Prayer of Examen- Luke 4:1-13

from http://www.radionewjerusalem.com/resources.html

For Lent, I'm going to be highlighting one spiritual discipline each week. This week, it is the prayer of examen.


The prayer is designed for corporate or individual use-it works great just praying back over one's day, or as a way of a family practicing talking about spirituality and God together. I hope that you find it useful. (prayer after the jump)




Prayer of Examen
1) Acknowledge God’s presence

2) Recognize Blessings

· What went well?

· What was beautiful?

· Where did you experience God?

3) Observe Feelings

· What motivated you?

· Where were you torn, confused, avoidant?

· Where were you joyful, hopeful, understanding?

4) Discern Actions:

· What was good?

· Where did you struggle?

· What are your patterns?

5) Reconcile and resolve

· Ask forgiveness

· Are there any lessons or commitments for tomorrow?

· Give thanks

· Remember that you are surrounded by God’s love.

6) Pray the Lord’s Prayer

I know that some of these questions are a little excessive for younger children, but these questions are ones that work pretty well for any age of child.  The key is to phrase them in ways that are age appropriate.
Here is one example of a way of simplifying the prayer:

The Simple Examen

One high point of the day

One Low point of the day

One person I’m thinking about

One plan for tomorrow

Give thanks

Lord’s Prayer

Finally,
here's my sermon from this Sunday, since I've been in the habit of posting them here.

Good morning-
It is good to be with you!
We begin this Sunday the season of Lent, the annual time of reflection and introspection before the celebration of Easter. Our theme this year for Lent, which we share with many Mennonite congregations around the country is Holding on and Letting Go.
As we live our Christian lives, one of the most important tasks we face is proper discernment about what is important, knowing what is at the core of our lives, what we cling to, and what is peripheral, what can be set down at the foot of the cross. This can be applied to our theology-what are the key issues of Christianity, and which disputes can be left to individual conscience-I think of some of the questions I have been asked-do I believe in once saved always saved? Do I believe that Jesus and God are exactly the same? Am I a Bible believing Christian? That speak to serious and profound conflicts in Christ’s church that I confess to basically having no history with, or concern over.
We can hold on or lay down things in our personal relationships-holding on to the loving experiences that are most important, and letting go of slights that don’t matter-
or our daily lives-holding on to the tasks that are most important, relationships with friends and family, the most important parts of our jobs, and letting go of the things that do not give life, busywork that might be time better spent elsewhere. Have you heard of the Pareto principle? It’s the idea that in most systems, 80% of the results come from 20% of the input. For businesses, it means that 80% of the profit often comes from 20% of the customers. It came from Pareto, an Italian economist, who noticed that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the people, and it applies on everything from that to the Illinois Mennonite Conference, where 80% of the money comes from 20% of the congregations. Timothy Ferriss wrote the book ‘4-hour work week’ based on this principle-that a small business should focus on the customers who are worth the effort. The trick, of course, is knowing which part of your time is in the 80% inefficient, or the 20% efficient work!
In order to practice this holding on and letting go this Lenten season, we’re going to go through a collection of spiritual disciplines, one per week through the next six weeks, ending in the spiritual discipline of celebration for the week of Easter. These are designed to help us reflect on what God is calling us to hold on to and what to let go of at this time in our lives. I’ll introduce the spiritual discipline during my sermon, and then there will be a handout on them in the bulletin each week, and on my blog (if you don’t have internet access, I’ll have a couple of printouts of my posts each Sunday) I’ll provide some other reflections, particularly focused on the discipline of the week. I encourage everyone to try out these disciplines at least on a week to week basis, and if any strike your particular fancy, feel free to keep them as daily rituals.
To start our journey together, we begin in the desert with Jesus, facing temptation. This time of testing after his baptism by John was Jesus’ time of examination, when he was tempted by Satan, when he wrestled with his mission and the techniques he was willing to use to achieve his ends, and this image of the desert is a useful image for our own lives, as we sometimes find ourselves wandering in times of trouble or drought, and success seems far away.
So lets look a little more closely at the model of holding on and letting go from this morning’s scripture, the story of Jesus tempted in the desert. Jesus does a lot of holding on and letting go here, as he explores himself and the world.
Physically, Jesus is holding on and letting go-he has just been baptized, and you might expect him to leap into ministry with both feet, but rather he takes time to reflect. The 40 days are a common period for reflection or waiting in the Biblical text. Noah, of course faces 40 days and nights of rain. Moses waits on the mountain at Sinai for 40 days, Elijah waits on the mountain for 40 days for the still small voice of God.
In our modern paced culture, taking more than a month to wander in the desert is a pretty unlikely thing to have happen-if we take a few days to reflect on major life decisions, we consider ourselves lucky- but this image of fasting intentionally, letting go of agenda, of people, of food itself still seems to be a good image of honing one’s call and one’s vision for the task ahead. There are so many things in our modern lives that take time, that take energy, and the insistent demands of the everyday often dominate our agenda, preventing us from really thinking about what we might let down that is extraneous to the core of our agenda, and what we might most importantly hold onto.
Spiritually, Jesus is holding on and letting go as well. The whole image of temptation here, (however we want to think about the character of the tempter) is about discerning how to engage the world.
The temptations that Jesus face revolve around how to use his power as Messiah-the consistent care for the poor and outcaste that he demonstrated throughout his life would suggest that turning stones into bread and ruling all the kingdoms of the world might serve as wonderful tools for achieving his ends. But his commitment to peace and an ethical life dictate against the methods offered by the tempter.
The fear he expresses on the cross-my God my God, why have you forsaken me, hark back to this time of testing, when would not put God to the test by asking to have his life saved.
As we think about our own lives, this I think is the meaning of temptation-we too are faced with choices, about priorities and power that we either hold on to, or let go, and its worth figuring out which is which.
And finally, as we play with this notion of holding on and letting go, I think it is interesting to notice the banter between Jesus and the tempter-you notice that Satan quotes scripture at Jesus-its from Psalm 91, to be precise-and Jesus responds with a counter-text from scripture. This is something that Jesus does throughout his ministry-paying attention to how to properly use scripture, privileging scriptures about justice, and the poor instead of scriptures about warfare or violence-he quotes Isaiah in his first sermon in Luke, phrases like ‘all who live by the sword, die by the sword (Matthew 26:52). Quotes the 10 commandments in Mark, and commands us to love god and neighbor before all things.
Here, wandering in the desert, Jesus quotes three times from the book of Deuteronomy, the book that recounts the children of Israel, wandering in the desert as well, the book of the law, and he speaks of some of the themes of his whole ministry-that there are things more important than power and the things of this world, that our first task is to align ourselves with God, rather than worrying about whether God is aligned with us, and refusing to sacrifice principle for satisfying ends.
When we read the biblical text, we face a similar challenge-to discern that which is life-using the story in ways that are liberating and Christ-like, following the model of Jesus, and we would do worse than remembering that there are more important things than things, that we are called to align ourselves with God’s vision of reality, and to oppose techniques that require wandering deeply through the muck before reaching good ends-whether that being torturing terror suspects trying to get information out of them, or sacrificing people’s well being to become economically successful.
These are the tasks of discernment that we all face and we all learn from in our lives, so it seemed appropriate to begin our spiritual discernment practices with one focused particularly on this task of figuring out what we are supposed to hold on to and what to let go of.
Its called the Prayer of Examen, and it comes from the Ignatian tradition in the Catholic church. It is a prayer of self-examination and reflection, as we offer to God the events and reflections on our day. We’ll end the sermon with this prayer, and you’ll find in your bulletin a copy of this prayer, that you can use in the week ahead in your own homes, reflecting on each day as it comes, on where we saw God, and where we struggled to be light and hope to the world.
In the same way that Jesus took time in the wilderness, letting go of temptations of this world, so too is it useful to pray for our own process of discernment, our own ways of letting go in the world.
You can follow along in the bulletin, I will give space for you to think through this prayer, but if you do this at home, it works very well to do it in family groups-going together through this prayer, so you both have a chance to reflect on your own life, but also hear about the day of people you love from a little different perspective. It is possible to do this prayer with people of pretty much any age (once you can talk), I’ve included a modified version that I got from Andy Brubacher Kaetler, professor of youth ministry at AMBS.
Prayer of Examen