• About

A Musing Amma

~ Gathering the pieces of our lives together under the eyes of the Holy

A Musing Amma

Category Archives: daily examen

Faithfulness

26 Sunday Jul 2020

Posted by Elizabeth Nordquist in daily examen, Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

faithfulness

It is required that a steward be found faithful…

I haven’t given much though to the fruit of the Spirit called “faithfulness” before now. Renita Weems is her book, Listening for God, prompted me to take a look. She says that fidelity or faithfulness is keeping up our commitments, doing the “things I have to do until belief returns”…”to be here not there…”showing that we are serious about touching and being touched…by grace.” I have begun to ponder how to keep faithful during times of global pandemic. To whom? and to what? and how?

It is a Sunday morning…sheltering in place…again! This is a day and time when I would usually be in the car on my way to the sanctuary, to join with the gathered ones to sing, confess, pray, savor sacred text in word, sermon and song, and to greet those I know and don’t know who have come together in Spirit to worship. Instead today I am doing cursory ablutions, curling up on one end of the couch across from my husband, the dog in between, with lighted candles, clicking on the link to our congregation’s pre-recorded worship. I have done this faithfully for all the weeks we have been sheltering in place. I read this week that 48% of churched adults in the country are not tuning into a place of worship, familiar or different at all. But I am very clear that this practice of routine is one of the things that is sustaining my getting through this time of unknowing and anxiety. I surely miss all the elements of corporate worship, but being faithful to this ritual is grounding me, keeping a place marker in my life in its Spirit journey.

I have staked out other practices of fidelity which help me know what time it is and the passing of the hours and days. I try, sometimes against all temptation to do otherwise, to care for my body–the walking, the eating healthily, the taking of meds, the breathing and stretching. I have had to learn, rather late in life to be a good steward of the body I was given, by acting on the routine practices that demonstrate my care for it. I am faithful to my best beloved ones, trying to discover and use the medium that serves each one best–Facebook, Instagram, phone or text. I miss being able to hug and pat my grands, all of them, either from actual or social distancing, but in this liminal period, I am faithful to touching them from afar. I am strongly committed to my practice of reaching out to those who are struggling with health, grief, sadness loneliness or despair, with the same attention to mode and frequency that I choose for my family. I don’t need to know how my communiques are received, because just doing this faithful act reminds and grounds me of who I am and that to which I am called.

It is the faithful routine of all kinds that is keeping me from collapsing into despair these days, especially in my journey of Spirit. I keep a new journal of gratitude right next to me all day long, to capture the unexpected graces that occur when I least expect them. My husband and I go on neighborhood “scavenger hunts” looking for beauty on our morning walks. My own reading–many from voices unfamiliar to me-:African-American, Native American, poets from all around the world–reassures me and points me to the Light. I take mindfulness moments each evening. And there is in me an ongoing stream of prayer prompted by the Spirit, inhabiting my body and mind, recalling sacred text that I can savor, that keeps my faith in the Holy One alive and in motion.

Faithfulness is a gift of the Spirit, but I am learning that it is given to me new every morning, even on the days when I have to slog through early gloom of weather or mood, and that my fidelity is made possible by the Faithfulness of One who is unfailingly faithful and keeps the energy going in me! I am grateful!

Advertisement

Where Am I?

23 Saturday Apr 2016

Posted by Elizabeth Nordquist in daily examen, Easter, listening, Mindfulness, paying attention, presence, silence

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

dailiness, Easter, listening

images-1

Yesterday a friend emerged from surgery; another one is going in tomorrow.

One friends left for her summer location; another left on an extended trip to see loved ones.

I drive south to reconnect with a long time friend. I drive east to share breakfast with my daughter. I go north to attend a meeting.

I have a conference call on tap for the morning. I need to make some appointments with doctors. I have to have a prescription refilled. I need to take a rain check.

But where am I–my heart, my mind, my soul?

I remember Carmen Bernos de Gasztolde’s “The Prayer of the Butterfly”from her Prayers from the Ark:

Lord!/ Where was I?/ Oh yes! This flower, this sun, /thank you! Your world is beautiful!/This scent of roses…/where was I?/ A drop of dew/ rolls to sparkle in a lily’s heart./ I have to go…/ Where? I do not know!/ The wind has painted fancies/ on my wings./Fancies…/ Where was I?/ Oh yes! Lord,/ I had something to tell you.

When my worlds are so much with me, I have a hard time keeping track of myself! Every world is interesting–fascinating or compelling or demanding, yet if I can’t locate my own center of being, I don’t have much to bring to the worlds I navigate.

In this Eastertide I am needing to practice once again paying attention first thing in the morning and last thing at night to where I am. I begin with my body–what space do I occupy? how does it feel? where are the comfortable or sore places that inform me of my state of being? I then attend to my heart–what feelings am I aware of? if I stay longer, what else is there? Then I move to my wider location: what is happening or has happened today? what will I or did I do? what crossed my mind? captured my attention? keeps pulling on my focus? I almost always need to do this in silence, alone–often with my candle lit, reminding me that the Light of the Holy never goes out. I also need to take time, enough time to let the mud settle, to let unattended hope and fears surface, to develop a sense of proportion and place.

It is a continuing amazement and distress to me that I have to practice this over and over, I am always a beginner. My Butterfly Mind has such strong wings, and rides so hard on the updrafts! So I need to come back to what I know for sure: The Holy One knows not only who I am, but where I am. In Psalm 139, the poet declares:

O God, You search me and know me inside out./ You know my comings and goings. / You understand my thought completely.                                                   (Swallow’s Nest,  Psalm 139:1)

If I want to know where I am, I need every day to begin with the One who knows. And the Spirit is willing to lead me into knowing, even after sleeping. When I awake, I am still with you. (KJV, Psalm 139: 18, b).

Yesterday the Gratefulness.org website posted this thought of the day:

 You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith, and hope. ~ THOMAS MERTON

It is in the time of silence of beginning and closing the day where the recognition of that which Merton calls for begins to speak, and it is there where the Spirit who knows me inside and out can guide my awareness, can replenish me for this present moment, and empower me with courage, faith and hope once again.

For each new day and night, thanks be to God!

The Examen-ed Life

19 Wednesday Aug 2015

Posted by Elizabeth Nordquist in daily examen, Discernment, reflection

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

dailiness, Daily examen, prayer

CoritawomanWhen I get stuck in amber, cannot seem to move ahead or back (often in the summer heat), I revert to well-tried practices of Spirit that have energized me in the past. So this summer I have reclaimed the Ignatian practice of the daily examen. I first learned this practice in a winsome and accessible book by the Linns called Sleeping with Bread. They describe simply the daily practice of reviewing one’s day with a set of questions: “Where did I experience Grace today?” and “where did I feel farthest from Grace today?”  Alternately, one could ask :where did I feel the most freedom?” and “where did I feel most restricted?” The answers to these prayerful questions then may lead to prayer, first those of gratitude, and then to prayers for forgiveness, for wisdom, for healing. I love this concrete, do-able exercise, for it helps me pay attention to my life in God, and helps direct my prayer to specific area of longing and need.

During these months I discovered…or was led to…a new book called Reimagining the Ignatian Examen by Mark E. Thibodeaux, SJ, (Loyola Press, 2015) in which he deepens the basic premises of the examen, then focus them in thirty-four specific area of questioning designed to take one into the heart of each question. In using the book, I was instructed to begin in gratitude for particular gifts of the previous day. (I need to use this prayer in the morning; i am too sleepy at night!). Then, I was directed to review my day in light of the day’s focus, such as habits or thoughts, words, deeds, or discernment. Taking not more than 15 minutes, likening my responses to “tweet-size journaling,”  I was able to recall, savor and then to examine in a more precise way i which I had encountered the Holy One and where I needed to ask for something–forgiveness, assurance, wisdom, all with a more pointed  direction.

I became aware that all too often my prayer has been generic…”God, bless us all” kinds of prayers, but that I longed to be more concrete, more specific in my relationship with Christ and more conscious of that holy encounter when I was aware of the Presence, the Breath, the Fire, the Grace. So I was delighted to be prodded to something more. Over the course of the summer days, especially the dog-days in which we are now living, the keenness of each day’s particular questions often became a sign post pointing me in the direction of other connected, synergistic signs by which I could notice God’s presence, and hear God’s word. On a day when the examen directed me to think about the question, “what do you seek?”, I was then asked to preach on a text from Mark’s gospel in which the question was, “what do you want me to do for you?” In response in my own musings and in preparation for bringing the Word, I needed to dig in my soul for answers to those connected questions. After a day of asking the question, “Who wore God’s face today?,” I saw at an exhibit of the art of Corita Kent an early painting of hers, in which a woman is holding up both hands in prayer, as if she is offering up both her gloriousness as a creature of God and her frailty as a human being. A powerful selection on Choosing Life led me into walking through many days mindful of whether this action in which I was engaged was one in which I was choosing life or choosing death by not inhabiting my life.

And so energy has begun to flow, attention is being paid, love is blooming. The amber is set aside for the another time, and the the “sacrament of the present moment” is being honored. Ahead of me lies a connection with a friend, a performance of a young person, a reading with my beloved, a larky trip with children and grandchildren–all moments full of movement, possibility, hope and prayer. The examen-ed life is well worth living!

Personal photo of painting by Corita Kent at Pasadena Museum of California Art.

Archives

Follow A Musing Amma on WordPress.com

Recent Posts

  • Weeping With Those Who Weep August 18, 2022
  • Ordinary Time: The Party’s Over July 4, 2022
  • Eastering June 2, 2022
  • Lent: Lamenting in Grace March 30, 2022
  • LENT: Grace is Enough March 12, 2022

Categories

  • action
  • advent
  • aging
  • b
  • balance
  • beauty
  • blessing
  • body
  • book reflection
  • breaking bread
  • Breath
  • candlemas
  • celebrations
  • centering
  • change
  • changing my mind
  • children
  • choosing
  • Christmas
  • clouds
  • community
  • compassion
  • creation
  • daily examen
  • darkness
  • delight
  • Discernment
  • discovery
  • doing good
  • dryness
  • earth
  • Easter
  • Epiphany
  • examen
  • faces
  • faith
  • faithfulness
  • family
  • fear
  • food
  • freedom
  • friendship
  • gifts
  • giving up
  • grace
  • gratitude
  • grief
  • Holy Week
  • Hope
  • hospitality
  • icons
  • illumination
  • Jesus Christ
  • joy
  • lament
  • legacy
  • Lent
  • letting go
  • Light
  • listening
  • loss
  • Love
  • marriage
  • Mercy
  • Mindfulness
  • ministry
  • mothering
  • music
  • mystery
  • Mystery
  • New year
  • open heart
  • opening my mind
  • paying attention
  • peace
  • pilgrimage
  • praise
  • prayer
  • presence
  • rainbow
  • reflection
  • refreshment
  • remembering
  • renewal
  • rest
  • retreat
  • rose
  • sabbath
  • sacred reading
  • saints
  • sanctuary
  • scripture
  • seasons
  • seeing
  • shadow
  • sharing
  • shelter
  • silence
  • singing
  • slowness
  • soul friends
  • sources of Spirit
  • Spirit
  • spiritual direction
  • surprise
  • taste
  • teaching
  • time
  • touching
  • traveling mercies
  • Uncategorized
  • waiting
  • weeping
  • wisdom
  • women
  • Word

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • A Musing Amma
    • Join 111 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • A Musing Amma
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...