The US Senate has now voted 51-49 to move forward with a vote on Brett Kavanaugh's appointment to our Supreme Court. After watching the vote and taking it in, I chose to start cleaning the house in anticipation of our family's arrival later tonight from Brooklyn. Cleaning, dusting and baking more bread makes sense to me right now. Not only are we out of bread, but I need to learn from my mistakes on the last batch. That is one of the gifts of bread baking: it affords a hearty taste of self-reliance, creativity and generosity in an era saturated with cynicism and despair. My two loaves will not the revolution make. Nor will they change much in this broken culture. But kneading and waiting are essential ingredients for my staying grounded for the long haul. And I know how much I need to nourish hope in myself.This morning, in my small prayer book of gratitude, there is a quote from Billie Jean King: "For me losing isn't failure. It's research." That is certainly true for my current baking endeavors - my first shot at each new recipe tanked - telling me that I needed to go back and do it over until a satisfying loaf arrived. After a few tries, the whole wheat recipe from the Tassajara Bread Book worked. Today I am involved in the reprise of a simple white loaf from The Spirituality of Bread book. Failure, research and practice is essential for making beautiful music. And, in the Christianity of the Eastern Church, failure is built into human nature. It is a call to repentance - an invitation to learn from our mistakes by changing our direction - and grow closer to God. Richard Rohr regularly writes about what the mystics of Orthodoxy know as divinization. Two observations are illustrative:
By God’s divine power, God has given us all the things we need for life and for true devotion that allow us to know God, who has called us by God’s own glory and goodness. In this gift, God has given us a guarantee of something very great and wonderful. Through this gift, you are sharers in the divine nature itself. —2 Peter 1:3-4
Spirituality is primarily about human transformation in this life, not just salvation in a future realm. While Western Christianity lost much of this emphasis, and became rather practical and often superficial, the Eastern church taught theosis or divinization as the very real process of growing in union and likeness with God in this world. [1] This is one of the many losses Christianity experienced in the Great Schism of 1054, when the popes of East and West mutually excommunicated one another. The later Protestant Reformation, while needed, did not reclaim this wisdom and further split the church, each side losing something of value..
From September 12, 2018The Orthodox teaching of divinization, or theosis, according to Pope John Paul II, is perhaps the greatest gift of the Eastern Church to the West, but one that has largely been ignored or even denied. [1] The Eastern fathers of the Church believed that we could experience real and transformative union with God. This is in fact the supreme goal of human life and the very meaning of salvation—not only later, but now, too. Theosis refers to the shared deification or divinization of creation, particularly with the human soul where it can happen consciously and lovingly.St. Gregory of Nazianzus (330–390) emphasized that deification does not mean we become God, but that we do objectively participate in God’s nature. We are created to share in the life-flow of Trinity. Salvation isn’t about replacing our human nature with a fully divine nature but growing within our very earthiness and embodiedness to live more and more in the ways of love and grace, so that it comes “naturally” to us and is our deepest nature. This does not mean we are humanly or perfectly whole or psychologically unwounded, but it has to do with an objective identity in God that we can always call upon and return to without fail. A doctrine of divinization is the basis for hope and growth. Divinized people live in a grateful state of awareness, recognizing their undeserved union with God, but that does not always mean their stage of human development is without very real limits and faults. This is a distinction that the West, with its dualistic mind, seemed unable to make.
Most days I trust this in my heart. Some days I need help. Every day I need to find ways to practice this so that my trust deepens. I am angry, but not surprised, by the Senate's vote. And, sadly, I suspect that Kavanaugh will be voted in tomorrow morning. There will be long-term consequences to this act of naked political power devoid of compassion. We will become more frightened, angry and cruel to one another. Having just finished one of James Carroll's novels about the clash between Germans, Russians and Americans who lived through WWII as the Iron Wall was erected, I am keenly aware of just how depraved human politics can be. I fear this will be true for many of us in the USA in the years to come. And...
The late Henri Nouwen taught American Protestants something vital: Eucharistic spirituality. This gift helped many of us reclaim sacramental wisdom as we lived into the actions of the Eucharist. Nouwen was clear: like the bread of the feast first we are taken or called, then we are blessed so that we may be broken and shared for the healing of the earth. Taken, blessed, broken and shared is another gift from the bread - and more than any other time in my memory, I sense it is this gift that must drive my living.
So, for the time being, I need to get back to my bread.
POSTSCRIPT...
Ok, I have to own it when I blow it: my next batch of simple white bread was a bomb! It didn't rise. At all. I could blame it on the yeast, but that would be a lie. I wasn't paying enough attention to the recipe thinking, "I know how to bake bread. I've been doing it for 50 years."
Truth is, I used to know how to bake bread, but then I quit. Forgot. Got out of practice. So now I NEED the recipes - I NEED to follow the right order - because adding salt before mixing the yeast with the honey kills the yeast. There are consequences for getting this wrong. Waste of resources, waste of time, waste of money. In the beginning, you see, it is crucial to go slow. Yesterday I posted a prayer/song from the "Brother Sun, Sister Moon" film that needs to become my new mantra. It encapsulates the methodology of St. Francis as he started to rebuild the church in San Damiano. It applies to bread, political revolutions, life in general and authenticity.
POSTSCRIPT...
Ok, I have to own it when I blow it: my next batch of simple white bread was a bomb! It didn't rise. At all. I could blame it on the yeast, but that would be a lie. I wasn't paying enough attention to the recipe thinking, "I know how to bake bread. I've been doing it for 50 years."
Truth is, I used to know how to bake bread, but then I quit. Forgot. Got out of practice. So now I NEED the recipes - I NEED to follow the right order - because adding salt before mixing the yeast with the honey kills the yeast. There are consequences for getting this wrong. Waste of resources, waste of time, waste of money. In the beginning, you see, it is crucial to go slow. Yesterday I posted a prayer/song from the "Brother Sun, Sister Moon" film that needs to become my new mantra. It encapsulates the methodology of St. Francis as he started to rebuild the church in San Damiano. It applies to bread, political revolutions, life in general and authenticity.
If you want your dream to be, take your time, go slowly
Do few things, but do them well: Heartfelt work grows purely;
Day by day, stone by stone, build your secret slowly
Day by day, you'll grow too,
You'll know heaven's glory
When it became clear that these loaves were a bust, my mind went to the early work of Gandhi in India. After returning from South Africa, and learning both the possibilities and limitations of fighting for justice from within the system of apartheid, he took time off to think, walk, rest and talk with people all over the nation. Then, in a totally counter-cultural move, he started weaving on a small hand spindle. Weaving his own cloth rather than buying imported British goods that fed the Empire. Everywhere he went, he sat down, talked to people in simple terms and kept on weaving. He taught them to weave, too.
My bread baking - and that of countless others all across the US right now - is connected to Gandhi's commitment to nonviolent resistance and radical self-reliance. If I can learn to get this loaf right, owning my mistakes and learning from them so that I can share my bread with loved ones and others; maybe, just maybe, I can acquire the patience and grace to engage the horrific politics of this moment with equanimity, clarity and soul.
I hate everything about the capitulation of senators who are convinced by the political equation of raw power or else their acquiescence to what seems to be the lesser evil. Susan Collins' speech today was a casebook exercise in ethical bait and switch: she pleaded for the sanctity of "presumed innocence," using lofty and noble words to hide her callous calculations of what she needs to do to stay in office and maintain the semblance of integrity within her party. At some level, she most likely believes her own rhetoric, too. Look, as a Niebuhrian, I understand that the exercise of power is sometimes a vulgar compromise between naked self-interest and the common good. Been there, done that as an elected official in Cleveland as well as a community organizer in three metro areas.
But this is a kairos moment - a time when the forces of compassion and greed are in mortal combat - and self-serving appeals to a presumption of innocence don't cut it. This is a time for creative and humble acts of sacrifice not self-interest. Sadly, many of us have lost touch with our creative selves. We have become accustomed to an instant economy in the land of high speed consumerism. Like Neil Postman predicted, we have entertained ourselves to the point of stupor and don't really know how to regain our balance.
That's why I am making a new batch of bread right now. I need to relearn how to take this life slowly. To follow directions carefully. To listen and watch and share and love the simple things that remain. I've remade my bread and am waiting for it to rise. Then, I'll cook the lump that didn't rise along with the good loaves to learn from my mistake. Maybe I can make croûtons. We'll see. And then, maybe too, when the time is right beyond the baking, I'll know how to do a few other things that strengthen life well and with patience.
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