Examen Prayer | Step 2: Petition And Step 3: Review Of Day

Hi there,

This is Lee again,

Very happy to be with you for day two in our Daily Grace series exploring the richness of the Examine prayer of Ignatius of Loyola.

We're doing a very simple version of the Examine which is,

The Examine is this beautiful opportunity to look at and our day,

Our life,

And see the evidence of grace everywhere and how we are dancing with grace,

This love song.

So if you haven't watched yesterday you may want to watch that because it lays the foundation but one thing I'll say from yesterday just to remind you that through the lens of the Examine as we're looking at our life we're looking to see the action of grace in our life and how we respond,

This dance,

This love song or dance with grace.

And one thing to note about that as we explore this second step today is it's not that grace is just,

The action of grace is just one thing among many.

You know there's the Sun,

The Moon,

The stars,

And there's my work,

And there's my family,

And then oh yeah there's this grace that happens to be working its way in there.

No it's through the lens of the Examine it's all grace,

Every part of it,

My existence and all of creation is an action of grace and so I bring this curious zeal to it to see how I am dancing with grace,

Right?

So yesterday we had the pre-step of just reminding ourselves that we were always and forever in the presence of grace and then we had the first of the Examine steps which is gratitude so calling to mind and heart those gratitudes those things from which for which we are grateful you know as Meister Eckhart says you may have heard Britton I say this many times before if I had but one prayer thank you would be it and it would be enough if the one word the one phrase we said in our life was thank you it would be enough we could build a whole spirituality on thank you so we will pause for a moment to welcome those gratitudes again as our first step and then our second step is we turn to grace and we say okay grace I want to dance with you and this is what we call the petition step the second step is the petition we ask grace to let me see your action in my life open my eyes in other words you know if it takes a Zen stick to wake me up or a gentle tugging at the heart whatever you need to do I give you permission that's the petition step right and then we'll move actually to the third step is we'll start to review our day and we'll look for those things where we look back over the previous 24 hours and see the action of grace specifically where do we see the action of grace and how are we dancing with it how have we said yes and I want to say something really really important here and I think vital and sometimes misunderstood is that first of all this is a process of grace working through us it's not a self-improvement checklist right it's this is a prayer it's a prayer that we're opening ourselves into to participate with grace and and we look for the action of grace in our life not the way a scientist may review the steps of you know a process in the lab or you know an exploratory process or a manual building something we look with the eyes of compassion because we want to grow in love and we want to see how we've danced with grace and we want to see those places we've said yes this is what Ignatius says you want to see those places where we were invited to love and we said yes to love because sometimes we miss them especially if we're hard on ourselves but we're checked out or we're highly critical of ourselves or others yeah you know we do that and we want to pause here and say no if life is an invitation for grace how have I said yes right how have I said yes so let's let's do that let's sit into these steps and if it feels good you may close your eyes may want to close your eyes it's a beautiful way to start the exam and settle into a comfortable spot with a straight spine and we'll go through these first the first pre step and then the next two steps of the exam and if at any point you feel you want to pause this video and just sit with that step please do so that first pre step is to remind ourselves we're in the presence of grace you may take a few moments to do that and if so whatever that takes to remind yourself you're in the presence of grace you can do that pause me if you need to once we've called to mind that we are in the presence of grace we let ourselves be struck by these gratitudes and this we could sit with for five ten fifteen minutes so what are the things I'm grateful for perhaps in this moment you just call to mind one one thing you're grateful for in the past 24 hours and yes you call that to mind you may want to give that back to grace remember this is a prayer thank you God thank you grace for that gift and you may pause me here if that feels important to sit with those let's assume we've allowed a few graces or at least one or two to bubble up a few gratitudes we then turn to the petition and the petition is a step in which we might say okay grace I want to see your action in my life I give you permission to show me open my eyes so you may find your own version of open my eyes and I'm gonna keep moving for time's sake but even that you may pause and sit with for a moment but once we've made that step and we've said okay grace open my eyes I want to see the action of your action in my life in this love song I'm invited to dance into and am I dancing that's what we're asking right am I dancing how am I saying yes and even how am I saying no and that brings us to the step of the review the third step of the exam and so here you will want to pause right and I'm just gonna guide you through this for a moment whereas you want to look back over the 20 the previous 24 hours or so and look for the ways that you have been invited into love and where you've said yes so for example maybe I felt on my heart a desire to call someone who was in need and I called them I said yes oh wow okay I called them didn't have to but I did it maybe there was a kind moment or a moment where you felt really loving and caring with your children or a parent or at work you didn't have to be loving but you chose to be loving these these kinds of things you want to celebrate and perhaps there are some ways that you saw well I had an opportunity to love and I didn't well set that aside we'll look at that tomorrow but for right now give yourself permission to celebrate the ways you said yes to grace so you may want to pause here and sit with those for three four or five minutes and as we've called those to mind and heart and see the ways that we've participated in love and grace you simply want to acknowledge that don't let life pass you by without acknowledging the invitation to grace and love that life is in the ways that you've said yes so today as we conclude this prayer I invite you to take that with you the celebration of the dance between you and grace that is your life blessings on a beautiful day