Embrace.

3. Hold these significant values in your hand and bring them into an intimate dialogue with Jesus as you contemplate the Parable of the Weeds and the Wheat.

Confess to Jesus honestly the state of your heart as regards these values. Listen to Jesus respond to your concerns.

4. For our sharing, be ready to share as context, a bit of your stepping stones;  Prepare 3 containers so you may have somewhere to put on strips of paper the different values you wrote on Letting Go [Dying to Self-RED]; Ready to Embrace [Yes to New Life--GREEN] and Not Yet Ready [Yellow].

5. We shall use these clusters of values in our "Ritual of Letting Go" to conclude our Spiritual Conversation tomorrow.

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Matthew 13,24- 13,30

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Wheat & The Weeds | English | Parables Of Jesus

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- comfort zone, what is familiar
- face to face training, teaching
- way of life as I knew it and enjoyed (malling, dining out, watching movies, traveling to places)
- predicted income for 2020

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- online learning
- online facilitation
- increased academic involvement
- being in limbo for a while income wise
- my gray hair (symbolizing my more authentic self)
- doing things differently (embracing digital ways)

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- I have nothing to write in this column. Initially, items in ready to embrace are in this column (like doing things digitally), but out of necessity and with chances to do these things during the ECQ, I discovered pwede naman pala. So it moved to ready to embrace.

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• Living life on an intimate scale, simpler more meaningful
• Writing projects about kindness and compassion, journeys and conversion
• Smaller studio work, and more grounded in San Pablo
• New ways of practicing and teaching Zen
• Partnership with Boots
• Discovering Diego
• This Emmaus Covid group

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• Sense of security and identity that working for ABS-CBN and the Lopez family provided
• Sense of purpose and identity coming from my clay artisan community
• People who have worked with us and served us well: Levi, Elmer, Crixel, Ofel, Mang Eddie
• Some aspects of life as I knew it: luxury of having a driver and staff to help me
• Expectations of what would have been a robust year for Casa San Pablo
• Sense of security that Boots will always have some reserve stash
• Sense of security about the stability of Casa
• Attachment to my Zen teacher
• Expectations of what college life will be like for Diego

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• Not ready to let go of the call to be a writer, if anything that is becoming clearer
• Not ready to let go of the call to be a clay artisan, if anything that is becoming purer
• Not ready to let go of Casa San Pablo’s mission to put our hometown on the map, to tell stories about San Pablo, to be a creative hub, no matter how small
• Not ready to surrender our right to fight and speak up against injustice and authoritarian ways, but don’t know how
• Not ready to give up on the innkeeping business
• Not ready to return to old ways of rampant materialism, hectic pace, pollution
• Not ready to give up Zen-Ignatian spirituality
• Not ready to be seen
• Not ready for a drastic shift in lifestyle

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- The STD before the SJ in my name and the belief that you need that to cast a wider net for a catch.
- For now, St. Ignatius Spirituality Center and the chance to bet there to grow Permaculture haven.
- For now, unfulfulled "n-ach" and image of the "Province expert on Ignatian Spirituality"
- The previous notion of physical limits of religious experience and religious encounter.
- "The Lonely Apostle" tendency

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-  Believe in my gifts in retreat-giving and spirituality and see God re-create this to respond to new emerging apostolic needs in the new normal. [God seems to be giving me a big retreat house!]
- Building a "condo-cienda" on the 10th floor, to continue to proclaim the good news of permaculture (and plant without workers to help me).
-  to work in a more relaxed way on five monographs to a binder-book key chapters of my research for apostolic use, hopefully till December 2020:
--- Composition, seeing the Place:  Locating God's chosen space for a retreatant's redemption
--- Emplotment of Conversion.How God orchestrates a retreatant's conversion (and how ego or the evil one resists or blocks).
--- Discernment of Story: Might there be "rules for discernment of stories?"
--- Giving the Exercises: Spiritual Direction in a (new) Narrative Key.
--- Celebrating Three Retreatants, in thanksgiving for telling this writer their Sacred stories.and several others with vignettes. Case Study book for Spiritual Direction in a Narrative Key.
- Embracing, listening to, growing this new unfolding call: Spiritual Direction and Retreat-Giving in Digital space.
---receive the gift of a network (SRP-IHS Hub) to experiment with in safe, nurturing space, with genuine desire to minister others in spirituality

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Not quite ready . . .
- to give up permaculture experiments
- retreat-giving, retreat guides mentoring, spiritual direction to the limits imposed by quarantine.
- to abort the child named "Spiritual Exercises as Narratives of Conversion."

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Thank you, Lord! Thanks for LIstening.

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Not ready to let go of an old way of relating w/ Mommy & embrace a new one.

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Ready to embrace a new way of relating w/ Ianna.

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The farm - as someone who started it, the guilt of having Pinky continue it, as additional income/financial back-up,  and give Pinky all the space to make decisions on it.

Past ways of managing my resources , that didn't work well

Past habits that have affected my health,

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Not Ready to Let Go:
The way of being a father that I had grown up  - controlling, one-way, stern, etc.
The Way of being a spouse that I had been exposed to.
The feeling of fear, smallness over the perceived   powerlessness and vulnerability of being  artist - by myself , no one to help , delegate to.
Some habits that impede my productivity/effectivity

Not Yet Ready to Embrace:
To be the spouse and partner Pinky needs

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Not ready to fully come out quarantine & go back into the pandemic

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Invited to almost let go of my original idea of a united front.

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a more prayerful, spiritual life , that would affect all the other aspects of my life for good
to be the artist that would make a difference, survive  and thrive in this new environment
becoming , and learning to be the father I can be for my children, that my children need
to not put my faith on material things, money, yet act responsibly, to build my financial independence

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• Life on an intimate scale
• Being a small studio artisan
• Writing about compassion, kindness, journey of conversion
• life as simple innkeeper
• new ways of doing zen
• Diego’s new college life
• Journeying with our Emmaus circle

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Fr. Vic Baltazar, S.J.

There seems to be an over-arching midlife transition dynamics over the different life experiences of people.

Like any transition, the midlife transition involves a dying to "old" self and a rising ti "new" self. Because there is dying, there is grief involved, referring to this dying self; and because there is an awakening to something new, there is anxiety and worry involved referring to this future self.

Perhaps this something that you may bring to deeper reflection and prayer: What is transitioning in you? Old self and new self . . .  where is the dying happening? where is this awakening to new life happening? What do you need from God to take this "Paschal" leap?

Then within the overarching midlife transition process, there seems to be smaller transitions which differ  from person to person:
-- whole trust to wounded trust-
to healed and restored trust
-  active work-in-office to
work from home; to life
of retirement
-   parent-child relationship to
"friendship"
-   middle adulthood to late
adulthood--dealing with
diminishment, with closer
approach to death
- less doing, more being.

what are some signs of midlife transition to greater wholeness and integreation?

- Essentials of personal identity open up and are brought to question, inviting the person to be more forgiving of polarities in the self and seek out new synthesis of the self that are forming gradually. [and when this dynamic in yourself happens alongside your partner's midlife transition, and/or your child's adolescent of young adult transition, all these can be potentially explosive!

- a transition in your marriage or parenting, an invitation into deepening of friendship of partner-spouses or parent-child, a process which need all persons concerned to embrace individuation at the same time that each embrace communion as well (unity in diversity).

2. in the area of individuation: recall how Yahweh (ako si ako nga!) revealed Godself to midlifing Moses as one who is presence, an eternal subject with out any need for predicates.

- individuation can also mean to make choices so the better person may come out of previous contradictions-- [i want to be a good father but I grew up with the notion of father is the control, the master of the family. Might there be a gentler side to the father-friend who exercises leadership in the family in a more gracious way--as adult with fellow adults?

- Individuation can also mean exploring new ways, new attitudes, new behaviors and expanding one's repertoir of "how to be the good me.

- Finally, it is when the individual enjoys greater clarity of who the "I" is when this person will be able to enjoy a genuine encounter with an "Other" God-- previous to this, the greater part of God may be but a projection-- of the God we need or the God we are prepared to receive. Did you notice the revelation of God becoming clearer and more alive in you these days?