It
is the 90-year-old Benedictine monastic, Brother David Steindl-Rast who is
considered the world’s expert on gratefulness.
Along with several books, Steindl-Rast has a 15-minute TED talk that has
been seen over 6 million times. In that
TED talk, he shares that it is gratefulness which makes us happy.[1] In a culture that is predicated on violence
and consumerism, however, gratefulness or gratitude is not something that
happens by default. Gratefulness or gratitude,
is something we must intentionally practice, turn our attention toward.
As
Christ teaches, non-violence is intrinsic to the nature of God. And so, contrary to the popular culture, God
does not shout or scream or pound or try to knock down the door. Though God does not offer violently, God does
offer love and life consistently, dependably, and persistently. Steindl-Rast says,
Every moment is a new gift, over and over again, and if you miss the opportunity of this moment, another moment is given to us, and another moment. We can avail ourselves of this opportunity, or we can miss it, and if
we avail ourselves of the opportunity, it is
the key to happiness. Behold the master
key to our happiness in our own hands. Moment by moment, we can be grateful for this gift.[2]
If
this is the nature of God, we will not be attune to the gifts of God, given
opportunity over and over again, unless we focus our attention and practice, listening
and seeing in a way that understands each moment, each particular beautiful
piece of creation, as a gift. We do
these practices consistently, dependably, like water dripping on concrete. Who would guess that water can carve rock so
profoundly, and yet, we know that the persistent drip can mold and shape, much
like how the Colorado River carves out a path in the Grand Canyon. I have heard many people refer to me in that
way, “Yes, that pastor guy, he is a persistent drip!”
Seriously, this is the will and work
of God. In contrast to what cultural
Christianity tells us, God does not come in fire, hurricane, or lightning bolt. Rather, God is like the persistent drip
which, over time, changes not only our interior, gets into our blood stream,
but then through who we become as the persistent drip, transforms the world. Joining with others then, we become a river,
an ever-flowing stream, that molds and shapes our world.
Steindl-Rast talks about the process
of gratitude. In that process, we fill to an overflowing. And as we are
filled, the heart fills, like the bowl of a fountain, there is this quiet and
calm. Finally, when the bowl overflows it begins to sing and sparkle and ripple
down and out. Joy becomes
articulate. It comes to itself. In our imperial, consumeristic culture,
however, we are always taught that we need a new and improved bowl, a bigger
bowl, a never satisfied with what we have bowl, and so we never have a bowl
that fills to overflowing. Joy never
comes to itself. Gratitude never becomes
us because it is something else or something bigger we want.[3] The attention and practice of gratitude is
like that of the monastic practice of simplicity which helps us release what
hinders us from entering into prayer.[4] We become available to joy.
Lent is often a call to look for God
within ourselves and within our daily experience. One of my favorite lines from the old
television sitcom, “Taxi”, was when Rev. Jim asked Alex, “Hey, Alex, guess how
many gumballs I can hold in my mouth at one time?”
“I
don’t know. How many, Jim?”
Rev.
Jim shakes his head. “Well, I guess I’ll
have to ask someone else.”
Sometimes we look too long outside of
ourselves for answers when we should most appropriately look inside ourselves or
to our own power and resources for the answers.
The prayer form of examen is an ancient spiritual form
begun by
Examen
contemplates the words from Psalm 95, “If today you would hear our
Liberator’s voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the place of
quarreling and trial.”[6] It is to remember that the person with the
proverbially hardened heart, the one full of violence, was Pharaoh. Psalm 95 is a prayer that if we hear God’s
voice, our hearts would be softened, molded, and sculpted into a kindness and
tenderness for one another. Do not let
your consciousness become like Pharaoh, a hardened heart, full of violence, for one another.
Spiritual
writers have long noted that the word for “conscience” in English is a much
broader term in French and Spanish that means something more like the term for
when we are fully awake and alive, a consciousness, a recognition and
realization of the way God is truly present and moving in the world. Therefore, in examen, we pray backward, sure that as we rummage through our day,
God has been present and moving.
We
give thanks for God’s presence and moving.
We notice and take charge of our feelings so that we respond in freedom
rather than letting our feelings take charge of us. We confess our complicit nature in brokenness
without making that brokenness and sin the focus of our lives. Finally, we look forward to the day coming or
the next day, fully expecting God to be present and moving as we think about that
day ahead.
In
another pastorate, I actively taught the confirmands how to use the spiritual
practice of examen, and I was
completely taken by surprise when several of them told me they were using it
and enjoying it on an every day basis.
As I reflect back on that, I realize how powerful that practice must
have been for them. In a youth culture
that must push on them to understand that they are not enough or to want more, examen helps them to behold their world
and the goodness found in it. They stop
to take stock of the light of goodness in their world, express gratitude for
that goodness, and then follow that bliss into the future.
I
want us to practice examen today,
this ancient pre-literate practice of gratitude that I think has resonance for
our post-literate world. If you have a pen
or pencil handy to write with on a stray piece of paper, you might want to use
that. And maybe it is something you can
take with you throughout the week.
Perhaps begin or continue in a journal of your own. Ignatius counseled the Jesuits to practice it
at noon and at the end of their day.
Maybe we could all begin with just once a day, recognizing the very full
days we have, and, if it gives you life, maybe extend it to twice a day.
So
center yourself. Become aware of that
good and gracious God encircling you, seeking to sit deep within your being and
find a home with you. Tenderly open to
that Spirit and ask with deep gratitude for the Spirit’s leading in your life,
just a simple prayer like, “God, life sucks right now. I could use some help,” or “Creator, help me
understand this blooming, buzzing confusion.”
Now in the second movement of examen,
review the day, the last 24 hours, with a sense of gratitude—the gift of a new
day, work to do, relationships, food, challenges, maybe even the dreams you had
upon awakening. Move from place to place
throughout this time, moment to moment, person to person, and write down those
opportunities for gratitude, your cup or your bowl being filled to overflowing. As you practice this, your attention is
tuned, your gratitude becomes longer and deeper.
The
third movement of examen is to, as
you scan your day, recognize all the feelings that surface, the whole
range. They tell us what is going on in
our lives, and our call in examen is
not to mute them but to pay attention to what they are telling us. This leads to the fourth movement. Choose the feeling which caught your
attention and pray from it. Express
spontaneously a short prayer that might be a cry for help or healing, maybe a
demand that God show up for an injustice in your life or in the world, a prayer
of praise or petition, maybe even a confession of where you feel like you did
not show up. The final movement of examen is to move forward. You may even want to use your calendar for
tomorrow to look at your day and see what it holds. What does that scheduled day bring up in
you? Anticipation? Delight?
Dread? Pray a short prayer for
whatever comes spontaneously to you and then give thanks to God for this
opportunity.[7]
That
is examen. It is a spiritual practice used by
Christians since the 16th Century.
As you can hear, it is not a spiritual practice meant to tell us what
despicable people we are and how evil the world is. On the contrary, examen is a practice that provides for our attention liberation
away from the violence and consumerism threaded through our wider culture to
move to a God who is regularly extending
goodness and kindness to us like an underground stream.
I
would like to end with the beautiful writing of Jennifer J. Willhoit, sharing
poetic words of gratefulness and gratitude, perhaps shaping and crafting the examen we might all consider in this
coming week.
Gratefulness
lives in our bodies.
And in the corpus of Earth.
It resides
there, next to the aorta or in the gray matter in our skulls.
It moves and rushes and sizzles like lightning all over this planet, in all her
beings.
We feel a rush
of gratitude in our fiery bellies or in the tingle up our arms.
We bear witness to gratitude painted in the growing pink of sunrise or in the
moonlit jewels doing pliés on night-black water.
Sometimes we
feel it in the lump that forms in our throats—gratitude moving up from the
heart, so substantial that it all but stifles us, choking us up. But we are
freed from the constriction as soon as we part our lips to let the gratitude
pass through us—out into the ever-needy world—in the form of words, a song, or
a kiss.
And though it
is as tangible as the bodies of growing, vitally-alive coyotes, or green
herons, I am absolutely convinced that gratitude is contagious. Because
yesterday when a once-mentor-now-dear-friend literally sobbed out his praiseful
appreciation to me, I caught his gratitude—palpably felt it rising into my own
mouth—and my arms lifted outward in a broad reach that became an embrace.
Shared
gratitude. Contagion. Inheritance.
It’s a germ or a gene. It’s shared, and shareable.
It does not
live out there—in the world of circumstances, events, facts, or fiction.
Gratefulness
lives right here (notice my hand placed gently over the left side of my chest).
And here (see
my palms [turned upward toward the coming of the spring sun and finally,
finally feeling its warmth]).
In order to
feel it, to cultivate it, to find it within—we must simply attend in presence
to what is. Right now. Right here. Abiding in this breath. If you are reading
this, if you have breath in your body and another inhalation within you, then
there is—indeed—a shining golden nugget of gratefulness just waiting there to
be discovered, again.
And if that
breath within you guides you to pause in a natural and wild place out of doors,
with hands on tree bark, flower, rabbit fur; with eyes on shiny bird feather,
crispy leaves, or tracing the dew on a fencepost; with the welcome pungency of
humus in your nose or the songbirds’ serenade in your ears … then you will have
rediscovered gratitude’s true home.[8]
May these words be a
gift to you. May you see every moment as
gift and opportunity. And may you be
grateful. May your bowl be full. And, as a result, may you be happy. Amen.
5Dennis Hamm, S.J., “Rummaging for God: Praying Backwards through Your Day,” America, May 14, 1994. A more extended and detailed version can be found here: https://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/top/church21/pdf/C-%5Cfakepath%5CThe%20Ignatian%20Examen_Scala.pdf.
[7] Hamm, https://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/top/church21/pdf/C-%5Cfakepath%5CThe%20Ignatian%20Examen_Scala.pdf.
