How Jesuit spirituality changed Andrew Garfield's life

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What the episode is about

Andrew Garfield talks with James Martin, S.J., who was his spiritual director for seven or eight months while he prepared to play a Jesuit missionary in Martin Scorsese's Silence (2016). Ten years later he talks about his new film The Uprising, acting as a spiritual practice, his mother and her death, what the Spiritual Exercises gave him (above all Jesus's hidden years and the freedom of being ordinary), how he does the examen every night, a dream he had when his mother died, and how not to take your pain out on others. The conversation often turns into a spiritual direction session, as both of them say. After the interview Martin and producer Maggie Van Dorn talk about God speaking through dreams. The episode is 56:47 long; the interview runs from about 4:20 to 51:20.

Opening line

Played before the intro: "With social media and with just a kind of the mask of the persona that we give to the world, it's a prison that we're all, I feel, in. And it's a prison that I long to free myself of. Free myself into my ordinariness." The full passage comes at 24:28. 0:06

Introduction: how Garfield "trained as a Jesuit"

Van Dorn's introduction: Golden Globe, Tony, BAFTA, two Oscar nominations; films include The Amazing Spider-Man, Hacksaw Ridge, Tick, Tick... Boom!, We Live in Time. To prepare for Silence he spent the better part of a year in spiritual direction with Martin, doing the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. 1:32
Martin: Silence, from Shūsaku Endō's novel, is about 17th-century Portuguese missionaries in Japan. Garfield and Adam Driver both had to prepare; Garfield chose to do the Exercises: an extended retreat meditating on the life of Christ, done either in 30 days at a retreat house or, as most people do today, as the "19th annotation" retreat in daily life over months. They did the whole Exercises in seven or eight months, and Martin says Garfield "gave himself generously" and had real experiences of Christ. 2:23, 2:42
Van Dorn: the Exercises are for anyone, you don't have to be a Jesuit or an actor. You can tell from the way he accesses his depths that he did them. 3:03

The Uprising: "these are not God's laws"

He sees it as a very spiritual film. It's set during the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 in England, right after the Black Death, which had killed half of Europe. An oligarch class around the young king Richard II (13 or 14) was misusing the recovery funds and hoarding wealth and status, and common people felt their souls squeezed to the point of losing their dignity. 5:28, 6:10
Enough people rose up to say "the world is out of joint. These are not God's laws that we are being subjected to. These are man's laws. Because God is more just than this. God wants us to not only survive but to thrive." At the time the king was seen as the literal vessel of God's word and law. 6:51, 7:14
For him it's a story of regular people finding a deeper, more personal relationship with God, and of people gathering in community to make "a more just world where everyone belongs". 7:37, 8:05
His character, the plowman, has lost his wife and two children to the plague and is being squeezed for all he's worth. The longing to set the world in order comes from that loss. He doesn't want to cause trouble or rock the boat, but he is "called", maybe against his own conscious will: "like the wind is speaking to him. His ancestors are speaking to him", like every spiritual activist "from Jesus onwards and before". 8:42, 9:43

A spirituality of acting

Martin asks if there's a spirituality of acting. Garfield tears up: we rarely get to have deep conversations in public, "particularly in this kind of the culture of divisiveness that we're in". 10:22
His work is "endlessly spiritual" and he can't fully express it. When the work feels deep and from the soul, he feels connected to other people, to nature, to all living things, to "some source that is very very mysterious". Then the words empathy and compassion come. 11:00, 11:32
His heart breaks when there is a lack of empathy anywhere, when we keep separating ourselves instead of looking for "a family feeling", "a deep listening of each other". Acting is where he finds joy and purpose and serves something greater alongside "my fellow soul travelers". 11:46, 12:31
Martin hadn't made the connection before: the lack of empathy in the world today, "so dehumanizing", and the empathy an actor needs for his characters. 12:41

Upbringing: the church of money and his mother

Martin's disclaimer: he knows a lot about Garfield's spiritual life from direction, but won't share anything Garfield doesn't share himself. 13:01
His upbringing was "very informal", and "very capitalist": he watched "the church of money", with mistrust, and saw a lot of pain caused by chasing financial security. 13:35
On the other side, his mother had "an almost pantheistic connection" to the world. (He gets emotional: "maybe I didn't get enough sleep last night".) She could love and tend to people, animals, plants, trees, a meal. "She was someone who was so concentrated and tuned in to the small miracles of all life. Very Jesuit." He absorbed it "like osmosis". 14:05, 14:56
At her hospice bed he saw who she had been from beginning to end: "this deeply, deeply giving, generous soul". Her frustration with herself all her life was, he thinks, an awareness that she was meant to be everywhere at once, serving and comforting; she got frustrated with "her incarnate being". When she died he sensed she was "back in pure spirit form", able to go to all the places she wished she could have been. 15:27, 16:13
"It could have been magical thinking. It could have been true." As they say often, "a life of doubt is a life of faith", from Thomas Merton, whom Martin introduced him to. That is the foundation of his "attempt at spiritual empathy". 16:41
Martin, whose mother died in February: when you're released from your body there's ultimate union with God, and since God is everywhere, you are present everywhere too. "I really believe that's true." 17:07
No talk about religion, church or synagogue at home: "a kind of do-it-yourself toolkit". It left him a big curiosity and a longing to fill that void, to be a seeker of union with "anything greater than myself... that has a healing quality... and that does feel like God to me". 17:44, 17:55

Silence and the Spiritual Exercises

Martin's side: Scorsese called him as a theological consultant, and Garfield asked to meet. He met a curious, spiritual man who wanted to know everything about Jesuit spirituality and to do the Exercises. Martin's first thought: "he can't possibly be ready for the exercises". He was. 18:39, 18:56
Garfield: their time together is "a highlight of my life" that he can still feel "in my body and in my bones". He'd have done anything Scorsese asked, but the book and script felt like "stepping into the mystery of faith, the mystery of doubt", of a spiritual life of generosity and self-sacrifice. 19:27, 20:03
The film became secondary to the work with Martin (he thinks Scorsese would support that order of priorities): his relationship with his own spirituality and with the life of Jesus became the primary experience. He was invited into it "mysteriously" through his calling as an actor. 20:40
Martin explains the setup: you imagine yourself in the life of Christ; they met once a week and Garfield was given the exercises, the life of Christ and other "points of decision". 21:35

The hidden years and the grace of being ordinary

Asked to describe the experience: "No, I cannot" (laughter). "Nice softball question there from Father Martin." 21:51
It surprised him; he had no idea what he was getting into. A series of "deep, intense, very beautiful, imaginative meditations on the life of Christ", from his conception through death and resurrection. His favorites were on the hidden years: imagining Jesus as a young man, where he was, the trouble he got into, his formative experiences, "and the ordinariness". 22:10, 22:44
"Why does that move me? I don't know. The ordinariness, the simple woundedness of him as a human being" lets him accept his own ordinariness and woundedness, "to not have to be anything but what we are". There is a place to forgive ourselves "for all of our humanness": if it's okay for someone as godly as Christ to be human... That was one of the big graces of the Exercises. 23:12, 23:38
What Martin used to say in direction, which made him laugh: "There are two pieces of good news. One is that there is a messiah and two is that it's not you." Martin: "It's very freeing, isn't it?" 24:08
"The idea that we feel like we have to be more than we are... it's heartbreaking." As an actor he feels the pressure to present, but everyone does, with social media and "the mask of the persona": "a prison that I long to free myself of, free myself into my ordinariness... my ability to just be a very flawed, a very beautiful, very complicated human being." Accepting that can start to feel like "a very rich gift". 24:22, 24:55
He had never thought about Jesus before the Exercises: "Not at all." It felt like a "reunion", as if Jesus and his qualities had always existed in his imagination and in him. A true relationship, strange and mysterious, showing the power of spiritual seeking and of the imagination, through which, as Martin says, God can work. 25:40, 26:09
He admits that with time he questions everything, even what they experienced together: "that feels very human to me". But there is something deeply real he can still "touch and hold even though it's invisible". Martin, "hesitating to be your spiritual director": at the end of the Exercises he had warned that the evil spirit would try to make him doubt it, "the classic response". 26:49, 27:18

His examen, every night

Ten years after Silence, he still tries to remember to do the examen every night. Martin: that's where most of his directees are, they try. 27:54
Before sleep he prays to God and to Christ, and adds others: his mother, Mike Nichols, Phil (Philip Seymour) Hoffman, Sandra Seacat, ancestors, "people that I know have my back in the other world". 28:33
First stage: walk through the day in your mind's eye and find two or three moments of deep awareness of God; re-enter them "in your imagination, in your body", sink into them and give thanks. A connection with the grocery store cashier, this conversation, a bird flying over a tree, surfing, a child laughing. 29:01, 29:43
Second: go back through the day and see where you lived "with an awareness of being in the kingdom of heaven", connecting with the world, with people, with nature, with your own spirit. 30:18
Third: "a searching and fearless moral inventory" (the wording of step four in the twelve steps): where did I miss the mark today? Where was I a bit impatient, very impatient, where did I lose my temper, "where was I ordinary, where was I human", where did I waste time on things that don't need my energy? He loves that the root of the word sin means "missing the mark". You're honest about it and ask forgiveness. 30:34, 31:04
The close: "Thank you for today. Be with me tomorrow and help me do better. Amen." Martin: "You remember the examen very well." 31:16

Contemplative prayer in a lost world

He prays contemplatively more and more this year, because he needs it: "the world is very upside down right now". Injustice, corruption, "a lot of lostness": "a lot of people are really really lost and they're being encouraged to be more and more lost." He needs to lean on a higher power more than ever. 31:45, 31:59
Martin finds "encouraged to feel lost" profound: there are forces that want people isolated, excluded, ignored, and little that draws us back to the center. Contemplation and having God at the center stabilizes and grounds you in confusing times. 32:33

Grief, his mother's song, and "here she comes"

When they did the Exercises his mother was still alive. They were "a prepping of the soil": they opened his capacity for awareness of what may or may not have been happening with her as she passed. 33:49
Part of him thought she could never not be here, "because she's the reason I'm here... she was the portal within which I traveled into this world". On his best days he knows she's still here, "in the wind, in the trees, in this conversation, in my memory, in my imagination". 34:35, 34:49
Martin shares two images from his own mother's death. She was 94, frail, had fallen and fractured her neck, weighed maybe 80 or 90 pounds, and the word that kept coming was "spent". He recalls a line he attributes to the Psalms (it's Isaiah 55:10-11): God's word doesn't return without accomplishing what it was sent for, like the rain. "God has sent her into the world. She's done what she's been asked to do and she's leaving." The second image: all her relatives at the foot of the bed, her parents, her two brothers, his father, welcoming her. 35:32, 36:06
Garfield feels a tension between what to keep for himself and what to share. Martin's litmus test: "Is it going to help people?" He wrote an article days after his mother died about her seeming to be on the cross ("I never understood the cross before"), and people wrote that it helped them. 36:58, 37:20
The dream, the night his mother passed: she came out in her hospital gown onto a balcony over a body of water, with all her living family there, and started singing. She wasn't a good singer, but in the dream she sang with all her remaining energy, and her voice was carrying a little boat with sick children across the water. She sang until she couldn't, turned to him and said: "I can't do anymore. That's it." A song "of such beauty and such healing and such generosity and such care", and in him, acceptance. 38:03, 39:06
Martin: God speaks to us in dreams, not every dream but some; the unconscious can hear what the conscious can't, and the Bible is full of it. And in heaven she probably has a beautiful singing voice. 39:40
Something Martin read and loves: when someone dies, people on one shore say "There she goes", and people on the other shore say "Here she comes". Garfield: "I would love it to be true. And there's a part of me that believes it to be true." Martin: "Keep believing that part that believes it." Both laugh that it has become a direction session. 40:32, 40:49
Garfield: if he can be of any service, "that's an honor to my mom". Martin, with the Jesuit expression: he "gave himself generously to the Exercises", did the meditations, journaled, showed up, and "God loves a cheerful giver" (2 Corinthians 9:7). 41:19, 42:05

Audience question: how do I transform my pain to stop transmitting it to others?

Garfield's first reaction: "Oh my gosh." He asks to be "front row center" for Martin's answer. 42:44
Martin: first recognize the pain, admit it's real, don't avoid it. Then speak about it with God, honestly, and with a spiritual director, a friend or a therapist, so you don't have to bear it alone. 43:04
Sharing pain is healthy (they've been doing it about their mothers). Transmitting it means imposing it, burdening someone, transferring your anger, lashing out. "You don't have to transfer your anger or your upset to somebody else", it can really damage people; you can decide not to, and holding it is fine if you're dealing with it. 44:10
His Jesuit friend Chris Derby: when Martin joked "My life is such a cross", Derby answered "Yes, Jim, but for you or for others?" You don't want your life to be a cross for other people. 44:43
Garfield: what helps him is community, people and also "tree friends, ocean friends, bird friends... soil friends, plant friends". Owning the pain and expressing it in self-ownership to someone who nods along; when a friend says "Yep, me too", the burden gets lighter: "I feel less alone. I feel less ashamed. I feel less embarrassed." 45:41, 46:06
The hard step for him is being vulnerable enough to say "I'm in pain", while not wanting to burden anyone. 46:22
A recent example: getting ready for a premiere, exhausted, raw, anxious about gotcha questions and the way media works now, "rabbit in a headlights", while getting makeup and a suit. He told his inner team: "I'm having a bit of a hard moment. I don't really want to go tonight... I'm feeling a little ordinary", knowing his life is "as privileged as it gets" ("bring out the world's smallest violin"). "I don't want to put this on anybody and I don't want to take it out on anybody... you haven't got to do anything about it." 46:32, 47:28
"You give good people an opportunity to show up for you and they love it." Their love and empathy started to heal it right away, others in the room shared their own pain, and it became "a familial experience". He pulled up his bootstraps and went. Martin: it's a gift for them too, they feel honored. 48:03, 48:51
Garfield's question back: if we fail and take our pain out on others, how do we recover, inside and with them? Martin: ask forgiveness; remember that God's forgiveness is much bigger than ours. When he's stressed and impatient, he explains ("I was really tired, I just came back from this trip") and apologizes. Often people say it's fine, sometimes they hadn't even noticed. And remember there's a messiah and it's not you: you're imperfect, and that's okay. A therapist once told him people are more concerned about themselves than about you, which is freeing too. 48:54, 49:19, 50:34
Martin's thanks: for his friendship, openness and honesty during the Exercises and after, for his big heart, "for being a loving person on this earth". Garfield: "the work you do brings me a lot of comfort and a lot of connection." 51:01

After the interview: does God speak in dreams?

Van Dorn: he's the same genuine, deeply feeling person she has seen in other interviews; you can see why he's a good actor, able to enter another's perspective with empathy. She noticed he hesitated before telling the dream. 51:50
Her question: if God speaks to us in dreams, why? Martin: Joseph's dreams and others in the Bible; and from a contemporary view, some things our conscious minds can't accept or hear, so it works better through the unconscious. On retreat he has had revelatory dreams. 53:03
But not every dream is a message from God: anxiety dreams about an exam or an unprepared homily are just that. You test it out. One of his directors asks a neutral question: "What occurs to you in this dream?", not "what does God mean". Hold them lightly. Garfield's dream, if he brought it to direction, sounds authentic. 53:28, 53:55
The more common mistake is the opposite, thinking God couldn't possibly speak through dreams, that it's superstition. If God works through imagination, why not through dreams? "Ask St. Joseph." 54:34
Van Dorn: finding God in dreams is like finding God in waking life, you still discern the spirits. And sleep is surrender: awake we think we're in control, orchestrating our lives with our egos; at night the ego isn't dictating. Martin, quoting a Jesuit brother: "Not every leaf that falls in front of you on the sidewalk is a big message from God." 54:57, 55:09, 55:37

Quotes

"It's a prison that I long to free myself of. Free myself into my ordinariness." (Garfield) 24:55
"These are not God's laws that we are being subjected to. These are man's laws. Because God is more just than this." (Garfield, on the peasants of 1381) 6:51
"She was someone who was so concentrated and tuned in to the small miracles of all life. Very Jesuit." (Garfield, on his mother) 14:56
"A life of doubt is a life of faith." (Garfield, via Thomas Merton) 16:41
"There is a place for us to forgive ourselves for all of our humanness." (Garfield) 23:38
"There are two pieces of good news. One is that there is a messiah and two is that it's not you." (Martin, as Garfield remembers it) 24:08
"Where did I miss the mark today?" (Garfield, on the examen) 31:04
"Thank you for today. Be with me tomorrow and help me do better." (Garfield, end of his examen) 31:16
"A lot of people are really really lost and they're being encouraged to be more and more lost." (Garfield) 31:59
"She was the portal within which I traveled into this world." (Garfield) 34:35
"Yes, Jim, but for you or for others?" (Chris Derby, S.J., quoted by Martin) 44:43
"You give good people an opportunity to show up for you and they love it." (Garfield) 48:03
"Not every leaf that falls in front of you on the sidewalk is a big message from God." (a Jesuit brother, quoted by Martin) 55:09

Exploration

Ideas

Jesus's hidden years as a meditation on ordinariness: thirty years of nothing recorded, and they give permission to be ordinary. If Christ didn't need to be extraordinary every day, neither do I.
"There is a messiah and it's not you" works against perfectionism and against the idea that everything depends on me. Martin uses it again for apologizing: you're imperfect and that's okay.
Garfield's examen has a clear shape I could use as it is: thanks for two or three moments re-entered with the body; where I lived in the kingdom; where I missed the mark; forgiveness; "be with me tomorrow".
Pain shared versus pain transmitted. Saying "I'm struggling, you don't have to do anything about it" is the way to not take it out on anyone, and it gives people the chance to show up.
"Encouraged to be lost": the lostness is pushed on us, it's not only personal; contemplation is a way to resist it.
Doubt as part of faith (Merton), and Martin's warning that the evil spirit will try to make you doubt what you received. Both are true, and the examen is where you can tell them apart.
Discernment applies to dreams the same way as to waking life: "what occurs to you?", held lightly.

Questions it raises

Is his "higher power... anything greater than myself that has a healing quality" the same God he met in the Exercises, or a wider, vaguer one he falls back on?
- I think it's the same God, said in a looser way. What changed him was meeting Jesus in the Gospels during the Exercises (the hidden years, the "reunion"). But when he talks about leaning on it now, he never names Christ.
Can you pray to your dead mother and to Philip Seymour Hoffman in the examen? Is it the communion of saints, or something else?
- It's close to the communion of saints: asking the dead to pray for us is an old Christian practice. He talks about them more as protectors ("people that I know have my back") than as people praying with him. It works as long as they're added to praying to God and to Christ, not put in their place.
Where do I transmit my pain instead of sharing it? Who would I say "I'm struggling, you don't have to do anything" to?
- As of this day it's easy to turn to easy numbing strategies: scrolling, cheap dopamine.
What would a meditation on my own "hidden years" look like: the ordinary days nobody sees?
- Most of my days are hidden years: Scripture before the phone, work, dinner, the evening prayer. The meditation would be to look at one of those days the way Garfield imagines Jesus at twenty: nothing recorded, and still not wasted.