Rummaging for God: Praying Backward Through Your Day
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| A Method: Five Steps.
1. Pray for light. Since we are not simply daydreaming or reminiscing but rather looking for some sense to pray for some illumination. The goal is not simply memory but graced understanding. That's a gift from God devoutly to be begged, "Lord, help me understand this blooming, buzzing confusion." 2. Review the day in thanksgiving. Note how different this is from looking immediately for your sins. Nobody likes to poke around in the memory bank to uncover smallness, weakness, lack of generosity. But everybody likes to fondle beautiful gifts, and that is precisely what the past 24 hours contain--gifts of existence, work, relationships, food, challenges. Gratitude is the foundation of our whole relationship with God. So use whatever cues help you to walk through the day from the moment of awakening--even the dreams you recall upon awakening. Walk through the past 24 hours, from hour to hour, from place to place, task to task, person to person, thanking the Lord for every gift you encounter. 3. Review the feelings that surface in the replay of the day. Our feelings, positive and negative, the painful and the pleasing, are clear signals of where the action was during the day. Simply pay attention to any and all of those feelings as they surface, the whole range: delight, boredom, fear, anticipation, resentment, anger, peace, contentment, impatience, desire hope, regret, shame, uncertainty compassion, disgust, gratitude, pride, rage, doubt, confidence, admiration, shyness--whatever was there. Some of us may be hesitant to focus on feelings in this over-psychologized age, but I believe that these feelings are the liveliest index to what is happening in our lives. This leads us to the fourth moment: 4. Choose one of those feelings (positive or negative) and pray from it. That is, choose the remembered feelings that most caught your attention. The feeling is a sign that something important was going on. Now simply express spontaneously the prayer that surfaces as you attend to the source of the feeling--praise, petition, contrition, cry for help or healing, whatever. 5. Look toward tomorrow. Using your appointment calendar if that helps, face your immediate future. What feelings surface as you look at the tasks, meetings and appointments that face you? Fear? Delighted anticipation? Self-doubt? Temptation to procrastinate? Zestful planning? Regret? Weakness? Whatever it is, turn it into prayer--for help, for healing, whatever comes spontaneously. To round off the examen, say the Lord's prayer. A mnemonic for recalling the five points: LT3F (light, thanks, feelings, focus, future). Directory: CollaborativeMinistry CollaborativeMinistry -> Quiet History, Unquiet Peoples: The “Tribal Question” in Assam CollaborativeMinistry -> Forest issues, forest dwellers and emerging situations CollaborativeMinistry -> General Congregation 35 CollaborativeMinistry -> Women in electoral process of india- under representation in decision making process Download 40 Kb. Share with your friends:
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