St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order, certainly understood the connection between the physical and the spiritual. He believed that we can find God in all things?a conviction that lies at the core of Ignatian spirituality. Does God really speak to us through a blue sky, through the sound of laughter, through the taste of dinner? Absolutely, St. Ignatius would say. You dont turn your back on the created world to find meaning and purpose; rather, God reveals himself to us through the very concrete stuff of our lives, through our bodies, through the things we experience with our senses. Walter Burghardt, a twentieth-century Jesuit priest, echoes this idea in these beautiful words: read more?