The Spirituality of Bread

Donna Sinclair

Northstone 2007

CopperHouseCURRENT: Donna, this is the sixth in Northstone’s “Spirituality of…” series. The first five were The Spirituality of Mazes and Labyrinths, …of Wine, …of Gardening, …of Art, and …of Pets. When I think of this sixth title, The Spirituality of Bread, I think of bread as being, of all human creations, the most physically essential and the most spiritually celebrated. I wonder if, as you wrote this book, you found yourself moving between those two aspects of “bread-ness”?

DONNA: Yes, there is something about bread that overcomes that body/spirit split! I am especially conscious right now of the physically essential nature of bread. As I write, newscasts are full of analysis of the possible impacts of global warming on the prairies, North America’s breadbasket – just as climate change is already affecting grain crops around the world. If the abundance we have long taken for granted lessens, we may become far more aware of how deeply dependent we are on the land and on the rain. And that may help us understand why Jesus would choose something so precious and vulnerable and nourishing as bread as a symbol for his own self.

CopperHouseCURRENT: I expect that, when you were first asked to write this book, some ideas and expectations immediately came to your mind. And then there were some surprises and discoveries along the way. I’m particularly interested in what those were, assuming that there were some!

DONNA: I hoped I would be able to help people see the spiritual in the ordinary, the extraordinary beauty and wonder of the everyday world. I hoped I could evoke a sense of gratitude for those who grow and make our food, especially bread; and a sense of the privilege it is to participate in that remarkable work, whether it is in our own kitchens, or simply as a customer at a local bakery or restaurant. I hoped above all to call up an image of the kingdom of God. It is an image so readily available to us in Jesus’ words around bread, at the last supper, or on the Emmaus road. Most of all, it is an image found in the rich spiritual life around our own tables, whenever we gather to eat and talk and laugh together with the people we love.

As for surprises, the sheer volume of what there is to know about bread, from the development of grain crops thousands of years ago, to the politics of it, was overwhelming. And there were certainly surprises there. Did you know that the reason we refer to the rich as the “upper crust” is that before the use of bread tins, when bread was simply plunked on the oven floor to bake, the servants got the blackened bottom of the loaf and the masters got the golden “upper crust.” And did you know that without the great rolling golden prairies producing grain the way they did, World War II would likely have ended quite differently? I didn't know that.

CopperHouseCURRENT: I imagine you as you researched and wrote this book, working the dough in your own kitchen, following the aroma of baking to some amazing bakeries, and discovering some remarkably enticing bread recipes. What were some of the memorable sensual experiences you had as you created this book?

DONNA: In a way, this book has been in creation for almost 40 years – ever since I baked my first loaf of bread in about 1967, in a Northern Quebec mining town, where there was no bakery, and bread arrived stale (and expensive) on the train from the south. Over that time the smell and feel and taste and even the sight of fresh bread has been a rich part of my life. Not every week, or even every month. I would hate to give the impression that you need to bake your own bread all the time in order to be a fulfilled human being. But I luxuriated in kneading a huge bowl of dough at those times when my life allowed it. I guess the most recent memory is last December, when my daughter – who lives and works a continent away – came home for a whole month. She essentially took over the Christmas bread-baking, the large cinnamon-laden wreaths that we give away to friends. What joy to work with her in the kitchen, to see her so competent and taking such pleasure in what I love to do, what her great-grandmother loved to do. To feel the presence of my daughter and my grandmother in the kitchen, together.

CopperHouseCURRENT: You may have already answered this question, but let me put it out anyway and you can leave it if there’s nothing more to be said. It’s about your own spiritual journey in the writing of this book. What did bread open up for you? Was there something of the nature of God, the Holy, the sacred mystery of life, which was revealed to you as a result of giving yourself to this “bread pilgrimage”?

DONNA: I suppose that, over the last few years, reading Tom Harpur’s The Pagan Christ and other books that have enlarged our understanding of the Holy, I became more alert to bread-gods other than my own. The story of Demeter and Persephone, for instance – the Greek goddess of grain and her beloved daughter – has entered my consciousness in a new way. So I have an increased sense that “sacred mystery” includes a whole lineage of women, as well as the familiar and loved lineage of Jesus.

CopperHouseCURRENT: I’d love to be able to send the readers of the CURRENT off to do something with bread. Do you have a suggestion from all your new bread experience? A simple recipe, perhaps? A bread story? A spiritual practice associated with bread?

DONNA: I am just starting to ask people at various events to contemplate their first memories of bread – making it, buying it, and eating it. I find that very evocative. My brother became quite rhapsodic, for instance, about a small bakery he remembered from childhood in the small town where we grew up. I believe a good personal meditation might consist of calling up the first memory you have of bread, and saying a prayer of gratitude for this gift of life.

Read a simple recipe that appears in the book >>

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Everything Up Is Really Down

A Cosmic Dance with Brian Swimme

I was recently at a conference where Brian Swimme, a mathematical cosmologist, was the keynote presenter. Swimme teaches cosmology at the California Institute of Integral Studies. I will remember many things from his three presentations, but perhaps nothing as transformative as his illustration of how we are programmed in our perception of the universe around us. Swimme came onto the stage holding an inflated globe of planet Earth. He pointed to where we are in Canada and asked us to imagine that we were outside the conference building looking “up” to the night sky full of stars. He asked us to notice how we always talk about looking “up” at the stars. Then he pointed to a place on the other side of the planet in Australia. Are they also looking “up” at the stars even though they are on the other side of the globe?

Try this, he suggested: on a clear dark night, go outside and lie down on the ground facing the stars in the sky. Stop thinking of the stars as being “up” and try to think of them as “down.” Here you are being held onto the planet by powerful forces that will not let you fall “off” or drift away into space. Stay there, lying with your back to your planet looking “down” onto the billions of stars that form our galaxy, one galaxy amongst billions.

“…it might take some time, but the moment will come, in a rapid reorganization of phenomena, when all those stars will be experienced as down below, far, far below, and the amazing feeling accompanying this experience is a sense of surprise that you are not falling down there to join them. But of course you don’t fall. You hover in space, gazing down into the vault of stars, suspended there in your bond with Earth.”

(Quotation from "The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos" by Brian Swimme, Orbis Books, 1996)

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Allurement

Following the Cosmic Path from Swimme to Sanguin

For at least two decades I had been aware of the work of Brian Swimme, but, as I have had to do with many fascinating thinkers and writers, I held that awareness as “a name to be pursued one day when the time presents itself.”

Well, it turns out that 2007 is that time! The principal of allurement has led me not only to Brian Swimme’s presentations on cosmology, but also to a wonderful book by Bruce Sanguin who has taken the thinking of people like Swimme and Thomas Berry and written a book that translates new cosmological thinking into what Sanguin calls an ecological Christianity. That book is entitled Darwin, Divinity, and the Dance of the Cosmos.

Darwin, Divinity, and the Dance of the Cosmos

Bruce Sanguin

CopperHouse 2007

I want to give you a taste of the way Bruce Sanguin takes the mind-blowing reflections of Swimme and brings those cosmic thoughts right into the daily ordinariness of my living and teaching. In his final presentation at the conference I attended in Richmond, BC, Swimme laid out ten “cosmological powers,” as he calls them, that have been operating in our universe since the Big Bang beginning and that are now emerging into human consciousness. I’m just going to name and fill out, with Bruce’s help, one of those principals, namely, allurement.

Swimme talked about allurement as a fundamental principal of attraction that holds, for example, the sun and the earth in a life-giving relationship with one another. Earth life was able to emerge because of this attraction; there was, in the allurement between earth and sun, an ignition of creativity, in which we thrive billions of years after that cosmic relationship came into being. What does that principal of allurement look like when it is applied to the dynamics of human existence in 2007? That’s where Sanguin’s book becomes an essential resource for ordinary cosmic travellers like me. Here’s what he has to offer on allurement from his own experience.

When I was in junior high school, on Sunday afternoons I would find an excuse to leave the football or baseball game I was playing with my buddies, make my way home, and turn on the TV at 3:00. A program called The Firing Line aired at this time. The host was a man named William F. Buckley Junior, whom I later discovered to be a staunch Republican, and an ultraconservative philosopher. But I didn’t leave the football game because of his politics or philosophy. I loved to listen to him speak, the way he carefully formed his words, and then strung them together in such a spellbinding way to make meaning. If someone caught me watching the program and asked me what I was doing, I would have gone mute. I didn’t have a clue.

I understand now that William F. Buckley Junior was a source for me of what Brian Swimme calls “allurement.” In his presence, a mysterious power, beyond and beneath my conscious awareness, and transcending my capacity to name it at the time, called to me. It was as though this is what I was intended for. In a mysterious way, his presence reminded me of what my life was to be about. I would fall in love with words, written and spoken. It would matter to me how words were used to make meaning.

I suspect that most of us have had this kind of experience, but there is no way in our culture to talk about those experiences. In my case, it was my own little secret. By grace, I was able to listen to my own life, and be led to my vocation – a word translated from the Latin word for call.

Call and response is a central story, a metanarrative, in scripture.

In the Old Testament, Abraham and Sarah heard a call to leave urban culture, load up the U-haul, and head out into the wilderness. All that sustained them, as the passing years mocked their decision, was God’s promise that, if they took the first step, God would make them a great nation…

In the New Testament, the birth narratives depict an enchanted universe alluring a host of characters to embrace the mystery of Jesus’ birth. Stars, angels, and dreams join in a conspiracy of good news, calling the human participant to believe what God is doing through them…The whole universe is a source of allurement, drawing all creation toward the birth of the Christ.

Each of the gospels tells the story of the call of Jesus to the disciples. They drop everything to follow him. In his presence, everything their lives had previously been about pales in comparison. Jesus is a source of allurement for the first disciples, and has been for millions of people for the last 2000 years.

Allurement appears to be a fundamental dynamic of an evolutionary universe, calling all beings and all systems to realize their destiny. Most New Testament scholars think that the portrayal of the disciples suddenly dropping their lives like a bad habit and following Jesus is an exaggeration. I’m not convinced. Jesus was for them like the sun is to the earth. He lit them up, and awakened them to their purpose. My own experience is that when this happens, there’s not much that can stop a person. In response to Jesus’ alluring presence, those he heals and teaches turn their lives around and follow him.

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Sabbatical

Questions for Opening into Sabbath Time

There is a growing awareness in mainline denominations of the critical importance of sabbatical time for people in ministry. The sabbatical policies that might have been loosely adhered to in the past have, in many cases, become not only more prominent, but required. People in ministry leadership are getting used to the idea of building sabbatical time into the five-year rhythm of their ministry. And in many situations it’s not the minister who has to speak for him or herself when it comes to claiming this time of refreshment and renewal, it’s the members of the personnel committee, or its equivalent, who are insisting on following the healthy and life-affirming policies of the denomination.

There are many ways of preparing for sabbatical time. I recently met for a two-hour session with a minister who is just beginning his three-month sabbatical. He was making a three-day personal retreat to live the transition from the chronos of ministry time into the kairos of Sabbath time. In preparation for our meeting, he had talked on the phone about questions that he might carry into his three-day time out. These are the questions I brought to him in our two-hour, face-to-face conversation.

1. What is the quality of Sabbath time that I want to live into? What characteristics of Sabbath time would I like to avoid?
2. What practices will ensure I live a Sabbatical “centred in God”?
3. What themes of my ministry/leadership/vocation/life with God do I want to bring into the sabbatical for attention and, possibly, for transformation?
4. What place do I want silence and contemplation to have in this time?
5. Who will I ask to accompany me as spiritual friends during this sabbatical?
6. What are the “big” questions of my living that I hope to make time for on sabbatical?
7. What are the issues of “ego” that may keep me from hearing God’s direction?
8. What could sabotage my intentions for this Sabbath time?
9. What rhythms of life will inform this sabbatical? If there are unavoidable aspects of my life that could feel intrusive and distract me from living my sabbatical the way I want to, how can I reframe those as features of the sabbatical?
10. What does it mean for me to love God with all my heart, and with all my soul, and with all my mind, and with all my strength and my neighbour as myself?
11. Do I want any of the following to be features of my sabbatical time:
• Psalms
• Increased physical activity
• Compassion
• Attention to God’s passion for justice
• A discipline of reading
• Music
• The arts
• Home-making
• Journaling
• Humour
• Conversations that matter
• Skill development
• Biblical story
• Diet
• Intentional retreat
12. What resources and influences have come to my attention recently that I imagine enriching my Sabbatical time?

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Luke and the Spirit of Pentecost

Seeing Luke’s Bias in the Story of Pentecost

As people settle deeper and deeper into the awareness that the Bible is an inspired human document born out of relationship with God, and not a divinely-given document channelled from above, people in small study groups feel increasingly freed up to get inside the perspective and interests of the author of each book of scripture. It’s a liberating adventure! Who were these people who translated their experience of God into written documents? What personal, political, and cultural interests were they weaving into their writing and sending to us down the highway of history? Scholars have been attending to these questions for a long time, but lay people in faith communities have not had nearly enough opportunity to see scripture through the lens of the bias of the writer and of the community in which they were embedded.

I’ve just finished the text of another study guide, which will be published by Wood Lake Publishing at the end of August under the title Experiencing the Bible. This experiential study for small groups is based on Marcus Borg’s book Reading the Bible Again for the First Time . When I got to the session on the gospels, I shaped a good part of the experiential process around recognizing the interests of each of the four gospel writers and seeing how distinctive those were. I took Borg’s presentation on the unique perspective of each gospel writer and created first-person lists, as if they were spoken by each of the gospel writers. I’m choosing “Luke’s” list as an illustration here, because he’s the one who, in the second chapter of Acts, describes the coming of the Spirit to the disciples at the Feast of Pentecost. Listen now to Luke speaking:

1. I set out to present, as forcefully as I could, the activity of the Spirit of God in the birth and life of Jesus.
2. To emphasize the presence of God’s Spirit in the events of Jesus’ birth, I included in the narrative not only Jesus’ conception by the Spirit, but also the presence of the Spirit in Elizabeth and Zechariah, the parents of John the Baptizer, who was also born at that time.
3. In addition to specific references to the Spirit, I include symbols such as wind and fire, which are images for the Spirit.
4. My first book narrates Jesus’ mission to the Jewish people in the Jewish homeland, and my second describes the spread of early Christianity into the Roman Empire beyond the Jewish homeland. My first book begins and ends in Jerusalem; my second begins in Jerusalem and ends in Rome.
5. In telling the story of the coming of God’s Spirit to the followers of Jesus and the gift of universally intelligible language, I deliberately chose to present a reversal of the story of the Tower of Babel, in which humanity was fragmented into language groups. In my story, we have the beginning of the reunion of the human community.
6. In my second book, I went to great pains to present the same Spirit that conceived, empowered, and guided Jesus, as central in the life of the early community of those who followed Jesus. I wanted my readers to get the sense that the Spirit is the main character of my narrative.
7. My interest is to have people see Jesus as a Spirit-anointed social prophet whose activity is particularly directed to the poor and the oppressed.
8. In writing two books, I have the opportunity to encourage members of my community to see that the same Spirit that was active in Jesus and that is so present in our community will continue to be with us in Jesus’ activity in the world.

Now read the passage, below, from the writer Luke, who brought to his writing all these intentions and interests. Feel free to ask these kinds of questions:

• What did Luke want to convey to his readers through this story?
• What truth did he want to share through the power of the story?
• How does Luke’s passion and imaginative storytelling touch you as reader 2000 years later?
• How does Luke’s description of the reality of ‘Sacred Spirit’ connect with your experience of that?
• How does Luke’s experience of God illuminate and deepen your knowledge of God?

This version is from The Message, a contemporary rendering of the biblical text by Eugene Peterson. His lively and colloquial style is transforming how many people hear these ancient texts, which have so often seemed out of reach behind inaccessible language.

Acts 2:1-8, 11-12

When the Feast of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place.

Without warning there was a sound like a strong wind, gale force – no one could tell where it came from. It filled the whole building.

Then, like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks, and they started speaking in a number of different languages as the Spirit prompted them.

There were many Jews staying in Jerusalem just then, devout pilgrims from all over the world. When they heard the sound, they came on the run.

Then when they heard, one after another, their own mother tongues being spoken, they were thunderstruck. They couldn’t for the life of them figure out what was going on, and kept saying, “Aren’t these all Galileans? How come we’re hearing them talk in our various mother tongues?

“They’re speaking our languages, describing God’s mighty works!”

Their heads were spinning; they couldn’t make head or tail of any of it. They talked back and forth, confused: “What's going on here?”

Others joked, “They’re drunk on cheap wine.”

Scripture taken from The Message, by Eugene H. Peterson; used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group

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Stay CURRENT, Stay Connected

Contact editor Tim Scorer at copperhousecurrent@woodlakebooks.com

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Coming Next in CopperHouseCURRENT

The June Edition of CopperHouseCURRENT: MUSIC, MUSIC, MUSIC!

Shining the light of emerging Christianity on the latest song book from The United Church of Canada and Wood Lake Publishing.

Interview with Bruce Harding, Director of the Development Team for More Voices – gifted musician and publisher.

“Be Careful What You Sing, for You Will Become What You Sing” – the subversive power of music and song in Christian worship.

Conversation with Jim and Jean Strathdee, leading church musicians in North America for four decades.

Using Power Point effectively in contemporary worship: vision and practicalities.

Music – Amir Hussain on Richard Thompson.

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