John Predmore: To the Frontiers - Ignatian Artists, Poets, Writers, and Seekers

I am a Jesuit priest of the USA East Province who has an avocation of binding art and creativity to spirituality. I have a SoWa (South End) studio in Boston and I give retreats and spiritual direction using creative techniques to make a person's Ignatian prayer particular and unique. Ignatian Spirituality is the cornerstone of my work; art, poetry, prose is a way to help us get to the heart of conversations in prayer.

Tuesday, September 29, 2026

For September 29th

Consideration: The First Principle and Foundation

The Principle and Foundation is a statement of human meaning and purpose emerging from a synthesis of the 17 basic principles. They assume we want to be actively involved in and cooperating with what God is doing in the world. It focuses upon what God is trying to accomplish in the world and how we can help in this co-creative process. It can become the basis of daily discernment and major decisions.

It is not to be prayed but reflected upon sentence by sentence.

You were created to make a unique contribution to the great evolutionary project initiated and continually supported by God, namely bringing all creation together into one magnificent conscious loving union.

Since all other created things in the universe share with you this common eternal destiny, they are essential to and inseparable from you as you participate in the pursuit of that ongoing evolutionary process all right.

Individually and joined with others, you are to use all means available to promote and carry out this shared purpose with all your personal creativity, compassion, and energy, always seeking and choosing what is more conducive to that purpose.

For this, God empowers you to grow in passionate love and care for all elements of the cosmos, since they, as you, all live and move and have their beings in God’s love.

And God is with you as you undergo whatever diminishments may befall you as you cooperate with others in your efforts and actions in pursuing the divine project the purpose for which we, individually and collectively, were created.

This passage omits Ignatius’ word indifference, which is about the freedom to meet God and collaborate with God in all circumstances, even if those circumstances are the opposite of what we instinctively want for others and ourselves. This understanding is an integral part of what Teilhard means by the concept of diminishment.

The Thanksgiving Examen:

Teilhard was an optimist despite the rejection he faced from the Jesuits and from the official church. Instead of putting his attention on failures and disappointments, he focused much more on praise, reverence, and gratitude when he related to God.

Psychologists say that there is a basic law of psychological and spiritual life called the first law of spiritual energy. Energy follows attention. Wherever you focus your attention is where the energy of your body, mind, and spirit goes. Teilhard preferred to focus on his own resilience, his capacity to adapt, and to restore his enthusiasm for work and relationships. If he was blocked from pursuing one avenue, he found another way. He suggests a nightly review of your day focusing on what went right instead of what went wrong. If you focus on giving and receiving love, your thinking will change for the better. If you focus on thinking good thoughts, your heart will grow more loving. The heart and mind are always interacting in concert.

Give thanks in general to God for the benefits received in your life, in others, and in the world today.
Ask for the grace to recognize all those particular things that happened to you and others for which you should personally be grateful.
Take account of your day from the hour that you arose up to the present time, period by period:

first your good thoughts, ideas, and intentions;
Then your good words spoken and heard; And then,
good acts, your actions, and those of others, small or large, that positively touched your life or the life of someone else.

Praise and thank God for all the opportunities you had to make a difference in the world today and to inspire you to recognize more opportunities in the future.
Thank God for all God has done for you, and to ask yourself: what can I envision doing that would lead me to be even more deeply grateful?
Close with an Our Father.

Examens are meant to be a lifelong practice. Jesuits do an examen at least twice a day. It becomes more natural when it becomes a part of your daily routine. The more grateful you become, the more loving you become, and the more receptive to love you become.

A Way of Life

Success breeds success. Failure breeds anxiety, embarrassment, and more focus on failure, more focus on feelings of disappointment. Focus on your strengths. Accentuate the positive. Focus on what is possible.

Success comes from staying in the game, playing your best, and keeping your eye on the goal. God's evolutionary project in Christ will not simply come up about by not committing sins. Observing the rules and doing what is forbidden is fine, but it just produces a holding pattern. It does not promote the true purpose of your life. What could I be doing for Christ? What do I want to be doing for Christ?

A truly grateful person can never be a sinful person. Ingratitude is a likely cause and source of all evil and sin (Simon Rodriguez, a companion of Ignatius) One who develops a continual spirit of gratitude will likely notice many of his or her undesirable faults falling by the wayside. By being grateful for others’ good qualities, you come to love others more easily.

The Positive Particular Examen (Presupposition)

Instead of counting the number of times you made critical remarks to others today, count the number of times you found ways to notice the good qualities of others and affirm them. Instead of counting the number of times you were afraid to speak up, count the number of times you did speak up.

As these more desirable thoughts, words, and deeds increase in frequency, your ability to perform them gets stronger. They are easier to carry out and they feel more natural. At the same time undesirable behaviors will diminish and disappear. What is practiced gets reinforced. Energy follows attention.

Upon rising, take a few moments to remind yourself about the particular good words or deeds you want to develop today and ask God to help you recognize opportunities for practicing this desirable behavior.
Around midday, let yourself actually count the number of times you succeeded in practicing your desirable activity, and thank God for your success.
Near the end of the day, count the times you succeeded in practicing your desirable activity and thank God for your success.

You begin not to distinguish things you are not grateful for as “what went wrong” or “where I failed” or “how I have sinned.” You are simply not grateful that you feel this way or another way. When there is gratitude, even a small amount, God's grace is not blocked.

If you feel discouraged, surround your discouragement with gratitude. Say something like this: thank you God for helping me be conscious of this unwelcome feeling. I know you love me and I trust that I am receiving whatever grace I need to receive help from you. If I cannot change what I am not so grateful for, help me to accept it. You may also ask yourself: what can I learn from this experience? It is important to keep unwelcome experiences or feelings to round it in gratitude because gratitude generates positive outcomes. It opens your mind to new learning and your heart to new grace. It nurtures growth and consciousness.

The Ignatian Adventure

Read pages 252-254, 45-46.

Song:

La Création du Monde by Milhaud — A ballet that combines jazz influences with classical elements, illustrating the creation of the world in a vibrant and imaginative way.

STOP

Stop telling yourself, “It’s too late.”
Stop waiting until you make enough money to do something you’d really love.
Stop telling yourself, “It’s just my ego” whenever you yearn for a more creative life.
Stop telling yourself that dreams don’t matter, that they are only dreams and that you should be more sensible.
Stop saying that you don’t have enough time and that you don’t have work-life balance.
Stop fearing that your family and friends will think you are spending your time unwisely.
Stop telling yourself that creativity is a luxury and that you should be grateful for what you’ve got.

Learn to recognize, nurture, and protect your creative side, and you will move beyond pain and creative constriction.

Poem: the earth is our mother

The earth is at the same time mother,
she is mother of all that is natural,
mother of all that is human.
She is the mother of all,
for contained in her are the seeds of all.
The earth of humankind contains all moisture,
all verdancy, all germinating power.
It is in so many ways fruitful.
All creation comes from it.
Yet it forms not only the basic raw materials
for humankind, but also
the substance of Incarnation.

~ Hildegard of Bingen

Christogenesis Conference

Ilia Delio, Kathleen Duffy, and others will chair this conference at Villanova University in November. I plan on attending.

https://wisrinstitute.org/2026-conference/

Sunday, September 27, 2026

Teilhardian Principles 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17

Teilhardian Principle 12: To know, love, and serve the universe with a passion

In the past, we were told that our first commitment was to love, know, and serve God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. It was also suggested that we should avoid loving things of this world.

We are invited to love the cosmos with a passion. We must see the awesome beauty and unity of creation. I would love for God is one in which we respond because God has loved us first. I would love for creation is a generative love, a love that wants to produce something new with the materials that surround us. Creation is something that waits to be continually recreated. It needs our human spirit to imagine what that transformation will be. He needs us to love it generatively into being. We are familiar with his generative love. It gives existence to what did not exist before.

Responsive and generative love flow together. Creation is our first lesson in learning about who God is. Learning to love what God created is to learn about God. The more passionately we come to know the universe and its God-given purpose, the more passionately we come to know and love God. As we respond to the generative love of God, we are inspired to love it generatively too. In creation, God's spirit is continually being made manifest to us.

Teilhardian Principle 13: To love the invisible.

This encourages you to get in touch with your inner self call, the invisible within. Within you is the spark of the divine spirit that pushes you to create and evolve. It shows you that there are more things in your life that are invisible and intangible. We have to learn to see the invisible. We see invisible concepts like marriage, relationship, and team, and we rally around them.

Teilhardian Principle 14: To love the not-yet.

We strive toward the future that has yet to become manifest. We reached towards ever higher levels of complexity and consciousness. Evolution is all about the future. Evolution is no longer about problem solving, adaptation, or natural selection. It is about imagining A desired future, while living in the present, and choosing to create the desired future. It means having a goal in mind. An evolutionary spirituality is to teach people how to envision the future that God envisions for creation. It asks us what will I do with this one precious and wild life?

Science fiction writers imagine the not yet. Research scientists search for something that has not yet been invented. Recall all the things you have outgrown or left behind so that you can create the future. Jesus talked about the not yet during the Last Supper as he encouraged his friends to focus upon what lay beyond the suffering. Jesus envisioned what he desired to create. The not yet is a central focus and an evolutionary spirituality.

Teilhardian Principle 15: An evolutionary spirituality is focused primarily on grace, not on sin.

Former spirituality placed emphasis on individuals’ personal sins and making reparations for them. It was a sin-redemption spirituality. Jesus quickly forgave the sins of those who trusted in him. He was more interested in having the person return to the community and being spiritually free to be loving and productive there. Each person had important work to do for God and needed to be free within to do it.

The forgiving attitude is the point of the parable of the prodigal son. The father never asks the son to do penance or reparation. He never asked for the return of the inheritance. The father simply reinstates the son as a full and respected member of the family. It is God’s gift to us to see each of us as a full and respected member of God's family.

This is the type of change in thinking and behavior with a focus on future works. God's unconditional grace comes as a total surprise to us. With metanoia a future orientation is clearly what God wants. Divine grace transcends sin. In the Christ project, God says stay focused on my love and grace. Never let others discourage you about your past. There is much work to be done in the present and the future, and you can do your part of that work in freedom. I want you to do it at my side in joyful union with me. We are renewed again and made whole. No matter what our past has been, we are given another chance to create our lives the way God wants. This does not mean we resolve all the issues of the past. The prodigal son was not asked to do that. That's God's work.

Teilhardian Principle 16: To recognize that union differentiates.

The law of union is a hard insight to grasp. The more completely you give yourself to creating togetherness, friendship, marriage, family, teamwork, the more clearly your own identity is clarified. You will become partners with others. You learn who you are by making connections. The law that union differentiates states that while participating in any organized whole, the parts perfect and fulfill themselves.

A well-organized whole has a genuine and intrinsic life of its own. The members of a union are not random parts. You are a highly differentiated individual that enjoys uniqueness, differentiation, imperfection precisely when you function as part of the whole. Relationships always bring complexity. You learn who you truly are by making your life more complex. You become more whole and learn of your fuller identity.

Teilhardian Principle 17: To love the invisible.

You begin to realize that everything you do is being done alongside with Christ who lives and moves and has your being. It is Christ in the universe that converges upon itself as more people become more conscious of this universal self-convergence process. Most of the human cells within the body of Christ become aware of their own identity but also of their larger identity. They will be not only a part of the cosmic Christ, but they will fully know it. Humanity has a ways to go, but Teilhard is optimistic that we will eventually learn the way of love.

Monday, September 21, 2026

Week of September 22nd

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola

In the Spirit of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.

Tuesdays from 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time Zone

September 22, 2026

Contemplation: Learning to Love the Way God Loves

God expresses God's self by creating a universe that reflects God's love. This self-expression created a universe that could delight in it as it grew and evolved over billions of years. God delighted in the humid race that emerged from the evolving earth so that they could become conscious of how much God loves them.

Imagine yourself surrounded by an omnipresent God holding the human race and loving existence and wanting to be lovingly involved with them, giving countless gifts to people, individually and collectively.

Ask for the grace to discover the thousands of ways that God loves you and all of creation. Ask for the grace to experience in your body and soul what it feels like to be so loved uniquely and unconditionally by God. Ask for the grace to feel tangibly connected to God. Ask for the grace to be immersed in God and God's creation and to feel deep gratitude and wonder at the boundless love God shows in every moment.

The third stage of loving: Cooperative Interaction

Ignatius (236) asks for a personal and active interaction:

I will consider how God laborers and works for me and all the creatures on the face of the earth; that is, God acts in the manner of one who is laboring. For example, God is working in the heavens, elements, plants, fruits, cattle, and all the rest – giving them existence, conserving, conserving them, concurring with the vegetative and sensitive activities, and so forth.

God keeps acting in and through each of those seven areas of gifts mentioned in the first point. God does not just act once and then stop. God continues to act and interact at every moment with, in, and through the gifts God gives in creation. By this continuous action, creation grows and develops. It becomes more complex and continues to evolve in consciousness.

For us to learn to love in the same way, we continue to act and interact with the gifts we have and the gifts continually being given to us to help us grow and evolve in complexity and consciousness.

We are invited to a new level of prayer, one that responds in wonder and gratitude to God's interactive commitment. Make some response like this:

Ever-creating God in whose love I live, in reflecting on your almost 14 billion years of divine revelation, I recognize the law of attraction-connection-complexity- consciousness that you have placed in me. This law is designed to culminate in the spiritual transformation of all matter. I stand in wonder and awe. My heart is filled with gratitude that I am one of those enjoying the privilege of recognizing, understanding, and feeling your love.

The fourth stage of loving: Mutual Indwelling

God shares God’s Self with the beloved, including the divine qualities of justice, goodness, piety, mercy, beauty, and so forth. God does not only give gives that are external to God, but reveals. God’s very Self to us an active, involved, interactive personal presence. Ignatius says “just as the sun’s rays give us the sun itself, and through its rays it is an active and interactive presence.

During the Incarnation, God shared God’s Self. Christ’s mystical incardination in the Eucharist is another expression. In the Universal Christ, we reciprocate in this self-giving love, “I no longer live, but I am alive in Christ.” I live and act in God and God lives and acts in me. Each of us lives out our day within and alongside God.

Finding God is all things is about finding God’s presence and quietly resting in it during prayer time. It also means being with God all day long in daily routines and activities, doing each thing with and in God. We are building the Christ together – God in me and I in God. We learn to become “contemplatives in action.”

We might conclude our prayer saying something like this:

O Great God in whom I live and act, I no longer wish to live and simply work for you. My deepest desire and the grace I ask is that I may live consciously in you and with you as a part of your Christ, that I may realize that my primary privilege and honor is to be a cell in the cosmic Body of Christ. I wish to live and work no longer just as me, but consciously as part of Christ who holds all of us together on our way to you. For this privilege I offer my deepest Thanksgiving.

Teilhardian Principle 7: The principle of self-convergence is now operating.

Self-convergence is an evolutionary ability to make yourself more whole and integral. It is a way of putting your life together. It is a process of inward evolution. You possess the ability to find ways to reconfigure, simplify, and integrate the growing complexity that is you. We are invited to do it with consciousness.

Teilhardian Principle 8: At present, evolution is focused in the “noosphere.”

Evolution also accelerates in the growth of human knowledge and consciousness. Worldwide, we are enveloped in ideas, information, knowledge, wisdom, goals, purposes, and powerful feelings. This envelope of information, thought, and emotions are the noosphere. This is the collective mind and heart of the planet. Whatever is in the noosphere remains a source of knowledge and love accessible to any individual. We keep enriching it.

We have a growing capacity for cooperative and caring interpersonal connections even though we may not choose to use this capacity. This development shows the real possibility of humankind coming to an ever-higher consciousness through higher and more complex social unions.

It is leading us towards a common outlook add a common hope. Eventually, the new or sphere will constitute a single thinking loving system. This is the natural and necessary underlying structure for the supernatural Body of Christ. It will help create a personal and personalizing world in which the individual is preserved and enhanced. The Body of Christ is meant to become an organized super aggregation of loving souls. The aim of God's plan of creation is the Christ project.

Teilhardian Principle 9: The success of God’s plan for creation depends on your conscious and creative activity to keep that divine plan evolving and developing in the direction God wants for creation.

Past theology taught us that the earth served merely as the classroom for Christians where they prepared for their final exams and hoped to graduate to heaven. Their daily activity and professional work did not build the Kingdom of God but generated a scorecard of good and bad behavior. They believed they would be judged worthy of a place in heaven based on this test of good and bad deeds.

The Christ project is why God created the evolving universe until humans. No creature was capable of grasping the idea of this great project. The plan is not only that each person would be saved individually but that we would work together as one family. We would consciously cooperate in the creative work of this universal Christ. We are invited to be an essential part of the project.

Teilhardian Principle 10: Any true spirituality today must be a collective spirituality.

Most spiritual traditions offer Individualized forms of spirituality. It nurtures a relationship between you and God. They present a path that emphasizes personal sin and salvation in union with God. Most Christians have been focusing upon personal salvation and helping to save individual souls. This is not enough.

A collective spirituality is called for in which people individually and collectively create and contribute to its evolution. The purpose is to bring the Noah's sphere to its highest level of convergence, eventually operating as a single consciousness. The oneness of humanity and the planet will be a knowledge based and love inspired union and communion. This will provide an adequate infrastructure for the full emergence of Christ as the cosmic Christ.

This helps focus the vision of humanity as a whole and would put our minds, hearts, and energy into building the great body of Christ. Therefore, the major task of any true contemporary spirituality should be to help prepare the collective mind and heart of the planet for the cosmic Christ. This is the Christ project.

Teilhardian Principle 11: Today, even an individual spirituality, that is a private and exclusive redemptive relationship between God and me, must include all other human beings and the rest of creation.

We were all joined to each other for the success or failure of the divine project. Whatever happens to a fellow human somehow affects me. Spirituality K cannot be something just between me and God. Your personal spirituality has to include awareness of in cooperation with God's unfinished project. Each person has work to do and it is connected to the efforts of all other persons. You are not the center of your life purpose. The Christ project is.

The Ignatian Adventure

Read page 44, The Anima Christi.

Reap pages 45-46, The “Presupposition” and 59-60, “Images of God.”

Song: Is there a song you listen to that brings you to transcendence?

As we are entering the fall season, could it be one of the seasons by Vivaldi, an instrumental piano piece by George Winston, a religious hymn like “All Creatures of our God and King” or “All Things Now Living” or even a secular song like Three Dog Night’s “Out in the Country.” For me, certain classical pieces work to elevate and center me. What is it that you listen to that brings you to a higher level of consciousness?

WhatsApp

I invite you to sign onto this communal sharing app. It allows for group conversations and sharing of resources without having to share your email address. It allows you to share information among yourselves without making me your conduit. It is a closed group.

https://chat.whatsapp.com/JrTudgr3B0p8tWP3KW9JZY?mode=gi_t

Introductions on WhatsApp. It might be helpful to share generally where you are, what your experience with the Ignatian Exercises are, and your connection with the evolutionary thought of Teilhard de Chardin, SJ. Say anything you would like about your family, your church situation, and your prayer routines.

All Notes will be Accessible through this website: To the Frontiers

https://predmoresj.blogspot.com/

Creative Affirmations

I am a channel for God’s creativity, and my work brings about something good.
My dreams come from God; God has the power to accomplish them.
As I create and listen to God, God will lead me.
My creativity is the Creator’s will for me.
My creativity heals myself and others.
I am allowed to nurture my artist
Through the use of a few simple tools, my creativity will flourish.
As I use my creativity, I serve God.
My creativity leads me to a trust and to a more loving place.
My creativity brings me to an environment of forgiveness and self-forgiveness.
However small, God has a plan of goodness for me.
However small, God has a plan of goodness for my work.
As I listen to the creator within, God will lead me.
As I listen to my creativity, I am led to my Creator.
I am willing to create.
I am willing to learn to let myself create.
I am willing to let God create through me.
I am willing to be of service through my creativity.
I am willing to experience my creative energy.
I am willing to use my creative talents.

The Seven Areas that we can use for Contemplation

If you find your gratitude and wonder naturally flowing in response to one of the divine gifts, stay with that feeling. You may spend the entire time with this single movement. Do not feel as if you have to cover all of the seven areas listed below. The graces from this exercise can never be exhausted.

Consider the gifts that astronomy has revealed to us. Ignatius may not have been aware of the extent of this revelation as he had no sense of the vast number of galaxies for the age of the universe.
Observe the gifts God has been giving us that the life sciences had revealed. All of these gifts are active, interactive, and evolving. As life forms kept evolving in complexity over time - From sensation to perception to movement to social life - We observed that consciousness became the primary emergent property of life. Evolution keeps moving forward.
Recognize evolution at work in all things. Saint Paul tells us that creation is still incomplete and still in process. Through discoveries in science and technology, we recognize the fundamental law driving creation onward and upward.
God's gifts on the microscopic side reveal by science show the incredible complexity and activity of each living being - the human genome, the trillions of cells that live in our body, each cell itself a living being with the highly complex intra active life.
Recognize the gifts of the earth itself. All the beauties of mountains, plains, and skies. All the power of tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, floods, deserts.
Reflect on God's gift that flow from human consciousness and society, such as civilization, music, art, literature, society, communication, transportation, recreation, science, mathematics, architecture, ecology, entertainment, film, radio, Internet.
Consider all the gifts you have personally received - talent, skills, education, opportunities, friends, family. Remember your five sentences as well as memory, intelligent, willpower, imagination, choice, the ability to love and make commitments, the ability to accomplish things, to create things that never existed before, could build teams, to worship.