I was asked to write a reflection piece during my volunteer year of service in Richmond. I was rediscovering what faith meant in the context of my new life phase. I worked around people who displayed the kingdom of God in the most profound, yet unobvious of ways. I took on baking sourdough during this period of my life. Here is my reflection from 2022 –
February 2022.
There is so much to talk about when it comes to spiritual growth and this pillar in particular. For those reading this – I pray that something speaks through to you in these words, that the yeast of the Spirit is awakened within you.
We came across the parable in Luke and Matthew about Jesus describing the Kingdom of God as yeast that is mixed with flour to produce a leaven.
I feel as though God constantly plants all sorts of wild desires in my heart. I started baking sourdough after Thanksgiving after a conversation with Caroline a couple of
months earlier. As I got into it, I began to see aspects of the growing spiritually pillar and all the beautiful complexities of our Faith which we covered over the past
several months come to fruition in this one simple process. Making bread in this manner, to me, is a rich metaphor for our spirituality.
For those that don’t know, sourdough is bread made solely from wild yeasts that exists in flour, living within a starter culture on the kitchen counter.
Making bread from a starter seems simple enough. Al it is is water, flour and salt. That is it. The natural yeasts that are in the flour and air when combined with water and some time begin to consume the flour and multiply. In a similarly beautiful way, God is within each and every one of us and the yeast of God multiplies within when the right conditions arise.
When you produce your starter, you then need to constantly feed it to keep it alive and viable for raising bread. These routine feedings involve removing a portion of that starter and replacing it with new flour and new water.
Occasionally in my life, I have found that I had to remove much of the old to make room for the new. New perspectives, new compassion, new love. New growth is new life. We’re constantly feeding this yeast within us. We have to in order to maintain Heaven here on earth. But when we finally have the yeast of the spirit in abundance within us or in our communities, it is hard to hide it and hard to not share it.
The kingdom of God is like yeast which is placed into something, that thing being flour.
When it’s finally time to make bread, we take some of that starter and mix it with all the bulk ingredients. I think for me, this stage resembles the messiness of life. There are moments when the dough is too tacky to knead and it just doesn’t seem to hold its shape. But in fact, the more physical work you put in, that is, the more kneading you do, the stronger the dough gets. It may be tempting to add more flour, but adding flour only makes the bread denser and harder. To me, those are the moments where I want to indulge in the instant gratifications of life. Maybe the kneading that is happening in our lives is necessary for strengthening us.
Following this step, there’s a lot of waiting happening. The yeast takes time to raise our dough. It takes time but we ultimately know the outcome and anticipate it. Hours go by before seeing any noticeable growth in size. My spirituality has gone through phases where nothing seems to be happening…
Before we bake, the dough is shaped and a design is cut on the top. Scars come with living. They hurt in the moment but God has a way of making beautiful what [we perceive] is ugly. Those slashes in the bread give this loaf its utter uniqueness. But this is after we bake it at 500F.
To get to that beautiful loaf, it takes so much work and waiting and heat. Something this simple takes at least a week before any dough is ever formed.
There are thousands of recipes for making sourdough, yet at the heart of them all lie the same basic constituents – flour, water, salt. Every sourdough starter is different and the manner in which we develop it, maintain it, the environment in which it lives in are all different. It is often hard to believe that there is also an infinite number of ways to spend a life and to form a spirituality. The recipes we choose to follow are unique to each one of us. To recognize that and to believe that there is truth in other recipes, is truly liberating and opens us up to a a different dimension of loving compassion. The year so far has allowed me to recognize that God exists in each and every person, in all moments. The kingdom of God is at hand, in our volunteer house, in our neighborhood, in our students, our patients, our friends, our family and every single person.
I pray that we may have the compassion to understand that every person possesses this God seed and the courage to affirm it for others.