Bread (in the time of dough)

 
                          When there is very little else left to believe in, one can still believe
                           in an honest loaf of fragrant home-baked bread.  --Anna Thomas                                                                                                                                                                                    
Bread is my favorite food.  Always has been.  Always will be.

There is no aroma more pleasing than the smell of baking bread.  Perhaps the scent is programmed into our DNA for survival. 

I grew up watching my grandmother mix and knead raisin bread in a large wooden bowl on the kitchen counter. It was a treat so special, so delicious, so connected to home and family that even the memory is a magical food for me, a bread of life.  I am from an immigrant people who ate their food wrapped in flat bread.  Long before Middle-eastern food became popular in American restaurants, my uncles would return from the Syrian bakery in the city with a flatbread we all loved.  We tore off pieces to scoop up rice and lentils, bits of lamb, or tabbouleh, the bread absorbing all of the delicious, savory juices from our plates on a table in a house where food was served in proportion to the love.

I have lived most of my life in the American Midwest, and I grew up traveling extensively throughout America’s wider bread basket awed by its amber waves of grain.  A trail of bread crumbs always brought me home, and it was sandwiches that made sustenance possible while on the move.  Back at home, we were sustained by the Midwesterner’s favorite mid-day meal:  a grilled cheese sandwich alongside a bowl of hearty, cream soup. Even stale, bread was full of possibilities—a delicious bread pudding, stuffing for poultry, or food to feed the ducks down at the pond or crumbs to sprinkle about the yard for the birds. 

Thanks to Wonder Bread, all unique and fabulous things are now compared to the wonder of sliced bread.  As a child I played with that bread and marveled at how, with its soft texture, it easily could be pinched or squeezed back into little balls of dough.   I memorized the jingle:  “Wonder Bread builds strong bodies 12 ways” with its combination of added vitamins and minerals.   On sick days throughout my early childhood there was no better medicine than sweet cinnamon toast made from Wonder Bread and delivered to me on the couch.

Later, in my adult years, and to my great delight, Panera entered the scene.  A fast food restaurant devoted to BREAD—a preview of heaven as far as I was concerned.  I love it all: the pitas and flatbreads, the baguettes, the bagels, and the hearty, chewy artisan breads made by skilled bakers like my grandmother. Whether or not I need it, I am drawn to the bread aisle of my giant grocery store.  A fragrant bouquet emanates from there despite all of the plastic packaging.  The vast array of breads tantalizes my senses, and I wander the bread aisle drinking in the scent like a sommelier sniffing the cork from a bottle of fine wine.

In poetry and literature, bread is the embodiment of ideas about abundance and love.  In church, bread symbolizes God’s presence and provision. Receiving the blessed bread is a sacrament.  We share bread in communion, coming together in faith, trust, compassion, and solidarity with Christ.

On this cold inauguration day when it seems possible that hell has frozen over, I am drawn to bread, the great symbol of comfort, nourishment, and community.  Today, the inaugural stage will be occupied by men of great wealth and power who seem to care greatly about their dough while the rest of the masses are starving for bread.   And so it is we the people who must cast our bread upon the waters today and join with the Living Bread letting divine words take hold of our hearts.    

As we go forward, come what may, let us break bread together and be nourished by the Bread of Life even as we pray:  Give us this day our daily bread…

…and deliver us from evil.

Amen.

      Bread for myself is a material question…Bread for my neighbor is a spiritual one. –Nikolai Berdyaev