Buechner, Ignatius: News of the Day
“When the evening news comes on, hundreds of thousands of people all over the earth are watching it on their TV screens. There is also the news that rarely gets into the media, which is the news of each particular day of each particular one of us. Maybe there’s nothing on earth more important for us to do than sit down every evening and think it over, try to figure it out, or at least try to come to terms with it. The news of our day. It is, if nothing else, a way of saying our prayers.”—Frederick Buechner.
Buechner challenges us to spend even a fraction of the time we listen to the world news of the day dealing with the news in our own lives. 12-step groups and short courses in Christianity, such as Cursillo and Ignatian spirituality, all suggest methods for reviewing the day, giving thanks, making gratitude lists, remembering back to when we encountered God, when we harmed ourselves or others, asking for forgiveness, planning to make amends, and in essence turning our life and our will over to God one more time each evening. Those in recovery call it the 10th step. St. Ignatius calls it the Examen.
Buechner reminds us that we should consider these exercises as prayer. It is our news of the day for God, nighttime news, and nighttime prayers.
These nighttime prayers are more needed now than perhaps at any other time in our lives.
In due course, answers will come regarding how we will respond to the world news of the day.
