After IV
A Moment to Retreat, Pt 1: An Explanation of Your Examen
 
Podcast Intro – (Upbeat acoustic guitar music)

Jon Steele  0:09  
Hey everyone. I'm Jon Steele. And this is After IV: a podcast for InterVarsity alumni. Life after college is hard. And even a great experience with your University chapter doesn't shield you from the challenges of transition. As we hear stories from real alumni learning how to make it in their post-InterVarsity reality, my hope is that this podcast will offer some encouragement, a few laughs and even some hope for the future. This is After IV, and these are your stories.

Welcome

Jon Steele
Hello, alumni and welcome to After IV: the podcast that is just for you. I'm your host Jon Steele. As always, it's a pleasure being together for another episode. And if it's your first time joining us, welcome to the show. So we've got a special kind of episode today, alumni. For those who missed the memo or forgot, tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, and Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent. Now last year at this time, we were joined by none other than Jason Gaboury resident smart guy and National Director of Alumni Relations for InterVarsity. And when Jason joined us, he helped us get a better idea for what Lent is all about. You can find a link to that episode in the show notes along with a couple others that are related to this season. And I recommend going there for a full explanation on the topic. But I'll give an abbreviated version just for a refresher. Very basically, Lent is the 40-day season leading up to Easter. Now historically, it was a time for new converts to Christianity to spend time studying and better understanding what it means to give your whole life to Jesus in anticipation of being baptized on Easter Sunday. Today, it's meant more as a time to prepare spiritually for celebrating Christ's resurrection. It's sort of a solemn journey to the cross reflecting on our own humanity, mortality and sin, which then makes the Easter celebration of life and the resurrected Jesus a much more meaningful thing. Now, depending on the church community that you're a part of, or that you grew up with, the way that you observe lent might be different, or maybe you didn't grow up going to church or in a church that recognized the Christian calendar all that much. That was my experience. And so maybe you haven't had any experience with Lent. That's totally fine. But for those who have, you may have spent time fasting, maybe you participated in almsgiving. Maybe you've had some specific devotional or prayer rhythms during that season could have been a number of different experiences. Once again, listen to Jason's episode, "Why Lent?" and you'll have a better understanding of why we do any or all of those things as well. "Okay, Jon, but what do any of those things have to do with today's episode?" Well, let me tell you. In our post-graduation life, I think one of many things that can be really difficult is making time to retreat. When we were back on campus with our university community, there were opportunities at large group or small group, maybe at a fall conference or chapter camp, whatever context it was for you, there were probably opportunities to retreat and spend some guided quiet time with the Lord. And it is incredibly difficult to do that in this season of life. Well, we want to help facilitate that for you. And Lent feels like a great place to do it. So today, we're actually releasing two short episodes, this one that you're listening to right now, which will serve as an explanation for the next one. And then the next one is going to be a really simple retreat guide in the form of a daily examen. Now some of you might say, "Jon, what's an examen?" Basically, an examen is a tool for looking back at our day, recognizing God's presence, identifying places where we did or didn't partner well with him and preparing for tomorrow. Our examen will start with a brief time of silence, and then I'll guide you through each one of those steps that I just mentioned, with some gentle music playing in the background. Now, ideally, this would be something that you do in a quiet space as you wind down for bed in the evening to take time to sort of look back over the day. And if you're able to do that, that's great. But that just may not be realistic for you. And that's totally fine. This is meant to be set up in a way that allows you to do it wherever and whenever you normally listen to After IV. You can use it as a practice of solitude, or you could invite friends, roommates family into it, whatever you'd like to do. So feel the freedom to engage in whatever way you can, the invitation is to just engage. The last thing I'll say before we wrap up this part is that we're making this as two separate episodes so that you can come back to the examen part, specifically, throughout the Lenten season, there won't be any introduction or welcome. Just the examen. Then you can jump right in without having to skip through the whole explanation or a bunch of me jabbering. I'll just give a really simple setup at the beginning of this next episode, and then you can just dive right in. So I hope you'll use this if you're trying to decide what exercise or practice to use for Lent, this could actually be a tool that you use every day for the duration of Lent if you choose to.

Podcast Outro – (Upbeat acoustic guitar music)

Okay, I think that's everything I have for you enjoy your exam, and I hope it blesses you and helps you meet with Jesus during the season. And if there's someone you know who also might enjoy this, why don't you send it to them too? So go ahead and jump to the next episode because that one's for you, alumni!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai