We all have likes, and some of these are strong, compelling, almost non-negotiable. We have favorite foods, colors, sports teams, things to do when we are not directly engaged with our responsibilities… The combination of our individual preferences make up a profile of our characteristic style. They are so familiar, so comfortable, and yet, they are not who we truly are.
One of the major barriers to making free and loving choices is what Ignatius of Loyola called disordered attachments – those people, things, activities, substances that we value more than our relationship with God. Whatever deviates our mind and/or our heart and/or our life-path away from what we know is right and good, away from God’s call, away from God’s loving desires for us and for others; these are disordered attachments. When it comes time for us to make an important decision, we are pre-conditioned by our attachments to choose according to whatever we are attached to. This can severely impair our discernment of God’s Will for us.
Ignatius has a simple antidote for disordered attachments – indifference (or detachment). To choose well, we need to be indifferent, detached. Ignatius was a passionate Basque. He was not talking about developing apathy as some backward kind of virtue. Indifference doesn’t mean that we don’t care. As fully alive human beings, we need to be in touch with, and have access to, all our feelings, no matter how fierce or deep. But when we choose, we need to be free from the domination of our feelings.
Once again, a huge help to dealing well with disordered attachments is awareness. We need to know ourselves inside and out. What claims us? What tugs at our heart? What siren’s song sings more loudly and more seductively to us, drowning out the voice of God? What, in our life, is more important to us than doing what is loving and just? Whatever pulls us away from God and God’s ways is a disordered attachment. It means more to us than is healthy and good for us. Knowing the answer to these questions allows us to choose more freely.
Because we do care, very much, we try to discover how our caring, or our passion, clouds our vision and moves us in one direction or another. Does it help or hinder our listening to/for God’s direction for our life? We may want something with all our heart. We may be totally convinced that what we want to do has to be the right way, the only way. We are attached. We need to back off and try to see our life and the choice in front of us from God’s perspective.
Jana Buckley says:
I like the challenge that this sets forth for us to search ourselves for our own perspective of ourselves. Not as a spouse or any other human role, but for me it means to look at who I am as a servant of God.