Week 3 Attention
Prayer & the Examen
Reviewing your day with God instead of sleepwalking through it.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Matthew 5:4Read these slowly, aloud, before you say anything of your own.
Akēdia
Acedia
The Noonday Demon — restlessness of the whole soul
Spiritual numbness and listlessness — a frantic escape from the reality of the present moment.
Acedia is the desert word for that restless, two-o’clock feeling — bored, can’t sit still, can’t focus, want to be anywhere but here — so you reach for the phone, the snack, the game, anything. The monks called it the noonday demon, because it hits hardest in the flat middle of the day, and the flat middle of any commitment. It is the enemy of every practice in this course, because it whispers, ‘this is pointless, go do something else.’
‘Blessed are those who mourn’ is the strange opposite. Instead of escaping what you feel, you stay present to it — even the sadness — and find that you get comforted. The Examen is the trained opposite of acedia: it makes you stop and actually look at your day instead of numbing out of it.
When do you feel that restless ‘I need to be doing something else’ itch the most? What do you reach for?
Why is it so much easier to numb out than to actually feel something hard?
Prayer • the skill of the prayer of examen
Most of us run a whole day on autopilot. Something goes badly at nine a.m. — we don’t deal with it, we just carry it — and it bleeds into the next thing, and the next. The Examen is the off-switch for autopilot: an ancient daily prayer that walks back through your day with God.
Six simple steps: Be still (settle; ‘Lord, have mercy’). Give thanks — specifically; name actual moments, because gratitude literally rewires the brain. Reflect — how am I coming into this moment, and where did I feel drawn today? Pray — take one or two things and talk to God about them. Hope — hand tomorrow over. Surrender — open your hands.
Why ‘mourn’? Because the Examen makes you honest about the hard parts too — the day that flopped, the way you blew it. Jesus doesn’t bless the man who pretends he’s fine; he blesses the one who lets himself feel it, and gets comforted. You can’t be comforted for a wound you won’t admit.
Voices from the desert, the cloister, and the long line of men who walked this road before you.
“Prayer is the laying aside of thoughts.”
Evagrius Ponticus · On Prayer 345–399
“If you are a theologian, you will pray truly; and if you pray truly, you are a theologian.”
Evagrius Ponticus · On Prayer 345–399
“The time of business does not differ with me from the time of prayer; in the noise and clutter of my kitchen… I possess God in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees.”
Brother Lawrence · The Practice of the Presence of God c. 1614–1691
“The end of every monk and the perfection of his heart is unceasing and uninterrupted perseverance in prayer.”
John Cassian · Conferences c. 360–435
A word for you, the one who leads — how this lands in a thirteen-year-old's real week.
Guys get handed about three acceptable emotions: fine, fired-up, and angry. Everything else gets stuffed. The Examen gives them words for what’s underneath — I was actually anxious about that test; I was actually hurt when they left me out. Naming it is the first step to it not running the day from the shadows.
The hardest steps for teens are specific gratitude (push them past ‘thanks for today’ to one real moment) and honest reflection. Acedia, in their world, looks like the bottomless scroll and quitting on anything hard. The Examen is the small daily rep that trains the opposite.
What’s one specific good thing from today you could actually thank God for?
What’s something you’ve been carrying all day — or all week — without really looking at it?