Inquietud: Reflections on a Pebble in One’s Sandal

Pebble in My Sandal

During college, I enlisted in a study abroad program in Mexico. It became a springboard after graduation to volunteer for service in Peru. From both experiences in Mexico and Peru, my life greatly changed. Learning Spanish and being immersed in the Latin culture, I discovered how words often bring new meaning.

Over the years, I remember reading somewhere that Ignatius often used the word, inquietud (restlessness). He described it as a constant yet mild sensation of a new awareness. Ignatius likened it to having a small pebble in one’s sandal—not big enough to stop the journey to remove it, yet carried along as tolerable, if a bit at times uncomfortable companion.  Since my college days, inquietud has been an underlying theme of my life. I believe that this restlessness is innate to our human experience, and I use the word purposely in my class to identify and reflect on these experiences which particularly strike us. For instance, when reading a novel, or viewing a film, or simply walking down the street, paying closer attention to using one’s senses leads to progressing in recognizing the Jesuit mantra of “Finding God in All Things.”

Back in 2002, when I was newly assigned as Special Assistant to the President of Loyola University Chicago, I discussed that assignment with my sister, Karen, a LUC Law School alumna. With her usual wit, she mentioned that she had no experience of a Jesuit in her four years of study. She added that, in those years, she never saw, spoke to, or had any contact with a Jesuit nor with the Jesuit mission. That conversation particularly struck me and left an inquietud moment that eventually led to teaching a class in Jesuit Spirituality at LUC Law School.

It was customary for those of us whose Jesuit assignments weren’t mainly pastoral to volunteer for weekend pastoral service. “Supply Work,” we called it. Most often we would serve in a local parish offering Eucharistic liturgies. My earlier assignment in the Jesuit Provincial office was located near a Latino community at a nearby parish. There, I presided at the Sunday Spanish Mass held in the grammar school gymnasium, as the main church Masses were said in English. I served this community for fourteen years with the hope of accompanying them to enculturate into the wider English-speaking parish. For many reasons, mainly cultural, it was asking too much of this community for my hope to be realized.

With the new assignment at Loyola University, it was a good time to leave the pastoral parish dimension of my earlier work. The challenge it left me was how and where to replace it. Once again, the theme of inquietud was being played out at LUC. The experience was an Ignatian version of a pebble in my sandal.

Development of Course with Law School Deans

As I began my new job in the President’s office, I rode the elevators and walked a lot on campus. I was struck by discovering how much either the student body or I had changed since being in the classroom. I enjoyed conversing with students and appreciated their courtesy, kindness, and vitality. These discussions revealed a need for a class in Jesuit Spirituality.

I spoke with Fr. Mike Garanzini, S.J., the university president and “Director of the Work.” In that conversation, I related how the AMDG (“For the Greater Glory of God”) adage has also been a consistent theme ever since my early Jesuit formation. After raising my idea to bring a course in Jesuit Spirituality to the law students at LUC, President Garanzini strongly encouraged me to pursue my idea with the Law School’s deans and to explore its potential in the LUC Law School curriculum.

A few weeks later, I contacted the Law School’s deans. We arranged to meet and discuss this “pebble in my sandal” and my sister’s Jesuit experience at LUC Law School. I confided my idea to bring Jesuit Spirituality to a course designed for LUC Law students. The deans voiced interest while they acknowledged a gnawing lack of physical or cultural Jesuit presence in the Law School.

This conversation with the deans led to an examination of Loyola’s mission and how it influenced the deans’ responsibility to prepare students to practice law with its inherent focus on social justice and ethical duties. For example, they noted the school’s discerned curriculum shifts in response to the evolving focus on social justice created by Vatican II and Jesuit Congregations aligned with the Council. At the Law School, these shifts brought about courses such as Child Law, Elder Law, Poverty Law, and legal clinics—areas of great legal neglect in the urban community. Among the students, I noted energy around these shifts, an energy I palpably felt and included to support in my course.

Law, Life, and Jesuit Spirituality

With this further inspiration and in pursuit of a new pastoral dimension to my assignment at the university, I worked with the deans to create a course called Law, Life, and Jesuit Spirituality. The law and life components would afford structured time and peaceful space for the students who are frequently overwhelmed by their courses and career development. They would learn to reflect and talk about their legal experiences and personal concerns appearing from their work, culture, and particular backgrounds.

Spirituality would be introduced and would help guide them in practice with the tools of Ignatian Spirituality. In particular, the current directives from the Superior General of the Society of Jesus were acknowledged.

1. Showing the way to God through the Spiritual Exercises and discernment;

2. Walking with the poor and excluded;

3. Accompanying young people; and

4. Caring for our common home.

This course enabled students to encounter these apostolic preferences. Using the Daily Examen, students experienced what I call, arrepentirse the Spanish word for “a change of heart” or “a change or disposition.” The simple act of recalling an instance and experiencing it as a spiritual moment prompts gratitude and places the person in a passive and often more peaceful state.

With a seminar format in the mode of adult learning, the class members also learned from each other while they began to appreciate the evolving community they would form. Over the years, this community of law students has included those from various religious traditions as well as non-believers.

Each week the students would be required to submit a brief reflection paper describing their experiences of that week’s assignments. Though the students commonly brought to class a background of catechetical knowledge of God, they also brought a hunger for a deeper, more meaningful understanding of God. Here is where I introduced inquietud, noting that it is the Scriptural God personally communicating with each student. This hunger or subtle “restlessness” provided a fertile opportunity to introduce and familiarize them with Ignatian Spirituality, beginning with the pebble in their sandals. Their understanding of God gradually shifted from knowledge of, to sensing and experiencing God in a personal and in adult mode of communication. Students often described this shift as a welcomed respite from the pressures of law school and one they associated with their physical workouts. Both could become habitual.

Each semester began with briefly introducing Ignatian Spirituality, noting that it is a means, a tool to help all souls develop and cultivate a personal relationship with God. We looked at some supporting videos and slides, a favorite of theirs being a simple presentation of each brain side highlighting the non-dominant brain side, including imagination and its use. In their other law classes, they mainly used the dominant brain side. Using familiar art forms, I gradually introduced them to finding symbols, images, and associations, especially when discussing Scripture stories and reflecting about them.

I continually encouraged the class to take in available and easily accessible art forms. Chicago offers rich and diverse museums, galleries, and theaters, among many other venues. With their weekly reflection papers, I invited them to describe what particularly struck them from their week’s readings and reflections.

Along with links to view various forms of the Examen, I also gave them a printed version. To ease its use and intended habitual practice, I asked them to put this printed version in the corner of their bathroom mirror or some other prominent area where they usually began and ended their days. With class readings and discussions of them, the students’ weekly reflection papers summarized their experiences from practicing these exercises. These reflection papers became a form of spiritual direction. I would respond to them with written comments and suggestions much as I have learned from the spiritual directors who have guided me.

Many of the class readings offered perspectives on Ignatian prayer, meditation, and contemplation. We discussed how each of these can be adapted to a personal routine for one’s reflection and prayer. Adapting and accommodating their schedules and lifestyles to habitual prayer has been well received and effective. Examples include reflecting on going to a park and inviting Jesus to walk along, reflecting while riding to school on the ‘L’ train, reflecting while listening to music, and many other creative practices.

Film was another bridge to help the students realize their catechetical foundations and move towards actively exploring the options that the tools of Ignatian Spirituality offer. Taking clips from The Hours, The Shawshank Redemption, and Cool Hand Luke, among others, the students became especially aware of the Jesuit maxim, “Finding God in all things.” This enriched and broadened how they perceived Jesus. Using these art forms led to a deeper understanding of how life in general is one with ambiguity, doubt, and fears. Too often law students tend to see the world in black and white terms. This enriched and practiced spirituality brings and expands understanding of the complexity of life. A great foundation for one’s legal career! By semester’s end, many used hope as a noun instead of a verb, an indication of their progress.

I followed up from our discussions of allegorical tales with input by presenting slides that illustrated how differently one perceives him or herself, the other person, and the world. The presentation intended to illustrate our individual human “obstacles.” To achieve successful adult spirituality, one needs the liberty to realize, confront, and gradually shed one’s biases. Through this lens, students even today have an opportunity to realize themselves with an abiding sense of arrepentirse. This acceptance of our darker side is a natural segue to an ability to imaginatively use our senses to personally experience the Divine.

The spring course would include a good chunk of Lent. Often the class members described this season as one of “giving up” something commonly enjoyed. Instead, I invited them to recall the obstacles they personally experienced about themselves. Using the six weeks of Lent to practice the Ignatian agere contra (acting contrary to one’s impulse), students were encouraged to change their dispositions, per arrepentirse. For example, one student wrote of how this one day changed his outlook when looking at another person different from himself. He reported that in offering a suitable acknowledgement of that person, his disposition changed and a peacefulness settled in him. Arrepentirse on the L train. We discussed how these simple acts of kindness put us in more passive and reflective arenas, inviting us to take a deep breath and exercise the agere contra described earlier.

Another characteristic I noted in the class centers on a hunger students subtly develop for a God who mirrors the tenderness of Isaiah and the mercy of Pope Francis. It takes a while for students to absorb and own this element in their deepening spirituality. The early rounds of their reflection papers would take on more surface issues such as the relationship they enjoy with their pets and significant others. From exercising with the Examen and reading Scripture stories, slowly and subtly their papers revealed a growing sensitivity to peace, tranquility, and a newfound love of the Lord. With this mindset, students volunteered to serve others, especially the poor and wounded. For example, a popular ministry found them mentoring children from impoverished urban areas. From these children they mentored, glimpses of the Jesus they have begun to personally experience became an association they beautifully described in the required weekly reflection papers.

As a semester would move into its final weeks, the students would turn in their final projects. I discouraged them from using the academic tradition of a lengthy term paper and instead to consider using their creativity through an art form to symbolize and summarize their experience of Jesuit Spirituality. In that summary, they often described and identified the inquietud, the restlessness, on their journey, much like a pebble in one’s sandal.

In her final project written in the spring of 2025, one student noted that although she had not an artistic bone in her body, she became aware of how music beautifully expressed her reflections. Her final project included a playlist of songs and their associations as she came to personally experience Jesus and build an adult relationship with him.

I want My Father’s House to be the first song because it was actually what I wrote about in my first reflection of the semester. At the time it really reflected my relationship with God. I thought of God and my relationship with him as a parent/child relationship, where I considered myself to be a child who could always turn to God for a solution. However, throughout this semester’s readings and class discussions I have noticed that I have moved away from this traditional vertical authoritative relationship with God towards a relationship that is more horizontal (though admittedly not completely).^[1]

Over the years, I have found that vocabulary and its cultural groundings greatly yet subtly influence our understandings in general and the spiritual in particular. Using the Examen, for example, one is invited to go over what that person feels grateful for at that time. This action subtly offers an alternative to a usual tension between catechetical models of behavior and the adult informed conscience. Often what follows is a peacefulness and tranquility which richly nurtures the growing experience of the kind of God, God says God is. A personal relationship then naturally follows.

Another student’s reflection paper detailed her journey during the spring of 2025. Her insight stemmed from a class presentation about the film, Shawshank Redemption. We watched a clip of Red (Morgan Freeman) on a bus heading down a rural road to reunite with Andy (Tim Robbins) after they each were released from prison. Red’s voice-over talks about new life and the overpowering gift freedom is. As the camera pulls back the bus passes through a patch of wildflowers teeming with butterflies. That scene flashed into this student’s mind with her summary copied below.

Through LLJS, I have begun to build a deep personal relationship with God. I have learned from God himself that God does not judge, he loves me just as much as any other being, and that God doesn’t hate science. I never knew that the bible was not meant to be read literally. In addition to my budding personal relationship with God, I have found such freedom in the writings of those like (Tomas) Halik and (Stephen) Schloesser. Those writings have helped me to have such a feeling of peace and healing. They have helped me reinvigorate my spiritual relationship with God because I wanted to, not because others simply told me that is what I needed to do. As a result, I am feeling so much more joyful, grateful, and peaceful in my everyday life, just like a butterfly. They have further helped reveal to me that the God I always wished God was in my chrysalis stage, is who God really is. For my final project, I would love to incorporate butterflies into my watercolor painting, which symbolize the journey I have been on this summer of spiritually rediscovering God.^[2]

As I reflect on my own experience over many years, I am ever grateful for the many gifts of the Spirit and the many generous folks who helped me realize them. Each turning point included a pebble in my sandal, a restlessness to go further, do more, dig deeper. When I entered the Society of Jesus, this kind of inquietud/restlessness was a prelude to the Jesuit “Magis Principle”—doing more for the greater glory of God and the common good. Reflective prayer helped me also realize how my own personal relationship with Jesus produced amazing side effects, especially honing my sensitivities to seeing God in all things. Fidelity to the many, and mostly subtle experiences with the Spiritual Exercises has splendidly exposed and deepened my relationship with this God of Surprises. Sharing this experience with the law students at LUC remains an ongoing source of new life, peace, and joy.

Notes:

^[1]          The excerpt cited here is with the express consent of the student who wrote it.

^[2]          The excerpt cited here is with the express consent of the student who wrote it. 

Title: Inquietud: Reflections on a Pebble in One’s Sandal
Author(s): John F. Costello, S.J.
Article Type: Reflection on the Living Tradition
DOI: https://doi.org/10.51238/jeq.xd9W263
Language: English
Pages: 311–317
Keywords: —
In: Jesuit Educational Quarterly
In: 2nd ser., Volume 2, Issue 2
Received: 13 May 2025
Accepted: 21 August 2025
Publication Date: 22 July 2026
Last Updated: 22 July 2026
Publisher: Institute of Jesuit Sources
Print ISSN: 2688-3872
E-ISSN: 2688-3880

APA

Costello, J. F. (2026). Inquietud: Reflections on a pebble in one’s sandal. Jesuit Educational Quarterly, 2(2), 311–317. https://doi.org/10.51238/jeq.xd9W263

CMOS

Costello, John F., S.J. “Inquietud: Reflections on a Pebble in One’s Sandal.” Jesuit Educational Quarterly, 2nd ser., 2, no. 2 (2026): 311–17. https://doi.org/10.51238/jeq.xd9W263.

MLA

Costello, John F., S.J. “Inquietud: Reflections on a Pebble in One’s Sandal.” Jesuit Educational Quarterly, 2nd ser., vol. 2, no. 2, 2026, pp. 311–17. https://doi.org/10.51238/jeq.xd9W263.

Turabian

Costello, John F., S.J. 2026. “Inquietud: Reflections on a Pebble in One’s Sandal.” Jesuit Educational Quarterly. 2nd ser., 2 (2): 311–17. https://doi.org/10.51238/jeq.xd9W263.