Sleeping with Bread: Monday, June 15th

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Monday, June 15th

Pat, pat, pat. Pat, pat, pat.

Hear that? It's the sound of me patting myself on the back because I remembered to put up the host post!!!! Yay for me! (Now, I just have to make sure I get it done before the scheduled Blogger outage... T minus 53 minutes.)

This was the last week of school for my kids. My daughter finished out her fourth year in her multiage program. Next year she moves into a new class. This, of course, led to lots of memories and reflection for me as I considered how much she has changed in the last four years.

I also had lots of time for reflection as I attended a church group reunion tonight.

Hopefully, I'll get my own Sleeping with Bread post up this week and share a little about all this reflection I've been doing. I am going to the beach tomorrow, so I might not get it done until Tuesday.

I look forward to reading what you all have to share this week. (Can you believe June is HALF OVER!)

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:

dianne said...: I hear you on June - where's the time going?

Thanks again for hosting this meme!; June 15, 2009 4:32 AM
Tara Lamont said...: Pat pat - good for you! Happy bread baking.; June 15, 2009 8:06 AM

Post a Comment

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!