I have always loved biographies and autobiographies.
I especially enjoy those of leaders, as well as the great spiritual writers and read several such books every year. Two of the more significant ones this year, for me, were The Pastor by Eugene Peterson and All is Grace by Brennan Manning.
I also have a biography/study of Vincent van Gogh I have been just waiting to read (hard to find the time for this luxury), At Eternity's Gate: The Spiritual Vsion of Vincent van Gogh by Kathleen Erickson.
Ignatius is one of my primary Historical Mentors (an idea from Bobby Clinton's work on mentoring) and I have now read over a dozen books about the life of Ignatius and I have two more sitting on the shelf waiting to be read. I also have several older, out of print biographies on Ignatius on the Kindle.
Ignatius is such an inspiration because of the way these following things flowed together in his life:
organizational, strategic and empowering leadership
spiritual formation and his work of spiritual direction
missional service to the world
life long learning
Those four themes are at the heart of Leadership ConneXtions International and the leadership development work we do around the world. So, when I read Ignatius, I am constantly inspired as he models the way in these qualities and, models the way in terms of what their synthesis looks like.
HOWEVER . . .
a vital caveat must be front and center on those things mentioned above. Here is that qualifier.
Everything Ignatius did flowed out of his inner world. And Ignatius inner world was aessentially a heart that was transformed through intimacy with Christ. Once his interior world was so shaped, it then infused everything he did.
In one sense, before he was anything else (leader, director, teacher, learner) he was a mystic.
And all that I mean by that word is "A mystic is one who encounters and experiences the Presence of God."
It is the presence, the work and the Word of the revealing God that is encountered and experienced in relational, affective ways that lead to the transformation of life.
The transformation of life is:
the renewing of the image of God within us,
the flowering of the fruit of the Spirit, which is simply the moral quality of God's own life becoming ours,
the reordering of everything in our life so that it is centered around Christ, surrendered to His will and directed toward His purposes.
Such relational intimacy and inner transformation is always the gift/grace of God. At the same time, the Scriptures are unanimously affirming of the responsive engagement of the individual who receives and responds to the initiating work of God.
Ignatius lived in this reality on a daily basis and it is what created a "spirit that moved within him" and which ultimately was attractive to a generation (and in fact successive generations).
In other words, if you are called to be a leader, teacher, director, pastor, missional servant in the world, banker, nurse, carpenter, or anything else . . . you are first called to be a mystic.
Imagine a world full of missional mystics, who are finding God in all things, and especially, in their chosen, bestowed vocations!
Imagine you being such a person.
May God give you the desires of His heart on these things.
And perhaps reading a good biography or two, of those who have gone before us and who have become who we long to become, may be a companion for you in 2012.
Brian K. Rice
Evangelicals on the Ignatian Way
Leadership ConneXtions International
www.lci.typepad.com
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