Minister's Page ~ Connecting ..

(The following is excerpted from the monthly Newsletter)

I am back.  My time away was lovely.  And it is lovely to be back. 

Not surprisingly, I learned a few things.  I will no doubt be reflecting on some of those lessons in sermons and columns and conversations down the road. 

I read a stack of novels.  It was glorious.   How I love a story. 
I cooked a lot, having recently subscribed to Gourmet magazine.   A recent issue was on Italian regional cooking. 
I made focacia.  Can you imagine?  Home-baked focacia.  (Secret ingredient:  mashed potato in the dough.) 

I hadn't baked bread in a long time.  There are few things more satisfying than baking bread, methinks.   Local writer, Gunilla Norris, wrote an entire book of meditations on baking bread.   Why don't I bake bread more often?  There are no good reasons.  Guess what?  I'm going to start baking bread more often.

In one of my favorite poems, Robert Frost's Two Tramps in Mudtime, the poet writes about the task of chopping wood, about taking out a lifetime of frustrations, disappoints in the act of chopping.  Such is the way of working the dough, though perhaps there's a bit more love thrown in.  Each of these, the chopping and the kneading, both creates and needs warmth in order to generate heat and to rise.  I was glad to be reminded of this simple truth.

Simple truths.  Boy, these days are feeling increasingly alarming, aren't they?  Perhaps what may carry us through, nourish our power to resist apathy or overwhelm, are the simple truths:  that there is bread to be baked; children to raise; elders to offer wisdom; walks to be had; flowers to tend; peace to be shared – a faith community and tradition to remind us of these truths and so much more. 

I'm glad to be back among you.  

Love,  Carolyn

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