Being Bread for One Another

Transformation

“…Bowls and cups, pots and pans,

Spoons—my hand, your hand.

We shall come to know ourselves

As vessels that can hold this moment…”

Gunilla Norris (from “Hunger,” Becoming Bread: Meditations on Loving and Transformation; p.24)

          Normally, today would be a day for cooking, for baking and biscuit making. Tomorrow is Easter Sunday and would be a feast day. This year, not so much, although some of us have families sheltering together at home and will enjoy a shared meal.

Gunilla Norris’s little book of poems, Becoming Bread, was published in 1993, long before we knew of anything of the coronavirus that would shut down the whole world and lay tens of thousands of us in the grave. We may not be cooking up a huge meal today, but this is a moment in which to better understand how we may become bread for one another in a very real way.

          Sometimes, the lack of contact, the aloneness of this moment creates in us great love for things we took for granted just a few weeks ago. It causes us to realize how very much we need each other—friends, family, even strangers—and how much we enjoy our freedom of movement. We may find ourselves gazing out of windows, seeing people walking on the street whom we do not know, but somehow love and appreciate just because they’re there. The sounds of children, homebound because of school closure, laughing and playing in their back yards is music to our ears.

          Bread is made from a few simple ingredients—flour, water, salt and yeast, with a little bit of honey or sugar. And we are finding that the essential things we need in our lives are few and simple too. We need friends and family, our health, love, and meaning. These are not commodities. They are the equivalent of the tablespoon full of honey in the bread that make it rise and give it flavor.

          Name the people in your life who are bread for you. To whom do you provide sustenance? Does the love that flows from you to them give your life meaning? Right now, we have opportunity to think deeply about that meaning, and about ourselves in the world. Gunilla Norris says it this way in her poem “Seeing:”

“…Here I may find what I was afraid to see.

Here you may see what you didn’t know

you had. The risk of knowing

is here in the cupboard…

How little we have dared to use ourselves.

How much has been kept from each other…” (p. 25)

          We now have time to see ourselves clearly, and to decide how we want to navigate life going forward. Once we can step out of our houses, take off our masks, and embrace one another again, will we be transformed?

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane