Making Bread
She was learning something new. Wide-eyed, eager to try the unfamiliar and intimidating, not knowing she would receive such a fast return for her courage.
She mixed and rolled, twisted and waited. Something sound was taking shape from such modest components as warm water, flour and yeast.
Is it not in the process, after all where splendor exists, each careful part teaching us something about the whole? Isn’t it the learning along the way that gives the outcome its glory?
Monotonous effort may not offer the exact elevated feeling of reward, but isn’t it essential to anything that we do in this life? Can’t we decide to make the work just as sacred as the result?
Without the resolve to stick with it, even when the work proves dull or difficult, we forfeit the joy of seeing it through from small beginning to mighty end.
My Mother is nearly seventy. She’s a beautiful soul, kind and fiery, tough as nails and soft as cotton. She’s learning to make homemade bread, sweet and dense, a long golden oval of goodness.
We laughed the other day at the kitchen store as a twenty- something checkout clerk commented on Mom’s purchases. In her cart was a rolling pin and a dough cutter.
The clerk said, “I just moved into my own apartment and I am finding myself overwhelmed at the idea of stocking my own kitchen.” She continued, “I realize now all the things I took for granted, like my mother’s extensive collection of kitchen tools.”
It was funny because my Mom is still stocking her own kitchen.
I like that idea.
It’s proof that she’s still willing to learn, try new things, trust the process, and use new tools at seventy years old.
Not one of us should feel overwhelmed by where we are if we are open to growing.
So, as we learn to make bread together, I see that there is glory in the dough, because it is the foundation of the bread.
Bread that sustains and warms and is broken intimately between two people.