What's New?

What’s New?

The founder of the Jesuit order (I think) held his followers to one discipline above all else. The daily Eucharist was nice, but wasn’t necessary, he believed. The thing critical to living a life of faith was a daily examination of conscience. This examination was described to me as something subtler and more than a tally of one’s daily sins. Instead, the priests and brothers were expected, every evening, to look back upon their day and note the moments when they were open to grace, and those moments when they were not.

Girlfriend and I gave this a whirl a while back, at my insistence. It was an unmitigated disaster.

First, we’d get deep in the weeds with wondering just what it meant to be open or to not be. Then this other thing would happen—Girlfriend would name some graceful moments in her day, then ruminate a bit, and then declare: I think I was open all day long. I can’t think of any moments when I wasn’t really open to God’s grace.

You’re kidding! I’d proclaim, ungracefully. And then we would begin…a long and terrible discussion during which I heard this echo of my lack of graces ringing up like some celestial cash register—I would offer her examples of the bleaker moments of the day, I would make pronouncements about the innate brokenness and limits of humanity. Et cetera, et cetera, logs in my eye and millstones round my neck.

Thankfully, we dropped that spiritual discipline right quick.

More recently, we’ve begun another version. At the end of almost every day these days, we ask each other to identify the best and worst moments of the day. Surprisingly, these often turn out to be moments that we haven’t spoken of—not over dinner, not during the commercials as we watch tv. Sharing these high and low points provides a different kind of insight into one another days. I find I can finally keep some of Girlfriend’s colleagues straight, as they’ve become connected to stories of small triumphs or frustrations. I think maybe she’s begun to understand a little better, what I count as success or struggle.

It’s been interesting to notice that the best and worst parts of our days are not unlike the moments filled or emptied of a certain kind of grace. We each, quite often, celebrate accomplishment or connection to another human being—the moment we felt understood, a cherished conversation. Sometimes these are moments in the natural world, sometimes they are moments with each other. These are nice to offer up a minute for.

And the struggles, oh so often, have to do with our own expectations. Not getting something done as quickly as we thought we should have. Not being able to connect. It’s funny—but we’ve never not known when one or both of us thought our worst moments were spent with each other. Taking a moment to acknowledge that sometimes leads to apology, and I believe most always leads to resolutions to do better on the next time ‘round.

There is one more bit of intimate attention I am trying to work into these moments Girlfriend and I share after we have clambered into bed, while the sheets are warming up, before we slip away to sleep. It comes out of my morning prayer, which every day reminds me that each day really is a new creation, really never happened ever before, really can’t be the same old same old we sometimes pretend it is.

And so I poke Girlfriend awake and ask her: “What surprised you?”

It’s a tough question to answer, if you haven’t been preparing for it. And that is what I’ve come to love—when I spend my day alert for all that’s new in it, I see the newness, the delight, the unexpected, all around. The clump of daylilies, still blooming, in the bright spot of that yard. An older couple by the river with a picnic—he wore a beret, and brought a certain joie de vivre, a little bit of Paris to the shores of the Potomac. The conversation with the woman who stood behind me in the grocery line, who’s anxious for the children of her neighborhood to get a little older, so she can really do her house up for Halloween (“not quite fair to freak them out as toddlers,” she suggested).

There’s never any guarantee we’re going to get tomorrow. We didn’t even have a promise of today. These moments of our lives that are sliding right around us—every one of them is new. It’s worth it, I believe (Girlfriend rolls her eyes and grudgingly agrees) to pay attention to what’s new in each and every day. Keep a watch out for surprises: they are all around.