The Beauty of Bread.
Bread comes in all shapes, sizes and styles. Sometimes there are healthy bits in it, sometimes it is just cotton wool to wrap up a sausage and some onion. But apart from the outward texture and flavour, there is something deeper, more profound and more lovely about bread.
There is a simple, uncomplicated humility about bread. It doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what it is. There’s no fanfare with it, and it is seldom the ‘main game’ on the table.
It’s happy just being a slice of toast, or the chunks that hold the ingredients of a sandwich together. Hec! It’s happy just to help you mop up a delicious soup or the spicy sauce from a beef rangoon. Because bread is content not to be the main attraction, probably doesn’t want top billing, that’s what makes it so luscious. The self-effacement is what makes bread so absolutely essential. I mean, imagine a sandwich without a minimum of two slices of bread. Or garlic bread without the bread.
Perhaps that’s one of the loveliest things about bread. It knows that it is important, nay even essential, but it never boasts about this.
As I reflect on the last 40 years, I find that I am trying to become more and more like bread. Offering what is important and essential, but in a quiet, background, supportive way. Mopping up the muck, holding together that which needs support, allowing the other to be the flavoursome and the colourful. Always nurturing and sustaining. Sometimes with healthy bits and often being a bit crummy and broken myself.
When the self is selflessly offered, everyone is given the strength to journey on. Everyone is nourished and is given the strength to get where they need to be. May we become, and always be, bread for each other.