A Tool for Living Attentively

Several years ago, I started to perform an “examen” at the end of the day by jotting down the answers to these three questions: How was Christ present to me today? What am I most grateful for? What am I least grateful for? Usually, I seem to be most aware of Christ’s presence when I write, through contact with other people, and in nature. It is generally easy to decide what I am most grateful for: time with a friend, produce from the garden, a song from morning prayer that lingered through the day. It is all too easy to identify what I am least grateful for, such as mosquito bites, difficulty sleeping, or a hot, humid day.

A couple of months ago, I came across the Mary Oliver poem Mindful, which begins, “Every day I see or I hear something that more or less / kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle / in the haystack of light.” This poem prompted me to add another question to my examen: What more or less killed me with delight today? Often, it takes no longer than the walk from Marywood to the choir chapel for morning prayer to be delighted by the full moon, bird song, or light rain on my skin. However, keeping the question in mind throughout the day is a good exercise in mindfulness.

A few weeks ago, St. Benedict’s call to “listen and incline the ear of your heart” led me to add yet another question to my examen: What did I learn today by listening? I’m finding that this question is the most difficult one to answer. True, I usually pick up some factual information throughout the day by listening—a sister fell and had to go to the hospital, the beetles are feasting on the rose bushes, someone forgot to get a sub for dish duty—but the challenge is to listen for the unspoken messages that accompany the information, such as anxiety, disappointment, or frustration, and then discern how to respond to them.

I’ve made various attempts at journaling throughout the years, but I never kept at it until I started performing the examen. I’m grateful I’ve been able to establish this practice, because it is a helpful tool in living attentively throughout the day.