Sleeping with Bread: The Return of the Bakery

When I stopped doing the Sleeping with Bread meme here, it was due to the time and effort it took to round up even the few SWB posts by other authors. Now, with the magic of Mister Linky, all I have to do it put up the weekly post.

I've been feeling a need to "sleep with bread" and I think this is a good time and place to get started again.

So, please feel free to join me on Mondays with a little fresh baked bread.

God bless,

Mary-LUE

P.S. All you need to know about Sleeping with Bread is in the sidebar. If you have any questions, email me (available in my profile).

What is Sleeping with Bread?

During the bombing raids of WWII, thousands of children were orphaned and left to starve. The fortunate ones were rescued and placed in refugee camps where they received food and good care. But many of these children who had lost so much could not sleep at night. They feared waking up to find themselves once again homeless and without food. Nothing seemed to reassure them. Finally, someone hit upon the idea of giving each child a piece of bread to hold at bedtime. Holding their bread, these children could finally sleep in peace. All through the night the bread reminded them, "Today I ate and I will eat again tomorrow." (Linn, Dennis et al, Sleeping With Bread, p.l)

These are the beginning words of a book that introduced me to a practice called the examen. The orphans held on to what nourished them and were thus able to sleep peacefully at night. The examen, based on the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius, helps a person hold onto what spiritually nourishes him by looking at what is giving him consolation in his life or causing him desolation. It allows someone to express his gratitude to God for the good stuff and turn to him for solace for the bad stuff. It is quite simple. You simply ask yourself, in the last day/week/month what gave me consolation and what caused me desolation.

How do you do it?

Sleeping with Bread is a Monday meme. You can participate in one of two ways: 1) Pick one of the above examen question sets and answer it in the comments section of my SWB post; or, 2) Create your own Sleeping with Bread post. You are welcome to right click on the Sleeping with Bread button and save it to your own computer before uploading into your post. Then, make sure you come back and put the link to your post in the automated Mr. Linky form at the end of the current SWB post. I hope you will join me and my fellow bakers as we Sleep with Bread on Mondays!

Sleeping with Bread

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

The Return of the Bakery

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