Sleeping with Bread: Monday, November 10th

Sunday, November 09, 2008

Monday, November 10th

My church is going through a series on prayer and this week, the prayer is the Examen. If you are interested in a daily form, you can click here. I am thinking of trying to journal the examen daily (or as near as I can make it). By doing so, I hope to bring more cohesiveness to my weekly posts.

One benefit to the last few weeks of Sleeping with Bread is that I feel a relief of pressure, something like letting air out of a tire that is overfull. Taking time to reflect each week has definitely been helpful to me. I hope it is for you, too. In fact, if anyone would like to share in the comments how the practice has affected you, I would love to hear from you.

Fall Divider Pictures, Images and Photos

Although the examen is a Christian practice, I would hope that anyone who has something to share would feel welcome here.

Also, if you don't have your own blog and would like to participate, share your bread in the comments.

To holding on to what gives life,

Mary-LUE

4 comments:

Mel said...: Thank you for the link. Awesome structure to the examen. I'm one who requires the structure to develop the discipline. Thanks for that....

And I think you know that I do an evening inventory at the end of my day. It's a practice that's developed over the years, very specific principles get looked at. I know it's helped move me into all that I AM today, cuts through the noise and sets a course of action for the next day. Again, it's that discipline and structure that I've found helpful. Left to my own devises, I could come up with a bazillion excuses to not even bother--but I'd be back at feeling miserable and acting just as miserable as I felt.; November 10, 2008 3:58 AM
Unknown said...: Thanks, I will look at the form as I am a person that likes structure, even though I have been trying to make myself be more spontaneous.

I think doing a Sleeping with Bread entry each day would be good for me as I often find myself trying to put things into perspective form the last week and I think it would be easier if I had a daily inventory like Mel does.; November 10, 2008 8:34 AM
Tara Lamont said...: Mary Lue,
I'm back from my trip and SWB -
Missed you all last week.
Tara Lamont; November 10, 2008 9:54 AM
Elizabeth said...: Thanks for the prayer journal - I like it, a lot.

SWB is good for me - I'm not terribly reflective by nature, so setting aside time to actually write out my thoughts helps me to focus on things much more, and has brought up issues I was pretty effectively hiding.; November 10, 2008 6:58 PM

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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!