Sleeping with Bread: Monday, January 5th

Sunday, January 04, 2009

Monday, January 5th

Happy New Year!

I can't believe it is 2009. Just nine years ago, on New Year's Eve, our church held a decade party to celebrate the year 2000. That it has been almost a decade since then is incomprehensible.

In the LUE family, we celebrated the New Year very quietly. In fact, just a couple of minutes before midnight, I went in to wish my husband a Happy New Year and he was already asleep. We are not exactly party people!

One thing I regret is that I did not feel up to getting my own Sleeping with Bread post done last week. I have felt a sense of inertia this holiday season and it felt like swimming in quicksand to look back over the year. I hope to work on that this week. Maybe the structure of the kids being back in school, school lunches to be made, and appointments to keep with get me going.

How did you ring in the New Year?

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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,

4 comments:

Unknown said...: I had trouble staying up that night as well.; January 05, 2009 7:38 AM
Tara Lamont said...: I was up till 1 or so - we watched Ryan S./Dick Clark's countdown. Ian, Nigel, Heather, Uncle Carl and Grandma Janet rang in the New year with sparkling grape juice and too many snacks!
Blessing to you in 2009, Mary Lue!
T; January 05, 2009 8:17 AM
Anonymous said...: Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this beautiful meme. I plan to make it my Monday spiritual practice.; January 05, 2009 8:01 PM
Unknown said...: I did it this week, yeah! I actually did get it written last night, but I was hoping to add a song file. The fates were against me and I couldn't get it figured out. At least the rest is there!; January 06, 2009 10:34 AM

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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!