I love to make my own bread. Like half of Melbourne, I got into it during our endless Covid lockdowns. Of course it wasn’t enough just to make normal bread with instant yeast: no, it had to be SOURDOUGH bread, with a sourdough starter I’d sourced form eBay. It was tremendously satisfying to watch the bread batter grow and come alive, like a pet you were tending to on a twice-daily basis. A little bit of flour and water, and then 12 hours later I would double it, and 12 hours later I would double it again, and each time it would get a bit fizzier and a bit bubblier until one morning I would wake up, peak under the cover of a tea-towel and find a bubbling, writhing dough mass that was ready to be made into loaf.
Later, I found out I was celiac. No matter. I still do the same process now, but with buckwheat kernels, soaking and blitzing and then waiting, waiting, waiting. Whatever you make your bread from, it is TIME that seems to be the important ingredient. No bread can be made in a rush; it is time that is needed for the magic to happen.
Jesus once said, “I am the bread of life.” What a thing to say. I think about junk food, about all the things we try to fill ourselves up on, only to find our craving returned almost as soon as we have stuffed the stuff into our mouths. Affirmations, achievements, various forms of ‘success’, money, material goods…these are things we chow down on, expecting them to fill our bellies, expecting them to help us live to be healthy and strong…but of course they never do. It’s all junk food, and it leaves us bloated with pimples on our faces. The good stuff, the real ‘bread of life’ is everything that Jesus lived for: love, light, goodness, kindness, compassion, truth…and he died for those things, too. We gotta quit the junk food, and be clean eaters, living on the nourishing bread that is Jesus.
There is an invitation, too, to enter into the magic of bread: the magic that turns cereal and water and salt into something delicious and nourishing for our bodies. The magic that requires careful attention and TIME to grow, as we surrender to the illusion that we can possibly make bread with willpower or rule-following or charisma alone. No: bread – both the stuff we literally eat and the stuff that nourishes our souls – is a mysterious process, and we must give ourselves to it, letting it bubble and ferment, until something miraculous forms. To partake in the ‘bread of life’ is an act of surrender, as we allow our hearts and lives to be transformed into something new and delicious.
Words by Rev Andreana
Image by Flo Maderebner
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