May 21, 2014 Wednesday: 5th Week of Easter
It’s remarkable (though not really) how easily we can forget the emotionally charged things that happen in a day. The problem is that if we aren’t resolving them we aren’t really forgetting them. Take this example: a few weeks ago, I was having a delightful weekend day in the country. After brunch with a friend and an invigorating hike in the multi-hued autumn woods, followed by a relaxing evening preparing a home-cooked meal and curling up with a fun movie, I prepared to do the examen thinking it would be awfully quick, since it had been such an uneventful and pleasant day. Five minutes later, I found myself immersed in the recollection of a phone call I had gotten but not picked up during brunch, which had set off a torrent of resentment-fueled anxiety-based planning and worrying. Nothing had actually happened — I had taken no actions — but it had been a roller coaster for sure. Hours later, I had completely forgotten the storm that had run through my mind for 15 minutes or so. Thanks to the examen, I was able to see it for what it was and resolve to sort it out. If you’re like I was for most of my life, your reaction to this story will be, “Why not let sleeping dogs lie?” But that old saying contains the answer: That dog may be sleeping, but it’s waiting to wake up and bite you. If the fear had remained buried, it would have percolated under the surface, waiting to flare up again at the next trigger.
The examen
It’s helpful to set aside the same time each day, or the same point in your day — just before bed; between work and home; dinner and anything else — so that you make the examen a routine which isn’t a struggle to fit in every time. It’s also helpful to establish a sacred space of some sort around it. Ritual helps to establish habits.
First, affirm you are in God’s presence while you pray.
Then, recall those moments in the day where you felt God’s grace, or simply felt good, or where good things happened whether you recognize them as being of God or not: those moments in the day where you felt serene, without fear and anxiety, connected. Don’t just remember such moments but re-feel them and relish those feelings. As Fr. Jim Martin puts it in The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything, “savoring is the antidote to our increasingly rushed lives.” It’s so easy to forget these precious moments and dwell on the things that give us anxiety. The examen can help us through a “deepening of our gratitude to God, revealing the hidden joys of our days,” says Fr. Jim.
Using 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 in the daily examen
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Where was I patient today? Where was I kind? Was I envious? Boastful? Arrogant? Rude? Did insist on my way in a situation today? Was I irritable with someone? Resentful? Did I delight in anything dishonest or unethical? Where did I rejoice in the truth? Where was I in total acceptance? Faithful? Hopeful? Tolerant?
As you continue in the examen, identify those moments in the day when you strayed from God’s grace — diverged in thought, word or deed. We all have an inner guidance system, which gets uncomfortable when we start down a path of selfishness and fear. Sometimes we don’t hear it, sometimes we drown it out with fear-based messages, and sometimes we openly defy it. But in the examen, you pause and reflect back through the day and recognize those moments. This is the heart of the examen, but it’s essential to do the positive part too.
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