Sleeping with Bread: Are you getting enough sleep?

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Are you getting enough sleep?

A few years ago, I came upon this video to the song "Sleep" by Riley Armstrong. It's a clever song and the claymation effects in the video are fun, but I think Mr. Armstrong make a good point - " Sleep, I never get enough." How can we hold on to bread (the things that enrich our lives if we don't take the time to reflect, rest and relax?

This call to rest is one I need to heed more and I'm making intentional efforts to improve in this area. To be honest, this "Monday" meme is late due to taking a couple of days to rest and recoup after a very busy August of youth programs and field trips galore. Some of the best places for me to find rest and thoughtfulness can be in writing a blog post, having a lunch and conversation with a friend, playing some music or yes - even just taking a nap. So as you think about the bread of your life this week, I'd like to not only encourage you to write about how you best experience rest, but to actually do it. Take a break, go for a walk, visit the library - go to you favorite section and get lost in it for a while and if you would like to; go take a guilt free nap. I mean it, guilt free!

As the seasons are shifting back to fall, now it the time to fill the remaining free time of late summer days with all the rest and recouping we can manage. May your bread be one more visit to that favorite summer place, and may you actually take the time and go be there!

(Leave a comment if you must, but please take this prompt and go do something fun with the people you love this week - then come back a tell us about what fun you had. Happy last week of August!)

As a bonus - here's another one of Riley's videos for the song "Greater Than". :)

2 comments:

Kila said...: Today I visited the library and checked out two books for myself, something I hadn't done in a long time.; August 30, 2010 7:00 PM
Kila said...: Today I visited the library and checked out two books for myself, something I hadn't done in a long time.; August 30, 2010 7:00 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!