Try This At Home!

I want to give you a gift this month. I want to share with you a simple spiritual exercise you can do at home that can help you connect with God on a deeper level in your daily life. It's called the Ingatian Examen (or just "Examen" for short). Don't let that fancy name scare you away - this is a very simple, practical thing you can commit to memory and do in five minutes every day. It's simple. It's easy to remember. It's very, very powerful . . . and very, very effective.

The exercise consists of simply asking yourself two questions: "For what am I most grateful today?" and "For what am I least grateful today?" You just simply look back over the past 24 hours, and you try to identify the one moment in your day for which you are most grateful. Sometimes there are a lot of moments in your day that might qualify. The trick is to identify one - the one moment that you are the most glad about, the one moment that really made your day something special. Then, you move on to the second question. Try to identify the one moment in your day for which you are the least grateful. Again, sometimes there is more than one moment that might qualify. The trick is to identify one - the one moment that you are the least glad about, the one moment that you really wish hadn't happened.

There are other ways to ask the questions. "When was I happiest today?" and "When was I saddest?" Or "What was today's high point?" and "What was today's low point?" Or "When did I feel most alive?" and "When did I most feel that life was draining out of me?" Or "When did I feel the greatest sense of belonging (or connection) to God?" and "When did I feel the least sense of belonging (or connection) to God?" There are a variety of ways to ask the question; there's not one "right" way to do this. The point is to identify the best moment of your day, and the worst.

Why is this effective? Because it helps you reflect meaningfully and spiritually on what is going on in your life. It helps you pay attention to the good stuff - and the bad. It helps you look at your life, all of your life, honestly. You'll more likely to notice the great stuff going on in your life. You're less likely to avoid the stuff going on in your life that you need to face but that you would rather avoid. There's just one thing that's crucially important: you have to be absolutely honest. Don't identify something as your moment of the greatest gratitude, if it's really not. Don't identify something as your moment of least gratitude, if it's really not. You have to be absolutely, brutally honest with yourself - and with God - for this to be effective.

But again: why is this effective? What makes this so powerful? Because based on what you learn about yourself through doing this exercise over time, you'll begin to make the changes in your life that you need to make. You'll do things and create situations so that you'll have more of those moments for which you are grateful. And you'll do things and create situations so that you'll have less of those moments for which you are not grateful. There are, of course, some things in life that you cannot control - but there are many that you can. If you find yourself saying the same thing, or the same type of thing, is the high point of your day, then you'll begin to make changes so that you'll experience more moments like that more often. And if you find yourself saying the same thing, or the same type of thing, is the low point of your day, then you'll begin to make changes so that you'll experience fewer moments like that in the future. Whatever you learn about yourself along the way will be unique to you. No one else has your life. No one else has the joys and the challenges that you have. No one else has the same call that you have. This process will help you discover what your life is meant to be. This process will help you discover God's call for your life. This process will help your life become more joyful.

It is helpful to find a quiet time to do this on a daily basis, around the same time every day. Some people do this in semi-darkness with a candle, but that's optional. All you really need to do is ask the questions, and be honest with yourself in your response. I have used this process through certain seasons of my life. Sometimes I'll use it daily for months; sometimes I'll let it slide for a while. Sometimes I make notes of what I'm identifying every day, and then use my notes for self-reflection and for prayerful listening to God. Sometimes I'll discover themes and patterns in my life that I hadn't noticed before. You don't have to do this every day. You don't have to do it at all. But I would highly recommend it. Using the process over an extended period of time has improved my life in countless ways. If you want a better life, a more joy-filled life, a more meaningful relationship with God, this is one way to help get there.

This exercise is called the Ignatian Examen because it's named for the sixteenth-century Christian mystic who first developed the exercise and wrote it down for future generations, Ignatius of Loyola. He wrote about it in a book called Spiritual Exercises (which is still in print, after all these centuries!). A more accessible description of the Examen and the poewr it can have in one's life can be found in Sleeping with Bread: Holding What Gives You Life, a short, simple, straight-forward, practical book (with colored illustrations!) written by Dennis Linn, Sheila Fabricant Linn, and Matthew Linn. Technically speaking, the Examen originated in the Catholic tradition, but in recent decades many Protestants have bee using it - and benefiting from it - too.

Try it out. You might discover that it's one of the best things you've ever done with your life.

Peace and blessings,

Bill