Coming to our Senses in Prayer
St. Ignatius invites us to new ways of praying, one of which involves what he calls "the application of the (5) senses" (feeling, seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling) in "considering" topics in the 4 weeks of the Spiritual Exercises.
Perhaps February will cooperate in being an appropriate "season" for our growing in these types of prayer, using some familiar poems and songs as starting points for praying with our 5 bodily senses, complementing our more abstract intellectual approaches to prayer. Or, you may prefer to apply these 5 senses to the bible readings assigned to each Sunday in February.
Most of us probably start off each day with a jolt of java. American poet E.E. Cummings (1894-1962) invites us to broaden our morning's awakening with the sights, sounds, feelings, tastes, and smells of nature:
i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday ;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings :and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of all nothing—human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
-Fr. Ted Arroyo, SJ
This poem has also been set to music, available on YouTube if you'd like.
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