The Examen, a cornerstone spiritual practice of the Jesuit tradition, is flexible and can be adapted to many different settings and contexts. Mission in Motion has covered the range of applications of the Examen and similar Ignatian approaches to prayer, meditation, and reflection through retreats, workshops, and pedagogical strategies. As part of November’s Jesuit Heritage Month, a team of Capitol Campus Mission and Ministry colleagues innovated this spiritual practice by offering a “Walking Examen of the Capitol Campus.” This event, broadcasted to the entire university community, brought together students, faculty, and staff to experience the growing and evolving Capitol Campus through the lens of Ignatian spirituality.
The invitation to this experience made clear that participants would be engaging with the physical reality of the Capitol Campus in a reflective manner unlike most traditional building or walking tours. While the latter might be associated more with the orientation of a tourist or onlooker, this reflective walking experience was intended to promote deeper consideration about the meaning and implications of Georgetown’s growth in this area of Washington, D.C. Ultimately, the organizers hoped that this engagement with the Capitol Campus would lead to discernment about how members of the Georgetown community are called to engage with the campus through their work and study in the years ahead. For several participants, the walking Examen was their first time on the campus and a welcome opportunity to gain a comprehensive overview of the campus footprint in the city.
As a trained urban planner with deep roots in Ignatian spirituality, I have always found particular resonance with the “Composition of Place.” This is a meditation that St. Ignatius encourages throughout the Spiritual Exercises, his lengthy guided retreat, to help retreatants enter more imaginatively into the inner experience of prayerful encounter with the characters of the Gospel scenes. According to the Exercises, the path to union with the Divine occurs not only in cognitive experiences of mental processing of words and ideas, but also in the affective or emotional experiences of imaginative wondering. There is great spiritual potential when we facilitate creative encounters with the nitty gritty realities of the scenes depicted in Scripture. This kind of exercise invites the retreatant to notice the particulars of the setting, with emphasis on the contextual elements of the place.
In urban planning lingo, I see much similarity between this Ignatian “Composition of Place” and the standard planning practice of existing conditions analysis in which practitioners survey a setting or situation, grow in awareness of its reality through observation and other data collection, and then reflectively assess needs and opportunities in relation to the planning process being considered. Both processes similarly require imagination, creativity, engagement with reality, and attentiveness to data of various kinds – both the small and large details of data.
This walking Examen featured many of the elements of a classic Ignatian meditation that one might experience in the Spiritual Exercises. Fr. Mike Lamanna, SJ, a Jesuit priest and law student in Georgetown Law’s Class of 2025, and I alternated in leading each stage of the Examen. The experience began in St. Aloysius Church on the campus of Gonzaga College High School. This initial station provided the invitation to the experience and oriented the group to the spiritual dimensions of the walk. This transitional moment helped participants move into a reflective rhythm. The walking Examen consisted of five locations on the Capitol Campus, with each stop organized around a core theme related to Georgetown’s history, mission, and values. These locations and themes were:
- St. Aloysius Church/Gonzaga College High School (“Gratitude for our History and Desire to Rewrite it”)
- 55 H Street Dorm (“Home”)
- 111 Massachusetts Avenue (“Care for our Common Home”)
- Eleanor Holmes Norton Green of the Law Center (“Justice and Reconciliation”)
- McCourt School of Public Policy (“the Common Good”)
Participants were invited to reflect in pairs between locations, sharing ideas and reactions to prompts provided by the organizers. Like a classic Examen, the activity ended with a resolution to act:
“As I prepare to end this walking Examen, I turn to God with gratitude for this experience – both the joyful insights and whatever challenges it surfaced. I might begin to discern a decision to convert my reflections from today’s walk into some concrete choices. What do I want to learn more about? How would I like to share what I experienced with others? Is there something I am called to do at Georgetown or in the city related to the Capitol Campus? I sit with these possibilities for a few moments.”
The event formally concluded with fellowship over lunch and participants had the opportunity to engage in conversation about their time together. I sensed that this inaugural program would not be the last, and many others at Georgetown would benefit from such a reflective encounter with the Capitol Campus.