“Forming a Practice of Hope” is a monthly guide that will be published throughout the 2025 Jubilee Year in the Catholic Church. It is designed to spark a personal spiritual practice that is flexible and doable and is meant to be a road map that examines dynamics of the creative life and spiritual life. Read the other monthly guides here.
C. S. Lewis wrote: “Freedom [is] the gift whereby you most resemble your maker … It is a picture of moments following one another and yourself in each moment making some choice that might have been otherwise.” Rollo May wrote, “Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between the stimulus and response and, in that pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight. The capacity to create ourselves, based upon this freedom, is inseparable from consciousness or self-awareness.”
We become who we are by our choices. We are responsible for those choices, and they are constitutive of who we become. Saint John Paul II reminded us in his “Letter to Artists” that all people “are entrusted with the task of crafting their own life: in a certain sense, they are to make of it a work of art, a masterpiece.”
We need to pause to see what is already painted in our masterpiece and choose what each next stroke will be.
I wonder sometimes if we have forgotten the responsibility of freedom. I think our contemporary sensibilities often lead us to confuse “freedom” with “license.” We want a blank check. We want to be able to do whatever we want whenever we want regardless of the repercussions. That is license, not freedom. The irony is that license enslaves us to our first superficial unchecked stimulus. Without the pause, without the awareness of “what might have been otherwise,” we are not free. The blindness and intensity of our stimuli rush past any moment of reflection or examination to immediate gratification — without considering what effect that would have on others, on our world, on the masterpiece of our lives.
We become who we are by our choices. We are responsible for those choices, and they are constitutive of who we become.
We can reclaim the joy and hope of freedom when we make time and space for the intentionality of our choices. In the same way that an artist looks at what is already on a canvas and makes choices of hue, brush stroke and composition based on what is already there, we need to pause to see what is already painted in our masterpiece and choose what each next stroke will be.
Life Story:
One of the first silent retreats I directed was when I was studying spiritual direction in my theology studies. It was a four-day retreat over a long weekend, and one of my retreatants had never been on a silent retreat before. The retreatant described that the first day felt like a wonderful opportunity and a much needed change of scenery. The second day was fine but a little more uneasy. By the third day, the retreatant announced, “I need to go home.”
I asked what was happening interiorly. What were the thoughts that were disturbing the peace experienced on the first day? Were these invasive thoughts grounded in fear or grounded in freedom? The retreatant interrupted me and said, “You don’t understand; I just have to be around my things!” I paused. I breathed. I asked, “Would you just repeat that again very slowly?” When the retreatant repeated it, there was an awareness of the lack of freedom in the statement. We normalized the feelings; we identified that these feelings were not coming from a helpful place; we affirmed the good experiences of the retreat up to this crisis moment and discussed the benefits of completing one more day, staying in the struggle to honor the original desire. This retreatant grew in freedom.
Work Story:
When I was studying for my MFA in theatre, I worked with Niky Wolcz, a great teacher who had a very physical approach to acting. He gave us a series of images and movements that gave form to the imagination and challenged the body to take on the form that my imagination invited me to. One exercise was imagining a number of tight strings in the studio space and tracing the exact angle of the imaginary string between the thumb and first finger. The task was to follow the string all the way to its extremes: as far down as the floor and as high up as the body could reach following the angle of the string. I noticed that my body always slowed down as I approached the floor. The angle and configuration that my body would have to take on to trace the string all the way to the ground felt uncomfortable to me, and our bodies usually avoid the uncomfortable.
However, committing to the imagination of the string took away the judgment of my body’s lack of freedom. I simply committed to following the string and invited the body to come along for the ride. Once the space was “filled” with the imaginary strings, we were to go over them, through them and under them: again, positions that my body was not used to, but when I imagined the challenge as an adventure, and the strings as trip wires that were not to be triggered, the exercise became more fun and inviting. We were tricking the body to let go of its habitual lack of freedom, creating new possibilities, and staying in the feeling of freedom even in the midst of the difficulties.
Further investigation:
Read “A Letter to Artists” (St. John Paul II- 1979).
C.S. Lewis’ book “The Great Divorce” is a fantastical tale of the heaven we might choose and the hells that we make for ourselves told in a series of case studies in choices and freedom.
Practice Suggestions:
- Look back on the first choices you made today. What did you choose to wear? To eat? To drink? These low-stakes choices can tell us something about our “default settings.” Jot down the values you used to make those choices: ease? availability? comfort? expression? Notice these from day to day and ask if these choices are as intentional as you want. Do this every day for a week.
- On a clean sheet of paper or page in a journal, draw a curved line. Where did the choice come from? Try to understand the impulse rather than explain it. Put it aside until tomorrow. The next day really look at it and ask where the next curved line wants to be. Repeat this from day to day and see what emerges in the drawing from taking time to truly respond to what is already on the page.
- The next time you are on a computer notice your pull-down menus. Click on a button or heading and notice the neatly arranged possible choices for each tab. Begin to imagine and design pull-down menus for your own difficult situations. Name the heading: conflict, doubt, road rage, boredom. List the choices that you would be most proud of and the choices that habitually invade the moment. Think of your pull-down menu the next time you are in that situation.
- Notice yourself in your own creative practice. Notice any time that you might feel stuck. Really notice the moment that you are focusing on in your story, your play, your painting … and ask yourself: What are five ways this could possibly go? Work with your imagination on each option just as an exercise. Try to remove the demand of immediate definitive action. Entertain all possibilities and remember you can always revise.
- Contemplate John 8:1-11 and spend some time on the “pause” that Jesus takes that saves the life of the woman in the story and the souls of her accusers.
- Do a “particular examen” on freedom. Following the same form of the examen outlined in previous months, state that the grace that you want is a stronger awareness of moments with a lack of freedom. Once you notice these, surrender them and trust that the awareness will help you to create “pull-down menus” for these moments in the future.
- Dance for pleasure. Put on music that helps you expand and allows your body to play in.
- Look at the collected work of your favorite artist over the expanse of their career. What were moments or details in their work that signified a growth in freedom?
