In the final set piece of the Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius invites exercitants to recognise God present in all things—‘the heavens, elements, plants, fruits, cattle, and all the rest’ (Exx 236)—as well as in the human beings who surround them, and the gifts they acknowledge that God has given them. Indeed, Ignatian spirituality is often summed up in the phrase ‘finding God in all things’. This points to the truth that our experience of God is usually mediated, that it is in experiencing aspects of the world around us that we come to recognise the presence of God at work. To say this invites the question ‘How?’ How can I come to see God there in the richness and multiplicity of my everyday experience? Sometimes it may seem easy and natural. Many will glimpse God in gazing at a star-lit sky, as Ignatius himself did, or in holding their new-born child for the first time. It may well not be so easy, though, to perceive God in a crowded commuter train early on a Monday morning, or when I receive the diagnosis of a serious illness. Many of the articles in this number of The Way describe ways in which the authors have found themselves able to discover God in unexpected places, or at least in places beyond the conventionally sacred settings of church, prayer and worship.
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