How Was Your Day?
This is a form of prayer,
sometimes called the Examen,
that has been practiced in the West for many centuries.
Take a few minutes of quiet time
to look back
over the past twenty-four hours.
Does anything arise in your memory?
Maybe something especially good happened
or something unpleasant that disturbed you.
Just notice these things.
Don't make any judgments.
Our reactions to what happens
can help us see
what is leading us closer
to our true center in God,
and what is pulling us
further away from that true center.
What do your feelings show You?
What happened today
to draw you closer to God?
Did anything leave you
feeling less centered, more fragmented?
Notice what makes you feel
more alive, more at one
with other people, and all creation,
more 'whole,'
and nourish these parts of yourself.
Notice what tends to deaden you,
alienate you from others,
or make you self-absorbed.
Just noticing these things
will help you to work against them.
What we nourish,
by giving it our attention and energy,
"This book explores some of these questions.
But any answers you discover will be your own,
because prayer is itself a journey of discovery,
an experience unique to each one of us,
a personal relationship
with the God beyond our understanding
and the God who dwells in the core of our being,
closer to us than our own heartbeat,
the God our minds can never fathom,
yet our hearts can know.
All that this book can give you is a few footprints,
a few hints from the experience of those who have made
the journey of prayer before us,
and a little encouragement to embrace . . .
. . . the gift of prayer.
The definitions of prayer that have been formulated
through the ages
would easily fill a shelf, if not a library.
Prayer has a life of its own.
If we could define it today,
that definition would have moved and changed
by tomorrow.
Prayer is a living relationship that can never be
pinned down and analyzed;
prayer is a breath of the soul that has passed
before we can seize hold of it;
prayer is a reaching out of all that is deepest within us
towards all that lies infinitely beyond and around us.
What does prayer mean to you?
Some things can perhaps be said about prayer,
drawn from the well of human experience
through the ages."
