Sleeping with Bread: Sunday, February 22nd

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Sunday, February 22nd

I can't believe I remembered to post. I wasn't going to watch the Oscars... then I got sucked in. Unfortunately, I should be sucked into homework. Oh well... the evening is still young.

Hmmm... there must be some way to tie in the Academy Awards with this host post. I know... how many of the nominated films did you see? I saw most of the animated films, thanks to my daughter being a movie fan, but I did not see any of the five best picture nominees. In fact, I think the only nominated movie I saw was The Black Knight. I need to get out more... and I will... in 12 more weeks, when I am finished with grad school!

Oh, one "technical" note. I realized that some people thought that the host post contains a focus for the week. That is not true. Each week, each participant is free to answer the question in any way they choose.

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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,

Mary-LUE

2 comments:

Skeeter said...: Hi!

I'll post a "Sleeping with Bread" note tonight.

Best wishes,

Skeeter; February 23, 2009 12:01 AM
ashley said...: Hi all. I must have messed up the first time I put in my link, so I posted again. Sorry.; February 23, 2009 6:40 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!