The Best Part of Baking is in the Waiting

On the First of January this past year I had much to reflect on; I also had much to prepare.  My family has learned over the course of the last decade that they eat well when I am home.  I decided this year to cook a portion of the feast for New Years day.  Through the generations, my family has followed the old tradition of eating pork and cabbage on New Years day in hope of a prosperous year.  Many times in the last three months I have questioned if we ate enough or if that luck had run out.  It has been a difficult time with many cares, concerns, and decisions, and a lot of waiting.  This evening I was looking back through some old Facebook posts, laughing at the memories evoked by the pictures and comments during the month of January.  The winter of 2014, saw some record low temperatures, which led to multiple days of waiting.  Waiting for the heater to kick on, waiting for the snow to stop, waiting for the city wide State of Emergency to be lifted, simply a lot of waiting.  I was drawn today to my first post of the new year.  It also had to do with waiting.

To go with the annual New Year's meal I was baking bread.  I mixed the ingredients together the day before and I woke extremely early on the first of the year to make good work and prepare for more waiting.  As I sat in anticipation of my next move I began to reflect on the process.  So even though it centers on New Years Day, I believe it is something we can appreciate and need reminding of the whole year through.  I hope that it will bless you as it has again blessed me today. Here is a link to the bread recipe. http:allrecipes.com/recipe/no-knead-artisan-style-bread/. If you bake it make sure you break it and share it.  God bless!


There is something incredibly moving about starting the New Year by waking up at 6 AM (not a school day) to make bread for my family. As I work the dough again I turn on morning prayer through http://www.pray-as-you-go.org/home/This mornings reflection uses the following reading and focuses on the opening line where Paul says "But when the fullness of time had come......." What an interesting phrase. It suggests that everything had to be in place in its proper time and order for God's purpose to be fully accomplished. The reader posed the question "Is there something in your life or coming to fruition that you must wait for the "fullness of time?" My spirit is anxious as I begin this year, for I see God working His purpose while patiently preparing the "fullness of time." This was brought home to me in the making of this bread.

The process began by combining all the ingredients yesterday before noon, and covering up the infant dough and waiting. Waiting for quite some time (18 hours). During prayer I turned out the dough and worked into a ball, at which time I covered it again and wait (another 2 hours). When that time is accomplished, I will place the dough into the pot, set it in a hot oven, and wait (another hour). At which point I will set the "completed" bread on a cooling rack and wait (another few hours till the New Years Meal). Then finally, "when the fullness of time has come," I will say the blessing and break the bread with my family.

This new year (and every day) I pray that I will have peace in the waiting. That in the "fullness of time," the bread of my spirit may be ready to be broken for what God has prepared.

The rest of the appointed verse brings about this reasoning; "[But when the fulness of time had come] God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying "Abba! Father!" So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir , through God." (Galatians 4:4-7) Pray with me, as I pray with you, that we all learn to rejoice in the waiting.

FRATRES

Ecce quam bonum et quam jucundum habitare fratres in unum.

Many of my friends will know this as the motto of the University of the South - Sewanee.  Others may know it as the first line of Psalm 133.  The Latin translates to "Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to live in unity."

In 2009, I was beginning my final year of my undergrad program at Lee University.  After years of contemplation I finally decided to rush Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia.  For most of my college career I told myself that there was no point in joining a fraternity, that it was just paying for friends.  Boy was I ever wrong.  My last full semester has become the best of my time in college.  I have truly gained BROTHERS; an actual extended family.  These men who would have been just friends have become so much more.  I love all of them, and I have found that this extends just like a real family.

In the four years since graduating from college I have spent most of that time away from my blood family. My family has done something that every family does in that time, it has grown.  New babies have been born almost every one of those years, and although I have not spent much time with them or really know them, I love them so much and would do anything to protect them.  They are still my family.  The same applies to my brothers.  Some men had come a gone from our chapter before I arrived and multiple men have come and gone since I left.  They are all my brothers and I love them as I love all those new members of my family.  I have also discovered that this extends beyond the Pi Xi Chapter.  After moving to Indiana I have met Brothers in the some of the most interesting of places. One while in passing at a performance the the Blue Devils DCI, while another Brother noticed me wearing my letters in the parking lot at the grocery store.  One I met through a Facebook group for young people who love Liturgy and another who has become a Benedictine Brother at a monastery. Wherever or whoever they may be now, I love them all the same, because we are all Brothers.

I have found the same to be true in the church.  I have spent my entire life in the church but this feeling was on a purely local level until my time in college.  During my Sophomore year of college I began attending the local Episcopal Church.  This was a huge step for me, having been raised in the Pentecostal tradition, worshiping through liturgy was like a whole other world.  As I grew in my faith and became more active in the local, national and global church I noticed a beautiful connection.  The first thing I noticed was the connectivity of the word.  The Episcopal Church, as most liturgical denominations, follow a cycle of readings.  Over the course of three years, if you attend church every Sunday, you will have heard most of the Bible.  Plus, that cycle is a connecting tie between all the other parishes around the world.  My college roommate was living and teaching in South Dakota, while I was in Knoxville, Tennessee doing the same.  We could talk to each other on Sunday afternoon and discuss the days scriptures and sermons.  We had heard the same scriptures read even though we were separated by over 1,000 miles.  Though each parish may do things slightly different their is a beautiful universality about the liturgy.  I can feel just as comfortable worshiping in the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. as I do participating in the Eucharist at Saint Phillip's in Circleville, Ohio. Whenever I drive into a town and see a sign reading "The Episcopal Church Welcomes You," or see the Episcopal shield or flag on a building or car, I feel an immediate connection.  It is the same connection I feel whenever I see the letters ΦΜΑ. For the first time in my life I have begun to feel this family connection with the entire Christian community and the world in general.  I have always been empathetic but in recent days this has taken on a whole new meaning.

During the summer of 2011, I spent two weeks with the Brothers of Saint Gregory's Abby in Three Rivers, Michigan. You can check them out at www.saintgregorysthreerivers.org. During that time I fell in love with the Daily Office.  After spending four weeks with them over two summers in their Summer Vocationers program, I have chosen to make the Daily Office part of my everyday life.  Even though I do it alone, I know that there are people joining me in prayer at all hours of the day all around the globe. There are multiple moments in the Office for Morning Prayer that recall the whole human family and connect us all to each other.

I find this in the Prayer of St. Chrysostom:

Almighty God, you have given us grace at this time with one accord to make our common supplication to you; and you have promised through your well-beloved Son that when two or three are gathered together in his Name you will be in the midst of them: Fulfill now, O Lord, our desires and petitions as may be best for us; granting us in this world knowledge of your truth, and in the age to come life everlasting. Amen

We are all in this together, we are family.  HABITARE FRATRES IN UNUM; That brothers live together in unity.  This is not necessarily HABITARE FRATRES IN PACEM, not in peace, but in unity.  We are one family, with family problems.  We do not all get along at all times but the world would truly be a better place if we remember that we are all family and think of each other in that way.  It is much more difficult to feel hate toward family.  Love is difficult but that is what makes it love.  That is how we live together in unity.

Most Holy Lord, Jesus Christ; bless us with the knowledge and forbearance to live as one as you and the Father are one.  To show forth such love that we see all of humanity with the eyes of love, the eyes through which you see us.  Grant us a sincere awareness to know the needs of our brothers, that we may offer a hand, or give a meal, or even something as simple as a thought and a prayer.  help us to remember that we are all brothers in Christ and therefore equal in the eyes of the our Father.  AMEN

aperitif

aperitif: (fr) noun- a small alcoholic drink taken to stimulate the appetite and awaken the pallet before a meal.

   I thought it appropriate to begin this new blog as you would a special meal, by wetting the appetite so that all the flavors may be savored.  

   Why Breaking Bread, as a child I enjoyed many wonderful meals at my grandparents.  The one thing that was always on the table was some kind of bread.  The most common forms from my grandmother were either cornbread, biscuits or what we called a "daddy pone."  A Daddy Pone is drop biscuit dough uncut in a skillet to make a giant biscuit.  My grandfather had one rule when it came to table bread in our family: NO KNIFE.  His argument was that so many important meals in the Bible involve the breaking of bread.  To this day I have trouble cutting table bread.  There is something to be said about sharing a meal with friends and family and especially with strangers.  After a shared meal strangers become friends.  There is also something to be said for homemade break.  Something happens to the food when it has been worked by hand.

   Though I am not certain where this blog will go, I do know that I would like it to be a place for me to share recipes for table and for life.  I hope things will develop as with the story in Luke 24.  The travelers on the road to Emmaus have invited the stranger to stay with them for the evening.

   30 When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. 31 Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. 32 They asked each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?"

   Earlier this year I had the opportunity to join our Deacon to make the altar bread for church.  I kneaded the dough, I worked it into small rounds, cutting crosses into each side.  At communion the bread is then broken by hand and shared by hand.  A prayer from the Roman Rite sums it up nicely.

"Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation.  Through your goodness we have this bread to offer, which earth has given and human hands have made.  It will become for us the bread of life." 

In our lives, as in the Eucharist, God uses us and the work of our hands to feed a hungry world. 

   I pray that this blog will help all of us to open our pallets to the food of this earth and open our hearts to the food of the spirit.