Life at the intersection of faith, nature, history and art
“Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.” – Socrates
When the heroine of E.B. White’s classic children’s novel “Charlotte’s Web” first writes “SOME PIG” in her web in an attempt to save her friend Wilbur’s life, she was creating more than a PR campaign. She was creating wonder. She was making everyone who saw her web stop in their tracks, stand back, scratch their heads, and try to contemplate something they couldn’t fathom. That seems like a pretty good way to go through life.
Over the past week, I have been reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I’ve seen the B movies and a very good theatrical version years ago at the St. Louis Repertory Theatre, but I’ve never read the book. It was assigned reading this year for all the first-year students at the university where I work, so I thought I would join the throng of readers.
We all read books, poems and sacred texts with different mindsets and personal histories, of course, so these words purposefully and creatively strung together by the authors affect each person differently. As regular readers of my blog no doubt know, I write often on the idea of paying attention to the world around us, of leaving ourselves open to being moved by the things in our lives and, ultimately, by the looming presence of God. So I was delighted to read this passage below, spoken by Dr. Frankenstein about his hike through the woods and mountains, during which he observed the desolation after an avalanche, dangerous and deep ravines, “somber” pines, the distant valley with mist rising off the river and the mountain summits shrouded in clouds. In short, he was paying attention and was deeply aware of the human necessity of being moved. He says:
[Read more…] about The Creative Spirit: The Human Necessity of ‘Being Moved’
“There are no wrong turns, only unexpected paths.” Mark Nepo
I was talking to a friend recently who is trying to make a big life decision – one of those seemingly huge choices that appear to be riddled with opportunities for both success and failure. In the words of those sage rock ‘n’ roll philosophers from The Clash: “Should I stay or should I go?”
He is going about the discernment process in all the right ways, I believe. He’s talking to trusted friends and advisors. He’s doing his homework on the new place. He’s considering what he will be leaving behind. He’s praying and trying to leave it all in the hands of God, who knows him better than he knows himself. Still, it’s a tough decision. He’s not hearing any voices. He’s not receiving any divine telegraphs. As it so often happens in life, we have to make these decisions for ourselves, hoping and praying that it’s the right one. It can be a scary and confusing time.
This morning, we are sharing our outdoor space with a doe, who has been feeding herself on our friend and neighbor Gerry’s decorative grass and lying quietly in the shade of two small maples, paying little attention to the two humans behind the screen. Together, we seem to all be enjoying the silence of the early Saturday morning before the rest of the world wakes up and begins mowing lawns and puttering around doing the things we humans do.
It’s not really silent, of course. The birds are a noisy lot, and then there’s the distant traffic. Not much we can do about that. But relatively speaking, it’s pretty quiet. Silence, we sometimes think or come to believe, is a “nothingness.” It is the absence of noise. It is the hushing of talk. It is the musical void and even the quieting of our inner voices. And so it is. But it is so much more.
Praying the Examen and Leaning into Gratitude
“To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.”
Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette
Here in America’s Midwest, we are entering a new spring, although the mornings and evenings usually still have the remnants of winter in their cool breezes. Although we have just experienced an exceedingly mild winter, my practice of walking for physical and spiritual benefit has been lax and sporadic, and I am eager to pick it up again, if for no other reason than for the opportunity of putting myself in a better position to be astonished by unexpected glimpses of beauty in the world on a more regular basis. But the high level of pollens in the air and covering every outdoor surface with a thin layer of green has been keeping me and my wheezing cough and watery eyes inside. Hopefully this will subside soon, and meanwhile I’m mostly watching the outside world from my window.
Not paying close attention to what’s going on around us, refusing to be aware of the blessings and presence of God in our everyday lives, and not being willing to “be astonished,” as the French author of Gigi notes above, could all very well be the direst temptations we face as we get older. After all, we’ve seen it all, we think. There’s nothing new under the sun, so why pay attention? Another day is just another day if we don’t watch for something that will make it different.
So we settle into life, yawning at the sunrise, blinking through beauty of garden and field, ho-humming our way through all that we have learned to take for the ordinary and deserved. A meal becomes mere sustenance. The family visit perfunctory. The work of art only decoration or mindless entertainment. Without attention, without presence and purpose (our own and our acknowledgement of God’s) we risk allowing life to sweep over our heads virtually unnoticed. We live without gratitude not because we don’t care to say thank you but because we’re unaware of the gifts we have received.
It’s for this reason that the ancient prayer of St. Ignatius, the “Examen,” has become an important part of my daily prayer practice. It’s a prayer that forces us to slow down and pay attention, a prayer that can only end with that most powerful of prayers: “Thank you.”
Normally prayed near the end of the day, the Examen is an invitation to look back over our day and discover where we may have encountered God. It is an examination of our consciousness; a little different than the examination of conscience that we do when thinking about our sins and failures. This is a chance to review our day and take notice of what has happened to us and our interactions with others. It is a chance, before the day slips away from, to recall (or perhaps to see for the first time) where we encountered God. For when we do not stop and do this, we miss the blessings. We operate on autopilot and we just don’t see. We just don’t know. But when we stop and pay attention, we can begin to live lives of gratitude. We can’t say “thank you” for something we don’t recognize as gift.
In its simplest form (and there is really no reason for it to be any more complicated), the Examen includes these five steps, and it can be done in as little as five or ten minutes:
Become aware of God’s presence: Ask for God’s help in looking at your day with honesty. Become aware of God being aware of you. See your day as God sees it.
Review the day with gratitude: Notice your blessings. Notice your interactions and opportunities. Don’t forget the ordinary.
Pay attention to your emotions: Savor these moments. Pick one or two emotions that surface and pray from them. Positive or negative, both hold meaning.
Rejoice, praise, seek forgiveness: Rejoice in the times you were drawn closer to God. Ask forgiveness for the times you resisted God’s presence and action. Thank God for the awareness you received, for the awareness itself is a gift.
Look toward tomorrow: Ask God to be a part of your next day. Ask for the grace you need to be more aware. Be practical and specific.
As Rabbi Harold Kushner once said, “Can you see the holiness in those things you take for granted – a paved road or a washing machine? If you concentrate on finding what is good in every situation, you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that nurtures the soul.”