Moment by Moment: A Retreat in Everyday Life by Carol Ann Smith, SHCJ and Eugene F. Merz, SJ
Sleeping with Bread: Holding What Gives You Life by Dennis Linn, Shelia Fabricant Linn, and Matthew Linn
review by Catherine Askew
The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola is a sixteenth-century text with multiple prayer exercises which invite people to reflect on the experiences in their daily life in such a way that deepens their love for and freedom in Christ. The beauty of both Moment by Moment and Sleeping with Bread is that they reflect the heart of The Spiritual Exercises while putting it into our modern context.
Moment by Moment contains thirty-two ‘Moments’, or reflective prayerexperiences. Each one has a theme, scripture passages, excerpts for St. Ignatius, questions to ponder, and suggestions for practical actions that might make the wisdom from that day more tangible. I have enjoyed using this book to take an hour a week to go on a “mini-retreat” in my own home. And though I havemostly used it by myself, I could imagine sharing the insights from the exercises with my spouse or a soul-friend.
Sleeping with Bread is similar except that it is family-friendly and has good pictures! It encourages us to ask ourselves two questions: “For what am I most grateful? For what am I least grateful?” The book then goes on to describe a process by which we might ask these questions each day on our own or with our family or another group of people. By asking these questions, not only do we get to know ourselves and others we love better, we can also better discern God’s will. For, generally speaking, the authors say, God’s will is for us to do more of whatever we are most grateful for or whatever gives us most life.
I have found the questions and practices in these books help me to be more attentive to the ways God is at work in my everyday life. By regularly reflecting on my days, I begin to recognize certain themes that point me toward God’s deepest longings and desires for me. In short, they have helped me notice the fingerprints of God on my life.
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