AMDG: A Jesuit Podcast

Why Thanksgiving Leads to Celebration with Vinita Hampton Wright

If you’re listening to this episode on the day it drops, then we’re just a matter of hours away from celebrating Thanksgiving in the United States. Regardless of whether you’ll be surrounded by friends and family over these next few days or you’ll be passing the occasion in a quieter, more subdued manner, one thing remains the same: We are all called to cultivate a disposition of gratitude. These Thanksgiving episodes where we reflect on gratitude as a spiritual practice have become something of a holiday tradition all on their own. Gratitude is foundational to Ignatian spirituality. And it’s something we’re called to on good days as much as on bad ones. Today we’re lucky to have Vinita Hampton Wright return to the pod to reflect on these spiritual themes. Vinita always brings with her practical wisdom and deep knowledge of both the tenets of the Ignatian tradition and how to talk about them. Vinita is a veteran editors and writer of countless books and articles on Ignatian spirituality. She worked for many years at Loyola Press, and now gives workshops and retreats on writing, creativity and prayer. Vinita is also the author of this year’s 2025 “Book of Grace-Filled Days,” which is currently available from Loyola Press and a wonderful companion to your prayer in this upcoming year. Check it out here: https://store.loyolapress.com/2025-a-book-of-grace-filled-days

Duration:: 34m
Broadcast on:: 26 Nov 2024
Audio Format:: other

[Music] From the Jesuit Media Lab, this is AMDG and I'm Eric Clayton. If you're listening to this episode on The Day It Drops, then we're just a matter of hours away from celebrating Thanksgiving in the United States. Regardless of whether you'll be surrounded by friends and family over these next few days or whether you'll be passing the occasion in a quieter, more subdued manner, one thing remains the same. We are all called to cultivate a disposition of gratitude. These Thanksgiving episodes where we reflect on gratitude as a spiritual practice have become something of a holiday tradition all on their own. It is foundational to Ignatian spirituality, and it's something we're called to practice on good days as much as on bad ones. Today, we're lucky to have Venita Hampton Wright return to the podcast to reflect on these spiritual themes. Venita always brings with her practical wisdom and deep knowledge of both the tenets of the Ignatian tradition as well as how to talk about them. Venita is a veteran editor and writer of countless books and articles on Ignatian spirituality. She worked for many, many years at Loyola Press and now gives workshops and retreats on writing, creativity and prayer. Venita is also the author of this year's 2025 Book of Grace-filled Days, which is currently available from Loyola Press, and a wonderful companion to your prayer in this upcoming year. Personally, I always enjoy talking to Venita. I always leave the conversation with new raw material for my own prayer. I hope you find new inspiration for prayer and, most importantly, a renewed reason to give thanks after listening to our conversation. Happy Thanksgiving, and here's Venita Wright. Venita Hampton Wright, welcome back to AMDG. Always a pleasure to talk to you. Oh, likewise. I always enjoy being on the podcast. Yeah, we love having you so full of spiritual wisdom and we're on the precipice of Thanksgiving. For this episode, we'll drop the day before Thanksgiving, so I assume people are going to be listening to it just as they're driving to be with family, friends, strangers and turkeys. So as we think about Thanksgiving, just how do you approach this time of year? What's the kind of spiritual disposition that you look for in yourself and perhaps you suggest to others in your own spiritual work? Well, I think it's important to have celebrations throughout the year. You look back at the history of Judaism, the Jewish people, and they had celebrations at harvest and at different times that represented certain things that God had done in their past. I think celebrations are very important, especially when times are hard. I kind of see it as it's kind of a way of laughing in the devil's face. Everything's fallen apart, but we're going to celebrate because there is something to celebrate. I think Thanksgiving is also a really good time for family. I grew up around a lot of extended family, at least three generations. There was a time when we had five generations living in our family, and we were all kind of in the same small town. Thanksgiving, we would always be at grandma's. You would see the family's history every Thanksgiving because usually when a Thanksgiving came around, there may be a new baby born, and so you're celebrating that. Very likely, given how many people were in our family, we would be minus one person who had died during the year. And so when I get together with my family, and right now my mother is 88, she's still going strong, but she's 88. So I will host Thanksgiving at my home this year, and she and my sister in Fresno will be here, maybe my other sister. We will celebrate that we're all still here. I think it's important, it can be a really important family time as well as an important time to spiritually, to remind myself that regardless of what's going on in the world, I'm celebrating that I'm here, and there are people in my life that I care about. I like that idea of celebration as laughing in the devil's face, I like that. I think celebration is really key to Ignatian spirituality, right? It's kind of how the exercise is, well it's not kind of it is how the exercise is and right, we're supposed to celebrate. And I think that's an overlooked aspect of our spiritual tradition. I think it goes hand in hand, as you suggested, with this idea of gratitude, which is also central to the Ignatian tradition. So can you talk a little bit about how you see gratitude and celebration fitting together, particularly as we think about Ignatian spirituality writ large? Well, gratitude is a posture, okay? It's not just saying thank you, it's a way of looking at life. It's sensitized as us to what's going well, and that's really important. It opens our hearts to all that's good in the world, and when we can see that, we approach life with more hope and not despair. And that's a choice we make. We have to make it over and over again. I'm going to see what God is already doing in this world, and I'm going to relish that and be grateful for it, and gratitude is basically my posture toward life. I'm either looking for what's going well and what to be grateful for and what to celebrate, or I'm looking for all the things I don't have or that haven't gone well. There's not a lot in between, really. I mean, you're really in one place or the other. I don't think it's possible to kind of dwell somewhere in between. You're either looking at what's going well in life and where you find grace, or you're looking for all the stuff that's going wrong. I don't think it's possible to have both of those focuses at the same time. So I see it as a posture and Ignatius recognizes that, and he went so far as to say, "A lack of gratitude is sort of at the root of every other sin." He saw that as, "This is a real choice that you need to make. How are you going to see your life?" I like that a lot. It's a very visual way of living. Are you in your arms open, hands extended, like ready to receive gifts, or are you kind of closed in and bitter? It feels very visceral. I feel like you can feel both gratitude and celebration in your body, right, in the way you're putting yourself to the world. And you can experience that just in prayer, and I've done this in prayer retreats. I've asked people to stand up and have their fist close and repeat a prayer with me. And then I've asked them, "Okay, now do it with your hands open and repeat the same prayer." Doing with our body, what we're trying to do within can make a big difference. There's a reason that there have always been postures of prayer throughout our history, not just in Christianity, but all other major world religions they've had to do with posture. So having that sense of, do I think this world is a place of abundance, which as a Christian I do, or do I see this world as one of scarcity? And if I see it as a world of scarcity, then I go about my life fearful and grasping. I become selfish. I get on the defensive easily. I become afraid of other people. They may get what I want. It's just a whole worldview that in Christ, really, we're asked to shift it completely. When Jesus says, "God knows what you need before you even ask Him." Look what He does with the flowers of the field and all of this. And He was trying to help people understand, "No, the God that your worship is a God of abundance." And our gratitude is related to recognizing that. Yeah. It's so hard. It's funny. Our pastor at the church I go to has been talking about this idea of an abundance mentality versus a scarcity mentality, which is it's nice to really hear it front and center every week at Mass. Like, "Are we postured in the right direction or not?" And it's been energizing and challenging to me because I know I can cling to myself and become a little island. So we continue this same thread. Last year on our apparently annual Thanksgiving episode, we had your friend and mine, Father Mark Thibodeau, to talk about gratitude, and he talks about the examination. And I found it quite counterintuitive to my meager mind, because he says, "We always begin our prayer in gratitude, especially and always when things are going poorly or when times are particularly hard." And I said, "That seems silly. Why would we be grateful? Are we discounting the hardship that people are going through?" And he said, or I'm going to paraphrase, because he said it very wisely, and these are my kind of haphazard words here, but he said it to a sense, "Gratitude expands that horizon, our spiritual horizons. As opposed to, as you suggested, becoming too focused on what we lack, we open up the lens." And I'm wondering if you can kind of reflect on that or share your own take on that. Because I've been chewing on it the past year, and I find it really just rich. Yeah, well, I don't like to over-spiritualize things. I think we do that sometimes, but we need to keep in mind that the enemy of humanity, however you understand that concept, okay? Our enemy wants us to always see ourselves as unloved and without value or purpose. And gratitude helps us focus on love, value, purpose, and all the other aspects of people made in God's image. Again, it's a way of looking at life. It's not just saying, "Thank you." It's a way of seeing. It's a way of seeing ourselves and seeing other people. And it just has to be our starting point. And what I've discovered as a spiritual director and as someone who's done retreats with people and written books and all of this, what I see over and over and over again is that my main job in this world is to tell people one way or the other that they are God's beloved, because the big lie is that we're not. And gratitude is a way of acting against that lie. In nation's spirituality, we have that concept of acting against what is tempting us. And gratitude is a way of being proactive. It's a way of having agency in your own life because you're saying, "You know, I'm choosing to see myself as beloved and my neighbor as beloved." And that changes the way I see everything and the way I do everything. Yeah. And it's worth celebrating. I'm going back, I can know what you tell. That's going to be the nugget I chew on for this next year is this idea of thanksgiving as a, you know, audacious celebration, even when things are hard. And I think it reminding ourselves that we are the beloved of God and what that means is something that should energize and celebrate, you know, is celebration worthy? Um, so your, your name came to my mind for this episode, uh, because you're the author, here's a chance for a book promotion. You're the author of this year's, um, 2025 book of Graceville Days by Lola Press. Um, and I love, I mean, I don't know the history of this book. I'm sure you do having, having, you know, edited and worked on these books for so long. But I love that idea of Graceville Days and that, not to me points to this disposition, this posture that we've been discussing. So tell me a little bit about the book, but, but also how your approach to it, uh, demonstrates that, uh, your ability to kind of like get your arms around the grace in each day, even in these, you know, challenging moments. Yeah. Well, this does have a long history. I think they've been publishing it for almost 30 years, um, and, um, it is based on the electionary, so any Catholic or non-Catholic who likes the electionary, uh, can, it's a page a day. So there's not a lot there. Uh, it's, it's a really good, um, assignment for a writer because you have to say what you have to say in 75 words or less. And that's, that is, that is great practice. I mean, your writing gets so much better when you have to keep, you know, it's, it's great for a writer. Uh, and, and so it, it helps people to kind of stay grounded in the electionary readings. Uh, so you're getting a little bit of scripture, like the, like I chose one of the readings of each day and I would quote part or all of that reading, uh, and then I would, uh, write a meditation connected to that reading. And it's a way to kind of, it's a way to stay grounded in the life of the church because everyone in the world is reading these same scriptures. Uh, it's also a way just to, uh, be reminded of all the different things that scripture has to say to us. And it's short and well, it's not always sweet. Sometimes it's challenging, but, um, and you know, we wanted to make people hopeful. Let's see. I was looking at it because, you know, you always write these things months before they come out. So I can't even remember what I wrote now. Um, but okay, here's one April 22. Okay. Mary Magdalene stayed outside the tomb weeping. That's, that's from John. And I'll just read briefly what I had here. Mary stayed at the tomb of her friend and teacher. This is a hard place to inhabit for any of us. The world tells us to get on with your life. We're given a short time to grieve and then our pressure to stifle our tears and sorrow and look ahead. In this case, Mary had double reasons to grieve because Jesus body was now missing. What more could possibly go wrong? But she lingered there at the tomb of a criminal. And that's where Jesus met her. Let's give proper space to our emotions and adequate time to reflect and search. Jesus will meet us in that difficult place. So you know, that's taking one bit of scripture and kind of expounding on it and, and trying to relate it to what real life is like. How what's the, um, what's your own kind of writing practice for further? There's so there's so much to cover and you have so little space to cover it. And you know, some scripture is more inspiring than the next, as far as, you know, commentator goes. How, how do you kind of look for the, those little nuggets of grace in each of these, these passages for each day of the year? Well, it's a, it's a real task. It's not an easy thing to do because, and I, I can't believe that that I did 2005 and 2006. I did two years back to back and I still don't know what they were thinking because it's like I was completely out of any ideas by the end of that. Um, but what I've learned is that I will go through, cause it can get really tedious because you're having to go to the lectionary and copy right out of the lectionary, you know, and make sure you're on the right day. It can be kind of a tedious process, but I would choose, say, a week's worth of, of scripture readings and I would just, uh, choose whichever one I resonated with and I may not even know why I resonate with it, but I would just choose the scripture that I resonated with most and I would go ahead and type that in and then I'd go back on another day and say, okay, let's see what resonated with me about this. I really depend on the Holy Spirit's work in my own life that's, you have to, you have to depend on that, because just thinking that I have all of this wisdom on my own to just think of something to generate from anything, that's a little dangerous. It's better if I choose something that I personally resonate with some days. It's hard because some lectionary days are pretty rough going, you know, there's not a whole lot, uh, there are a lot of bad things happening and God's not real happy with people and, you know, I mean, some lectionary days are harder than others, but I do try to just notice, and this is very Ignatian, you know, Ignatius would say, where's the movement? Where do you feel them? Where do you sense the movement in your interior life? And that's how I approach this book. I have to really pay attention to what in me responds to which scripture and go from there. And generally it works, you know, wow, I can't believe this too back to back years as well. So I'm struck by this book, so like, you know, we both have written, you've written much, much, much more than I have, but as someone who is always trying to sell books, always trying to say how do I get my books in more people's hands, the shelf life for this particular kind of book is a year, right? Yeah. And then it's done. And I'm just wondering kind of like your own writing, again, I don't want to over spiritualize things, but I'm going to go into anyway, like your own spiritual body of writing, like what allows you to put so much effort into this book and then say, oh, and now the year is done. This book is this book is done. I can't keep selling. I can't keep returning to it. It's it's passed. So how do you how do you approach that kind of a project? Well, one reason they've kept doing it is this book sells really well. It has it has a great track record. It gets it gets bought a lot in bulk to be given as gifts to like catechists, you know, research staff and that kind of thing. And when books are bought as gifts, you don't know if they're actually read, but we do know that it has a pretty far reach. And so I figure, you know, I wrote almost almost 400 meditations because we include both seasons of Advent at the beginning of the end. So that's a glutton fragment, yeah, yeah, and and I just figured if if even a handful of these meditations help a few people get through their week better or or or or, you know, it's all in the present. It's in the present. It's in the present moment. And I figure that everything to God is present tense. There's no past future, whatever. It's all present tense in eternity. And again, this is kind of being very spiritual about it, but I think that it's worth it if it encourages a few people and and also what my own soul went through to write it. I mean, I have been my interior spirituality has been built up even more from that because I'm in the process of becoming, you know, God is creating me day after day after day. And I'm participating in that process. So there's no wasted time there, you know, it may not sell past this year, but you have no idea what that will bring and and how it may really help somebody and and I know what it's done for me. And just at a practical level, it's added to the bottom line of a publisher whom I think they do. I think they do good work, you know, and so if it helps keep them flush, you know, and in a bit in a better space so they can do more books, that's fine too. You have to kind of take a broad view on these things. I like that the spiritual and the very practical. I think that you kind of drop in this so we have kind of gratitude. We have celebration and now we have this, this, you know, presence, the sense of like being present to the moment. And I think that's really hard. I mean, obviously, I'm showing my own cards, this idea of like, you know, your your creative work having a short lifespan and yet I think what you've articulated is like the dream of of everybody, right? Like we want we want whatever we offer the world to have an impact on somebody and it's nice to think, oh, you know, what I say, what I do, the work I labor over is going to have these sweeping impacts on the shape of society. But sometimes it isn't just a small kind of relational moments, even if you're not, you know, looking the person down the eyes. And I think that that presence that that ability to be present to few, but to be grateful for the spirit kind of blossoming in that is really powerful and a good, a good invitation. Again, whether you're a writer or not to take into this, this kind of season of Thanksgiving. Let's go back to that word grace filled. Do you have practical kind of concrete ways that you approach and kind of beyond your writing, beyond this particular project, but practical ways in which you try to approach each day as grace filled or there is grace here, I have to just find it. I'm coming to the conclusion that our own action triggers that grace and I know that can sound theologically off to some people. But what I look at when I look at what Jesus said and the way things have been without getting, you know, blatantly political about this, but the way things have been in our country for a while now has just driven me more and more often to, okay, what did Jesus actually say? You know, what does it really mean to follow Jesus? It's, you know, the political climate has forced me to do that. And what I see is Jesus saying pretty consistently love your neighbor. And when I set out to love my neighbor, whoever that neighbor is, I really think that that activates grace in this life. And I think, well, I know Jesus knew that he knew that when human beings love each other and look out for each other rather than fear one another and condemn one another, he knew that that made good things happen. He knew that the universe was created in such a way that the act of love is always going to bring a life-giving result. So yeah, I look for grace. I look for what's happening around me. But I also believe that in large part because God has invited us into this grand scheme of love and redemption, grace is up to me. You know, how do I live today and how do I treat others? And do I see them as God's beloved or not? So if I want, if I want more grace, then I think I need to look for more opportunities to love my neighbor. And that can sound a little harsh, I guess, but you know, I think when God invited us into this whole operation, God was saying, you know, I'm not taking control of all of this. I'm sharing my control of how this world works with you, whom I have invited to become part of the body of Christ. And so you're on, you know, in Jesus' set as much. The only time Jesus talked about judgment, the only time that I've ever seen was when He talked about the sheep and the goats. And the only difference between them was how they treated others. That is the only difference. That's where that's the only place He talked about judgment. So I am thinking a lot more about that these days and thinking, okay, if any of you want grace, get out there and be grace, you know, be grace to people in your family, your neighbors. It can be a small thing, sometimes it's a bigger thing, but I think our own participation in this grand thing called God's Kingdom, I think our participation is where a lot of that grace is generated. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just that trajectory of kind of colliding with other people in our lives and the opportunities that come. I mean, it's obviously grounded very much in Scripture, but I think, you know, we can easily also look to the, you know, exercises, you know, I think the call of Christ, right? You know, Christ invites. As you said, right, there's a collaboration, God desires this collaboration. Christ calls us into the enterprise, into the work, and I always think of the two standards, right? Like the center of the enemy gets increasingly lonely and isolated. Yeah. Whereas the standard of Christ is all about community and fellowship, and I call you friends, right? And again, I'm just kind of harping on the celebration idea, like what, in which direction do we find more to celebrate and people to celebrate with, you know, which, which trajectory is going to, is going to bring that out? I wonder, so again, back to kind of you and your own work as a writer, what role do you suggest to folks who are listening, what role might writing play in identifying, naming, cultivating, gratitude and more mindful observation of God's desire to give us graces, to shower us with graces? Well, you're right. I'm a writer. I'm also an old writer, you know, I'm in my late sixties now, and I didn't say that. Let the record show. That's right. That's right. And I'm proud of it. You know, I've earned this age, but the thing about getting older is you just stop caring about what people think. You know, you really just stop caring about being popular or, or, you know, making loads of money. I mean, it's just, it's just, those things are not important anymore. And what I'm more and more drawn to is God, please show me reality. Show me the truth of what is going on around me within me. Show me the truth of your love or every person I meet and help me to, help me to communicate that reality. See, I think, and again, talking about the enemy, the enemy wants to surround us with unreality realities, I think it should be, or reality as certain people in power may be trying to tell me it is, or, you know, but reality is simply the truth of who people are and who God is and the world that God has created. So as a writer, I just want to be gut honest about the way God sees us, which is mercy and love and the way that Jesus had demonstrated that we act toward other people, which is, you know, love your enemy, pray for those who hurt you, help out people who need it. And so what that means is that I may end up writing for a smaller and smaller audience, frankly, you know, if I continue to really grapple with what's the truth of all this, it may not be popular. I mean, it wasn't when Jesus was around and he said, you know, the world hated me, they're going to hate you too. And that can be a conflict, you know, when what you do, you kind of have to be popular so people buy your books, right? I mean, we're not just doing what we're gifted to do, but we're in the middle of a business model called publishing. And at a certain point, I have to say, you know, I can't care about that. I need to respond to what the Holy Spirit is teaching me and I need to tell the truth that I'm learning over and over again. And that truth is just different versions of you are God's beloved, however that comes out. So, you know, I'm caught up in a great tension of this is what I see is important and it may not be what sells books right now. So, you know, and I think that tension is always going to be there. At the same time, sometimes when we tell the truth at just the right time, it's when people are hungry for it. And that's when the book does sell and it does great good because you happen to be telling the truth at a time when people are saying, "I am tired of all of this make-believe stuff. I'm being fed from all angles." So you never know, you know, writing it from a spiritual viewpoint does not automatically mean that you're not going to be popular and you're not going to sell well. I mean, we have plenty of bestsellers in the religion market, but it does mean that you still have the responsibility to discern what is the Spirit giving me to write. What is the Spirit showing me in teaching me that I have to share and doing that discernment I think is very important and worrying about the outcome. We have to be careful about that. Yeah. No, that's really good advice, really good advice. Now, question, we are looking pretty close to Advent. So how do you, weird way to say that I'm sorry, we're getting close to Advent. So what spiritual wisdom do you give us as we kind of come into this all-important season of the church year? Celebration, honey. Celebration. You know, I go nuts during Advent and Christmas and I don't apologize for it. I decorate, I bake, I put out, you know, I put on Christmas music. I get rid of a lot of other things in my schedule. There are a lot of things I don't schedule to do during, you know, I don't generally don't schedule freelance editing and stuff during Christmas. I want to just have the energy to really dwell deeply in the season. I watch movies about it. I have a whole stack of books I put out in Christmas time. They're all over the house. And so I may sit down on the couch any time of the day and just read another story related to the coming of Jesus, you know, whether it's fiction or devotional or whatever. I just think, you know, this is an excuse to really dwell deeply in this marvelous story of Jesus, of God with us, you know, and if that means you don't shop quite as much and don't go to so many events so that you can be in your own space and just enjoy the good news. And I think that's fine too. I like that image of books everywhere, just picking up one. Now and again, and just pulling a, pulling on a new story about incarnation. Great. Good advice. Well, Vina, always a pleasure to have you on. And let's, let's try and sell some books where, where can folks get the 2025 book of Graceville Days? Well, they can go to the loyal oppress website. That's an easy way to do it. It's always going to be available on Amazon. So anywhere books are sold, you can order it and get it. It should be pretty easy. Cool. And we'll drop a link in our notes here. We'll have a very happy Thanksgiving and a blessed Advent season. Oh, you too. AMDG is a production of the Jesuit Media Lab, a project of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States in Washington, D.C. This episode was edited by me, Eric Clayton. Our theme music is by Kevin Lasky. The Jesuit conference communications team is Marcus Bleach, Michael Lasky, Becky Sundalar, and me, Eric Clayton. Connect with the Jesuits online at Jesuits.org, on X at @ Jesuits news, on Instagram at @wearethejesuits and on Facebook at facebook.com/jesuits. You can also sign up for our weekly email series, now to discern this, by visiting Jesuits.org/weekly. The Jesuit Media Lab offers courses and resources at the intersection of Ignatian spirituality and creativity. If you're a writer, podcaster, filmmaker, visual artist, or other creator, check out our offerings at Jesuit Media Lab.org. If you or someone you know might be called to discern a vocation to the Jesuits, connect with a Jesuit vocation promoter at via Jesuits.org. Drop us an email with questions or comments at media@jesuits.org. You can subscribe to the show on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And as St. Ignatius of Loyola, may or may not have said, go and set the world on fire. [BLANK_AUDIO]