Kneading the Dough

 

Being Bread for One Another

“For a long time, I have wanted to write a book about loving. I have wanted to do this as a continuing question—an inquiry really, because good questions sometimes carry answers on their backs.”

Gunilla Norris (Becoming Bread, preface p. xi; Bell Tower, NY, 1993)

          From time to time, I pull this little book off the shelf. Everything about it speaks to me—the topic, the cover, the process of bread making, and the poetry. The subtitle is: Meditations on Loving and Transformation. Gunilla Norris lives in New England and was married for twenty-eight years before her marriage ended. This little 78-page book, illustrated as simply and beautifully as it is written, by John Giuliani, a Benedictine monk, is a commentary on how we love, and how we recover when love is lost. Norris is a psychotherapist who also teaches meditation and writes books.

          I especially like the image conjured by “good questions sometimes carry answers on their backs.” That is a notion worthy of contemplation, don’t you think? As a seeker of answers, myself, I do like a well-turned question. And bread-making as a metaphor for life is universal. As she puts the dough into the oven, for instance, she writes, “When we are in the fire and there is no escape possible, we tremble and shrink back. The passage through and into the heat of life is what we want…and what we dread.” (p.59) Transformation is a fearful and necessary thing.

I believe we are going through a bit of that right now as we try to come out of the pandemic. We’ve attempted to resume life as usual, only to find that it is utterly different—transformed by fire. It is helpful to remember that baking the dough is what transforms it into nourishing bread. Passing through the fire is essential, but we are different on the other side. Now begins the adventure of finding out just how different we are.

          Don’t we all question why life must be both joyful and painful? As Goethe said, “Who never ate his bread with tears, who never sat weeping on his bed during care-ridden nights…” One of the things I've noticed about growing older is that I do less of that. I wonder whether others of my generation do less, too. Perhaps we have passed through the fire many times and know that life on the other side is beautiful and delicious, whether painful or not.

          I’ll leave you with the words of Simone Weil: “When an apprentice gets hurt, or complains of being tired, the workmen and peasants have this fine expression: ‘It is the trade entering his body.’ Each time that we have some pain to go through, we can say to ourselves quite truly that it is the universe, the order and beauty of the world, and the obedience of creation of God that are entering our body.” (Becoming Bread, p.59)

May you become bread today.

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane