A 2024 Retrospective that isn't really a Retrospective

New Year's Eve Sunrise over our backyard 

There's an ancient Christian practice called the Examen, developed by Saint Ignatius of Loyola. The basic premise is to prayerfully look back over a period of time (a day, a week, a year) and notice what comes to your awareness and the emotions surrounding those moments, both the places of ease and the places of challenge, and how your experience of God’s presence is woven through it all. What you discover from this contemplative phase forms the basis of a more active prayer response to God before moving on to reflection on the future. The whole idea is that it a way to notice all the “good” and “bad” and release it into God's care as a way to be continually open to God's presence going forward.

It's also a way to stay open to the reality of the world - that life is more complicated than the successes we share (or the vulnerabilities and hardships we name). It's a way to stay attentive to the movement of God's spirit. It's a way to be mindful of your place in the grand scheme of things and focus on what is truly important.

I was tempted to do a 2024 retrospective, which had some highlights and for sure had more challenges than you'd really want to hear about (this was a hard year in a succession of hard years). Honestly, our celebrations revolve around our kids being happy and thriving and finally feeling like we have the capacity to rebuild the rhythms of our household to include more connections with others. (Side note: living on an island with kids, especially a toddler, means you have to be really intentional about how to spend time with friends.) I'm proud I did something out of my comfort zone with learning about permaculture. There were many daily moments of consolation and grace. However, a lot of the year was doing the hard work that happens when life goes sideways and trusting, as a friend wrote on Facebook, that the growth from this year will yield a harvest of joy and resilience in the coming year.

So if you are surrounded by people celebrating their wins and you feel like all you have to show for this year is the scars from surviving - it's OK. It doesn't mean there weren't moments of joy or gratitude. It doesn't mean that other people are somehow better at life. (After all, life isn't a competition and there aren't score cards - it is a function of our Capitalist mindset that measures anything in terms of productivity and dollars). 

All of it now rests in God's care anyway. The journey continues ever on - all we can do is continue to stay open to the movement of God in and around us as we navigate our daily living. Hard things will come and go. God's presence remains with us through it all.