Let my prayer (and bread) rise...

I love bread - all types of bread - crackers, yeasted, flat, sour dough, white, wheat and everything in-between.  Donna Sinclair wrote:

Baking bread makes me calm, whether it is my English grandmother's scones or my Scottish grandmother's raised white loaves.  Because bread is the opposite of fast food. You cannot make bread n ten minutes, and the slow work of kneading and shaping quiets our noisy and over-scheduled lives. Indeed, bread demands peace: you cannot grow grain in a battlefield. Bread also demands justice: cheap bread that results from the loss of the family farm is just too bitter to eat.  In fact, bread is the very picture of a just society.

For the next few weeks I'm going to be thinking a lot about bread - and maybe I'll even bake some.  We had great bread at today's Eucharist.  And it will play a key role in the up-coming 30th anniversary of my ordination vows on September 29-30th (the actual day was June 6, 1982 but what's three months among friends).  Then on October 7th our celebration of World Communion Day will include four different communion stations with different breads from around the world. 

If it is true that I often summarize the heart and soul of my spirituality in music - we'll be using a tune from each of the four congregations I've served to consider God's still speaking insights for me (and those songs are:  Springsteen's "Reason to Believe" for Saginaw, MI - Paul Simon's "You Can Call Me, Al" for Cleveland, OH - "One of Us" by Joan Osborne for Tucson, AZ - and the Herbie Hancock arrangement of Peter Gabriel's "Don't Give Up" for Pittsfield, MA) - it is equally true that I mostly think of the day-to-day realities of a faith community as a feast.  And feasting requires good bread, wine, resources to share, a place of welcome at the table of grace for everybody, beauty, time, music and safe space.

Donna Sinclair's beautiful book, A Spirituality of Bread, and Joy Mead's, One Loaf, have become sweet companions on the journey that always take me deeper. "The peaceable kingdom, which cannot come unless it is first imagined, is a commonwealth (the faithful) must hold in their hearts until they can make it whole - until grandchildren on new unsteady legs come to a laden table and thanks are said that all the world has bread."  So... que la fête commence!