The Talking Puzzles: Conversations with Images

By Thomas Ramadhani SJ

You have a choice to rewrite your story of destruction as a story of redemption.

In 2013, after a prolonged struggle with shame, public humiliation and vocational crisis, Father Ramadhani was sent for a residential treatment.

Working on jigsaw puzzles with fellow residents soon became his new hobby. Little did he know that this would lead him to soul-searching conversations with the images on those puzzles—Golden Gate Bridge, Dubrovnik, Riomaggiore, Sydney Opera House, Big Ben Clock Tower, Castle of Chambord, Mount Rushmore, Portland Head Lighthouse. The result is this smooth blend of Ignatian contemplation and mythic imagination.

Tapping on the strength of vulnerability, this book encourages anyone dealing with inner unresolved issues, to pull away, listen, look honestly inside the soul with the eyes of an outsider, and if possible, humbly seek professional help.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Singapore
• Release date: Sep 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543754087

Thomas Ramadhani SJ

THOMAS RAMADHANI, SJ holds a Doctorate from Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University, Berkeley, and a Licentiate from Biblical Institute, Rome. He is the author of Sewing God: Inner Paths in the Fashion World, The Talking Puzzles: Conversations with Images, and God’s Seduction Plan: A Homecoming Journey with Hosea.

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Copyright © 2019 by Thomas Ramadhani, Sj.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Scripture texts, prefaces, introductions, footnotes and cross references used in this work are taken from the New American Bible, revised edition © 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc., Washington, DC All Rights Reserved

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Contents

Acknowledgement

Prologue

Part One

The Images

1. Bridge

2. Fortress

3. Village

4. Opera House

5. Tower

6. Castle

7. Mountain

8. Lighthouse

Part Two

The Conversations

9. Mirror

10. Letter

11. Coffee Shop

Epilogue

Postscript

Appendix: Questions for Personal Soul-Searching and Group Sharing

Sources

Life is like jigsaw puzzles.

Respect the edges, admire the colours,

touch the shapes, nurture the wonder,

from the easiest to the hardest,

one piece at a time.

In memory of Fr. Gordon F. George, SJ

(3 December 1911 – 14 September 1994)

For my fellow pilgrims at Southdown Institute.

With gratitude for our tireless soul-searching together.

Acknowledgement

I thank Fr. Mark Raper, SJ, and Fr. Riyo Mursanto, SJ, who trusted me with the costly privilege to get help. Forever will I be grateful for your generosity.

A dedicated and professional assessment team at Emmaus Center for Psycho-Spiritual Formation was there for me at the onset of this long journey. With compassion, they listened to me as I was trying to rationalise my hidden reality. Eventually they recommended a residential treatment for me. Thank you for trusting me with a new hope. Although it sounded so scary, it turned out to be a new door for a graced opportunity I did not deserve.

That nine-month stay in the Philippines was a lonely journey. Now I can look back with awe and admit that I have survived because of the support from my brothers at the Jesuit Community of East Asian Pastoral Institute in Quezon City. I thank all of you for taking part in my life journey.

From the Philippines, I embarked on a new chapter in Canada. Little did I know that it would lead me to a seventeen-month stretch of soul-searching. Above all, Southdown Institute was and will always be a precious and irreplaceable chapter. Each from the Southdown clinical staff has contributed unique pieces to my journey. I was privileged to have them witness my brokenness, tears, defensiveness, as well as my renewal and rebirth. Respecting the confidentiality, however, I must keep them nameless. To you in the clinical staff, as well as the administration, housekeeping, and maintenance team, my sincere thanks.

To Southdown residents—past, present, and future, with whom I have the privilege to walk the same path, especially all my generous ‘plus one’ buddies—thank you for our journey together to the deeper recess of human psyche and spirit. You, together with everyone from the clinical staff and all others who make the place run graciously, will always be my fellow pilgrims in this blessed soul-searching. To you all I dedicate this book.

I have been blessed with the precious opportunity to live with my brother Jesuits at Canadian Martyrs’ Residence in Toronto, casually called the ‘2 Dale’ community. During my stay with them, I experienced the worst winter ever, with my eyes wandering outside from my tiny room above the garage when the snow was whitening my surrounding world with unprecedented enthusiasm. Paradoxically, even though the temperature reached thirty degrees centigrade below zero, I could already feel that the warm joy of spring was being sown in my heart. Thank you for welcoming me into your nurturing nest after my treatment and for being patient with me roaming in the house.

My editor Emman Villaran, copyeditor Diana Reed, as well as Julius Artwell and Kathy Lorenzo from the Partridge team have always been very helpful throughout the process. Thank you for all your hard works for me.

A person whom I have met only through stories, the late Fr. Gordon F. George, SJ, deserves a special mention here. His name may have been hidden under piles of papers filled with ‘2B-penciled bubbles’, but he was so instrumental to get the bishops’ approval and financing for a new centre called Emmanuel Convalescent Foundation, now known as Southdown Institute. Over the years, he was also involved in many ways with the institute.

Gordon, I do not know what you had in mind back then, but I thank you. I can see that you now look from your new place in eternity with a big smile, saying, ‘It was, and it is worth it.’

Prologue

One way to express the spiritual crisis of our time

is to say that most of us have an address but cannot be found there.

—Henri Nouwen

A popular speaker. A prolific writer. A broken priest. An exiled Jesuit. A rumour material. A treatment patient. A redeemed person. That is me. Seven labels given by different people. Well, there are more actually. And yes, we all love labels; I do too. Right or wrong, true or false, good or bad, it does not really matter if we can still play with labels. They provide us with an easy and simple conclusion to a complex reality of life and the world around us. Even more, labels on others make us feel secure that we are not them.

Number seven, ‘a redeemed person’, speaks loudly about my new life, and I really love this label. This book, however, is about number six, ‘a treatment patient’ label. More to the core, this book is based on one chapter of my life journey in a facility that seeks to help consecrated and/or ordained men and women dealing with some ‘issues’. It is a story that without my knowledge had already its start during my fourteen-week residential treatment at Southdown Institute, Ontario, Canada.

It was a practice that on the last Wednesday of every month, we had a special luncheon for all the residents and the staff. During such occasion, those who were finishing their treatment and scheduled to leave in the following month were given the opportunity to give a little talk as an anticipated farewell note.

As I was pondering upon what I should say, I found myself searching for some symbols that could represent my own journey at that blessed place. One thing I knew: during those fourteen weeks, I enjoyed much of my extra time putting together jigsaw puzzles. So I looked at the images of those puzzles one more time. Up to that point, with fellow residents, I had completed eight different puzzles. The first one was a bridge, and the last one was a lighthouse. Suddenly, I had a little ‘aha’ moment. Therefore, in my short farewell speech, I shared about my experience as an inner journey ‘from a bridge to a lighthouse’.

We were asked to share two things: ‘What have I received from Southdown?’ and, ‘What is my gift to Southdown?’ While answering the first question was easy, I found it rather difficult to answer the second. That was how I began to visualise a book that I would love to write. I made a secret promise that one day I would write a book as my gift to Southdown.

After my treatment, however, other things began to absorb my attention and energy. Nine months had elapsed when one day, together with some new friends from 1001 Friday Nights of Storytelling, I found myself at a talk given by Michelle Tocher. Her journey through personal turmoil had led her to fairy tales, and she discovered her own life story in the story of Rapunzel. She called this process ‘mythic imagination’, which is on the opposite pole from ‘mere fantasy’. The former always leads us deeper into reality, while the latter detaches us further away from reality.

It echoed in my ears as none other than practising Ignatian contemplation based on a fairy tale. Thus, I began to ask myself: What would happen if I get back to those images of the jigsaw puzzles and let each of them tell its story? Somehow, I had a strong hunch that if I did this, I would also find my own life story in each of their stories.

When I was back to Southdown for the second Connection workshop, things came to present themselves together. It was an experience that felt close to what Parker J. Palmer said when he talked about how a teacher would know the subject which he or she was called to teach. He explained the process simply by saying that the subject finds the teacher.

There I was, in the middle of deeper discoveries of my life story, it felt as if this book, in its imaginary and rudimentary shape, found me right there, and I could not get my mind and heart out of it. This time, however, it felt different. Even though it had started as a promise only to Southdown, it turned out that it was also a promise to the jigsaw puzzles themselves. It was a promise to pay attention to their stories and to put words to the stories. The book you are holding now in your hands is the realisation of that promise.

**********

In Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life, Dani Shapiro asserted, ‘To write is to have an ongoing dialogue with your own pain. To scream to it, with it, from it. To know it—to know it cold.’ In my case, pain has different layers: pain of having disappointed many people, pain of leaving open wounds with no instant remedy, pain of not being able to clarify clouded stories about many things, even the pain of knowing that revealing my vulnerability like this might not be judged politically correct.

For the sake of reputation and ‘common’ good—with the emphasis on ‘common’ that means ‘conventional’, rather than on ‘good’ that can be ‘unconventional’—many of us have for ages learned to impose, both on ourselves and on others, a distorted wisdom to numb and to pretend. Perhaps following the opposite swing of the pendulum from the pole of numbing and pretending, my journey has convinced me to have an ongoing dialogue with my own pain. In that process, the pain in the stories of the images represented in those jigsaw puzzles has opened the doors for me to touch my own. That is it. If you as a reader can feel, even vaguely and fleetingly, that pain, I have done my job.

Every former resident has different experiences about her or his treatment because each one is unique. For me, Southdown was a blessed place where my redemption began. It led me to the beginning of my homecoming. Writing all this has also been for me a conscious choice to continue my journey of redemption and homecoming.

God speaks in many ways; many times, even outside the sacred places. God wants to be found in everyone and in everything. God wants to be heard. I have heard God’s voice in my ongoing soul-searching, even long after I finished the jigsaw puzzles. Far beyond those lonely moments when I was trying to kill time, and as I was learning anew to live