Everything is personal...

"Nothing is easy... in a postmodern age when we question all our assumptions and struggle with global warming and belligerent politicians, the commonwealth of peace seems very far away.  But making bread gives us meaning," writes Donna Sinclair. And, "that, above all, is why it is a spiritual task. It helps us trust that the world will survive, that we are loved and that the kitchen where we work is holy ground."

For longer than I can remember I've believed in my core that each meeting at church - planning meetings, study meetings, council meetings - should begin with a bit of shared bread.  Maybe some wine, too - or maybe not - but probably so.  My daughter tells me that when she was in India wherever she went - for business, pleasure or study - every encounter began with tea.  And refreshments, too.  Somewhere along the way our realm became too efficient, too interested in the bottom line and hospitality and humanity was discarded as too costly and mostly irrelevant.

But as one spiritual director said to me years ago when I insisted that like the Godfather certain things were not personal, just business:  EVERYTHING is personal - especially in the church.  That changed my life.  Everything is personal - everything takes time - every bod is unique - everything needs space to grow and ferment, percolate and bake, ripen and mature.  So what could be more prayerful, counter-cultural and nourishing than to start everything we do with some bread?  Ms. Sinclair continues:

What could be more compelling (to hungry people) than to wrap the new religion in bread? What could draw more surely on the strength of Demeter, the reigning goddess of bread? Nothing could give Jesus' friends more hope - with his terrifying death soon to come - than bread, which depends on grain that dies in the fields but comes back again as goodness.  At every meal, they would think of him. Every time they gathered as friends, he would be present in the breaking of bread.

Like Gandhi said: there are people in the world so hungry that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread. So this Monday, when we gather to study, I'm going to bring bread and tea and start things off right.  And my time for prayer and study at each Council meeting this year is going to include a bit of bread and wine, too.  Sure, it will take us a little more time.  Of course, it will seem excessive and extravagant when there is business to be resolved.  But we serve a Crucified and Upside Down Lord - who comes to us as bread and wine - and after 30 years of waiting the time has come to do this in my ministry. 

Everything is personal - and being nourished and connected matters - so I'll keep you posted.  Joy Mead puts it like this:

Out of fire it comes
with bodily contours
satisfying to all senses:
a warm loaf; seedy and grainy,
soft and being-shaped,
its yeast smell, homely
and heavenly,
of fungus and damp autumn
woodlands... and the sun's warmth.

All life is here:
ordinary, good and beautiful:
growing things and cow-dung,
woody roots and seeds,
bodies of creatures
long dead in the soil;
all in this given
bread of our beginnings;
all in our breaking
and sharing
our one loaf.

(A total guilty pleasure - love it ALL - bread!)