The Spiritual Exercies of St. Ignatius
Last year Joe Boyd bought me a book called "Thirty Days on Retreat with the Exercises of St. Ignatius" by Paul Mariani. It's basically one man's journal of a 30-day spiritual retreat he did. After reading it, and being blown away, I says to meself, "One day I'll do that too." I found the book that has the exercises in it at half.com for four bucks, so I ordered it a month or so ago. I started spending an hour on the exercises each morning this week (OK, the guy who wrote the book I read spent all day for a month, but I'm starting with an hour a day).

So far, after the first three days, I have learned one thing:

I am a shmuck.

Not sure if that is spelled right, but you get the idea. The first week is supposed to put you in touch with your own sin, and so far it is working! If I had to sum it up in "Matrix-speak", I would say I am more "plugged in" to this crazy world than I had thought. It takes a lot of time & reflection to even begin to understand how much so.