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  • What Is Ignatian Spirituality?
  • Making Good Decisions
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    Mary Ellen Smajo

    Mary Ellen Smajo has been savoring and writing responses to sacred moments since early high school, when she first began to notice and reflect on God’s tangible actions in our lives. She is a (“very happy and grateful!”) member of the Ignatian Volunteer Corps and serves as the music minister for IVC Chicago. Prior to joining IVC, she worked in clinical education; before that she worked as a medical physicist in the hospital setting. Her PhD is in medical physics, and she did her undergrad at Loyola University Chicago. “These poems are God’s; may they do the work for which they were sent. Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam.”

    The Grace of Autumn

    Autumn Leaves Summer’s end cathedral windows paint pale canvas, dapple our shadows with sight, for colors pieced and patched quilt earth to sky; precious colors once hidden within, made plain by grace, grace us. Fall’s Last Leaves Wild wind drives them, shakes loose...

    Giving in God’s Name

    A Room Filled with Treasure You showed me a room filled with treasure, precious, priceless, and told me it was mine; I marveled: what a gift! such abundance! a comfort to have it, but what would I...

    Breathing

    While we’re often called to actively participate in God’s good work in the world, sometimes God tells us to stop for a bit and just receive. Sometimes I have...

    Healing and Comfort

    Sometimes God heals and comforts us, like Jesus did for Jairus’s daughter, the woman with the hemorrhage, and Peter’s mother-in-law. Sometimes God heals and comforts through us, and we...

    Dancing

    Pentecost I watch Your branches dance, bathed in morning sun, and wonder at the work of Spirit’s breath between the leaves; what You have begun You will fulfill, and we who wait so deep in peace can feel so...

    Scars and Make Me a Mirror

    Scars Some wounds take a long time to heal; some wounds never heal; sometimes there are scars, perpetual evidence of a love well-lived. You still have the wounds, evidence of Your love to-the-last and always; I’ve...