When I started Resurrected Faith, I told you I would share with you some practices that have helped me feel the presence of Jesus. The practice of Examen has been one.
I am so excited to share with you some insights on the Examen from local spiritual director, Jessica Sanborn.
I am falling in love with this spiritual formation practice more and more every week! Currently, our little family uses it as a tool to connect with God and one another over our weekly family dinner. I hope it is a blessing to you as it has been to me. As inspired by the book, Sleeping with Bread: Holding What Gives You Life, in our home practicing Examen sounds like:
“What did you feel good about today? or what were you grateful for today?
What was your biggest struggle today, or when did you feel sad, helpless or angry?
After sharing his or her answers, each person then brings them to God in thanksgiving for the consolation and in prayers for help with the desolation.”
We give thanks for the life in our day and pray for one another’s challenges, and share ideas as to ways we could possible be the answer to one another’s prayer. I bet a lot of you already enjoy doing this too! Reading through Jessica’s insights helped me ask these questions to my family (and myself!) with deeper intention and awareness of God, Love and Purpose. Practicing the Examen can help us learn to trust ourselves, our God given intuition, as well as to lean further into the awareness of the presence of Jesus in our lives, and with it, cultivate and feel more heaven on earth.
You are a blessing and made in the image of God! You were made with purpose and love, and I pray this practice helps you get in touch with that unique purpose and love a little bit more today.
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The following is my interview with Jessica, I hope you enjoy her insights as much as I have!
How would you describe the Examen?
The Examen is a practice of prayer of paying attention to your life that “helps you see where God is active in your daily life.” James Martin, SJ in Learning to Pray.)
You can use the Examen to look back on any time-frame or experience: your day, or week, month or year, a class, a retreat, or even a conversation. The Examen helps me notice when and how I am connected to God and Love and Life. It also helps me to pay attention to when I am disconnected from God, Love, and Life.
As we practice paying attention, we may notice patterns. For example, I feel so alive and connected to God and Love when I get to participate in soul-deep conversations. This is something to pay attention to and to make time for. Noticing this pattern was one of the ways that I felt invited to join a spiritual direction training program.
According to the Linns, in their book Sleeping with Bread, “God’s will is generally for us to do more of whatever we are most grateful for or whatever gives us the most life.” The Examen, helps us to discern who we are created to be and how God is inviting us to show up in the world.
How does the Examen impact your senses? look like? sound like? feel like?
For me, the Examen helps me to pay attention to the state of my heart. When am I most open? When do I feel really alive? When do I feel gratitude? Sometimes my senses are involved in that process. But I more often notice the state of my heart.
How does the Examen show up in your daily/ weekly/ monthly routine?
Many people pray the Examen in the evening, before bed. When I do a more formal Examen, I tend to pray in the morning, reviewing the previous day. I do this because I am more likely to have time alone in the morning. I think practicing the Examen can also become a reflex, noticing the state of my heart during the day. I find it helpful to write these down in a journal.
One of my favorite Examen-type practices is to spend some time at the end of the year, reviewing my journals, pictures of the year, and significant moments. I’ll make a collage of these significant moments and the insights and invitations that I want to bring with me into the new year.
What questions do you use when practicing the Examen?
I am trying to pay attention to when do I feel most open? When do I feel closed? When was I connected to God or others? When was I disconnected? When did I feel really alive? What in my day was life draining? What was I grateful for? What was I not grateful for?
How does the practice of the Examen impact your daily life and relationships? Relationship with God?
The Examen helps me to notice what is important to me. I think it helps me to identify next steps and also helps me discern when I need to do something different. It helps inform my choices about what I will say yes to and what I can give myself permission to say no to. I think it’s an important way of paying attention to what God is inviting me toward and also to what I am being invited to let go of.
The Examen can help me notice the times that I’m shutting down, or being unloving, or disconnected, or closed. I can be curious about those times. What are they about? Why? But most importantly, I can let God love me especially in those moments. (This is one of the key messages in the Linns’ Sleeping with Bread.)
When did the Examen first start and would you say it has Biblical foundations?
According to James Martin, SJ in his book Learning to Pray, “the technique of examining your conscience . . . reaches back as far as the Greek philosophers and was used in the early Christian church.” (p.138) However, St. Ignatius of Loyola (b. 1491-d.1556), the founder of the Jesuit order, popularized the prayer of Examen. It is also an important part of his Spiritual Exercises, a guided retreat that takes people through the life of Christ.
The Examen isn’t a prayer or formula found in the Bible, but I think that there are plenty of invitations in the Bible to support an Examen practice. The Psalmists asks: Search me O God, and know my heart, (Psalm 139:23-24), and I think we are asking the same thing when we pray the Examen. I think that the Examen helps us to identify “the fruit of the Spirit” (Gal 5:22), which would indicate where the Spirit is at work in us and around us and when we are participating with the Spirit in our lives. The Bible invites us to choose life (Deuteronomy 30:19); Jesus said in John 10:10 “I have come that you might have life.” And we are invited to love God and others, over and over again in the Bible. It makes sense to pay attention to this love and to move toward that love.
Is practicing the Examen the same as asking one another your “highs and lows” for the day?
Asking about highs and lows might be a part of an Examen, but I think that the Examen can run much deeper when we’re paying attention to the movement of the Spirit and the invitations of God in our lives. For example, when we are in deep grief, we could still experience the nearness of God in a profound way. We’re not just looking for our happiest moments.
Here is how you can weave the Examen into your daily ritual and why you might consider it:
The Examen helps us to pay attention to our lives and to God’s presence and activity in us and around us. It helps us know when we are participating in God’s invitations. It helps us to notice patterns and next steps. The more we practice noticing these patterns in our days and weeks and months, the better we’ll be at noticing God’s presence and activity in the present moment.
There are different approaches to praying the Examen, the process taught by the Linns in their book Sleeping with Bread resonates with me:
Begin by letting yourself experience unconditional love. Imagine yourself in a favorite place with someone you trust and love, a friend, or Jesus, or God. Take a few deep breaths and breathe that love in. Breathe it out.
1. In this place of love, ask Jesus or God to bring to your heart the moment (or moments) today for which you are most grateful. (Or the moments you were most alive, or connected to God and others, or able to receive and give love…whichever version of the question you feel invited to ask.)
“Ask yourself what was said and done in that moment that made it so special. Breathe in the gratitude you felt and receive life again from that moment.”
2. Ask God to bring to your heart the moment today for which you are least grateful. (Or whichever version of the question you feel invited to ask).
“Ask yourself what was said and done in that moment that made it so difficult. Be with whatever you feel without trying to change or fix it in any way. You may wish to take deep breaths and let God’s love fill you just as you are.”
3. “Give thanks for whatever you have experienced.”
You may want to journal about your experiences. I try to do this, because I forget easily sometimes. You may want to share your experience with someone you love and trust.
Is there anything else you would like us to know about the practice of Examen or perhaps some tools to get us started?
There are so many resources for the Examen. Here are just a few:
Sleeping with Bread: Holding what Gives You Life, by Dennis Linn, Sheila Fabricant Linn, and Matthew Linn
Learning to Pray: A Guide for Everyone, by James Martin, SJ (chapter 9).
Reimagining the Examen App: https://www.ignatianspirituality.com/reimagining-examen-app/
Pray as You Go: https://pray-as-you-go.org/article/examen-prayer (Guided prayers are available at this website or on their app.)
How can we support your work and best get in touch with you or connect for Spiritual Direction?
If you are interested in getting to know a little more about me, you can find me online at jessicasanborn.com. If you are interested in connecting with me about spiritual direction, you can email me at jessicalsanborn@gmail.com.