It would be easier to review the day in lament for all my selfishness and failings but that’s not what I am to do…

That’s how I began my nightly ritual, a few days ago, because that is how I felt.  Perhaps because I’ve done this enough now, even when some of those times seemed like “lists” instead of conscious reconsideration, I knew that if I persevered things would change. 

I’ve been consistently doing some form of Daily Examen, as an end of the day practice, for almost a year.  Somehow, reviewing the day in gratitude shifts my perspective.

Looking at that day’s reflection that I began despairingly in my notebook, I see that I started my review with the end of the day.  That evening, scrolling through my options for TV viewing, a Walter Brueggemann sermon was on our YouTube line up. I watched. It was a good ending to ease me into a reluctant beginning.

You see, this isn’t a “list” of things I’m thankful for or a chronological reliving of my day.  For me, reviewing the day in the presence of God engenders a larger reality.  It is not a utopia but reality that calls me to pay attention and trust the unfolding.

I continued in gratitude for things that expand my heart and mind for good.  And I remembered why I endured to begin my review of this day in gratitude.

When I began this post, I thought more about the sermon I heard.  Brueggemann titled the sermon on Psalm 31, Continuing Through the ‘Disruptive Conjunction.’  (Now you see why I had to listen.) He explained that the Psalmist’s complaints are interrupted by the conjunction “but” bringing a “moment of reflection with a pause for another reality.”

Reviewing my day was also the ‘disruptive conjunction’ that moved me from my experience of being narrowly focused on myself and what I didn’t accomplish to re-situate my experience in the mystery and goodness of God. 

My times are in your hand; deliver me…  Psalm 31:15

I am still awed when the words on the page unexpectedly answer or illuminate a question or thought I’ve been mulling over.  And it happened again.

I’ve been casually sampling some of Thomas Merton’s journal entries.  This day I decided to skip from February 10 and somehow landed on October 10, 1958, seventeen years after his arrival at the Trappist Monastery in Kentucky. 

After a morning of second-guessing my decisions or, more accurately, lack of deciding anything and feeling quite self-centered, this is what I read.

Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already am. 

…For it is the unaccepted self that stands in my way.

Thomas Merton, October 10, 1958

A Year with Thomas Merton

I tend to lead with fear, so; maybe I’m still a little afraid of being myself.  I will admit it has been a challenge to figure out who that is sometimes. What if—okay, this is a different kind of “what if” – what if I just did whatever I had to do and accepted what I didn’t do? 

Maybe my highest ambition could also be to be who I am—instead of all the truly unaccepting self talk of wondering if what I did is right or helpful or kind and on and on.  Maybe that truly stands in the way of loving and being loved. 

And that would have been enough of a gift from God for one day.  Yet, there was more, as I serendipitously made my way through the next part of Isaiah 45.

I was reluctant to write today.  My resolve for being a witness through these pages waned. As I did my morning reading, I was unsure about what I represented as the sacred in my world.  And then when I picked up my computer, I remembered something that made sense for today, this Election Day in the United States.

Earlier this fall, I read The Return of Ansel Gibbs, one of the few books by Frederick Buechner I hadn’t read.  It was published in 1957 and like all Buechner’s writing, in my experience, the story affirms literary philosopher Mikkail Bakhtin’s thinking that the novel is never finished.  The dialogue is not bound to the original contextual meanings but is always being rewritten, so to speak, in our reading and in conversation with our own times.

In the novel, Ansel Gibbs is being appointed to a cabinet position by the President of the United States, subject to congressional approval, of course.  At this critical juncture, near the end of the tale, Ansel Gibbs’ lifelong friend and Anglican priest, Dr. Kuykendall remembered a moment when he addressed young seminarians. With trembling hands on a heavy leather Bible, he said,

If you tell me Christian commitment is a thing that has happened to you once and for all like some kind of spiritual plastic surgery, I say go to, go to, you’re either pulling the wool over your own eyes or trying to pull it over mine.  Every morning you should wake up in your beds and ask yourself: ‘Can I believe it all again today?’  No, better still, don’t ask it till after you’ve read The New York Times, till after you’ve studied that daily record of the world’s brokenness and corruption, which should always stand side by side with your Bible.  Then ask yourself if you can believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ again for that particular day.  If your answer’s always Yes, then you probably don’t know what believing means.  At least five times out of ten the answer should be No because the No is as important as the Yes, maybe even more so.  The No is what proves you’re a man in case you should ever doubt it.  And then if some morning the answer happens to be really Yes, it should be a Yes that’s choked with confession and tears and … great laughter.  Not a beatific smile, but the laughter of wonderful incredulity.

The Return of Ansel Gibbs, p. 303

I read that maybe there is no such thing as time.  Maybe, we only have this moment, with its own story.

Don’t be afraid is a recurrent theme for me.  Isaiah knows that I need to hear that again.

Instead of copying a passage from chapter 44 in my notebook, I put together the parts that stood out to me in my meditative reading, a kind of found poem.

My servant, I have chosen

formed you and will help you.

I will pour out water, spirit, blessing

Do not fear, do not be afraid

You are witnesses.

Being a witness? I am being a witness to my life rather than all the fixing, managing, and what if-ing I tend to do.  To let things be.

I’ve been doing Daily Examine most evenings and it does make a difference to review my day in gratitude instead of lamenting what I did or didn’t do that day.  To be a witness to what is.  I’ve been here before. I am repurposing something that Cynthia Bourgeault wrote that seems inline with the kind of freedom that being a witness might bring.

Now to have the courage to take this lesson again and experience the surrender of letting be, with reverence, a respectful waiting, and a deep attentiveness to forces much greater than my own.

…gift is an empowerment, something that allows us to travel further on our way to highest possible expression of ourselves.  In this way, even difficulties are gifts…because they all have energy within them to teach us something vital about ourselves and the nature of our lives in this reality.

One Drum: Stories and Ceremonies for a Planet, Richard Wagamese

When I was walking the dog yesterday, a beautiful day here, my neighbour said, “We live in paradise!” Yes, I do, I thought. It is a gift.

I’ve been reading Isaiah and Richard Wagamese’s last book, One Drum, in the mornings. I find ideas do converge unexpectedly. What stood out to me as I read this chapter in Isaiah was this part about treasures in darkness and riches hidden in secret places. That seems to be especially true for most of us right now, if we linger. Whenever I’ve been most worried or unsure, some thing happens to open a possibility.

I don’t consider myself a structured person. And yet, for most of my adult life, I’ve spent some time, most days, reading in a way that helped me make sense of my life.  The Bible, memoir, novels, and even so-called children’s books are my “source material” that engenders the magic. Over and over it happens, a gift of reading bits and pieces that add up.

 When my children were young or when I had a more demanding job, I might only spend minutes in the morning reading this way, but the books were always near-by my morning chair or the quiet corner . Over the years the activity has stretched immeasurably.  There have also been days and weeks that I didn’t read with that openness.  However, the practice is always waiting for me.

 Often the gifts I receive get buried again in my journals. I used to only write down a scripture reference or sometimes a quote, keeping a sort of commonplace journal. I have a few old ones and I can simply look at the date and the reference or quote and remember something when I sat on the white couch in the sunny bedroom with large windows in 1986.  Now, with notebooks filled with words, I move on to the next day’s worries and forget the gift for a time.

So, I intend to write these things for some days in this blog as they emerge, to pay attention and to rest in the goodness.  To simply accept what I’ve been given and listen for my name.