Sleeping with Bread: Monday, September 28th

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Monday, September 28th

I keep trying to write a post about justice. But it is not working out right now. What I am thinking and feeling about it just isn't translating well to paper.

The gist of it?

There's a lot of injustice in this world. We KNOW that. We don't understand it all. We CAN'T understand it all.

There's a choice to be made. How are WE going to deal with the injustices in our life and the world around us? It may not seem like much of a subject for Sleeping with Bread; however, I think that how we view injustice, what we do with it, can affect our ability to look at our consolations and desolations.

What do you think? How does justice fit in with all this Sleeping with Bread stuff?

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

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: Mary-Lue: In what ways can we further social justice in our community? in our families? In what ways have we been hindering social justice? That might be a way to word it. Personally, I feel anything we can do for the poor in our own areas, if even just donating to a food kitchen, is one way we can help. One of our local stores had a month-long drive for donations for local food banks, and even though my wife and I don't have a lot of money, I contributed a little yesterday to the cause. Hopefully, it made somewhat of a difference.; September 28, 2009 10:46 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!