One of my favorite spiritual practices, examen, comes from Ignatian spirituality, and gathering for worship on the last day of the calendar year became the perfect time to introduce this to the congregation. Examen is a technique of prayerful reflection on the events of a set period of time in order to detect God’s presence and discern God’s direction for us. The most common use of the examen is as a daily practice, yet it can also be used for longer periods of time that lend themselves for prayerful reflection. In worship we used a time of guided personal prayer to individually prayer the examen about the year that had past and the year ahead in a time. Inspired by Mary, who was known for “pondering” in her heart (Luke 2:19), and Simeon, whose prayerful eye saw God’s salvation in the baby Jesus brought to the temple (Luke 2:30), we looked into our lives and invited God’s leading into the new year.