Passion. Love

I'm baking bread.

I love baking bread.  Not from the betty crocker box, but starting with the flour.  I make it from scratch.  Nothing can replace the fine grainy feel between  my creases or the stickiness that plasters itself inside my fingers.   The warm wafts of rising yeast beneath my hands energizes my soul. The smell reminds of the one time that I had walked through a beer brewery.  The smell of fermented yeast lingered strongly in my nasal cavity. It's strength broke me.  I passed the walk without breath and was relieved when my lungs coughed up the last of the brewery. I didn't know that years later my kitchen would have the same smell.   It's not strong, not like the brewery smelled.  But it's definitely there; that splendid delicious smell. 

Mother made bread making sound long and tedious. Above all it was painful.   I believed her until a day of boredom met my own curiosity. It became just the opposite.  The mixing and kneading became signs of nurtured love. I watched with learned patience as cornflakes of dough molded together to form the perfect consistency. Gently and firmly my wrist would raise and fall as I pushed  the heel of my hand into the growing elasticity. It became pure splendidness as the stickiness fell away to smoothness. 

Dough is unlike play dough.   As a young girl play dough was the activity I only got to play outside of my home.  I could spend hours molding it's smoothness into little figurines and shapes of my imagination. I was careful. Any sudden jerk would tear the play dough pieces.   Dough wasn't like that. It was one mass, completely one, inside and out.  Dough is one like my husband and I are one and like the trinity is one.   I marvel at its material and think, "There is nothing else like this." The recipe called for ten minutes of kneading but I made it into fifteen minutes.   No matter.   Now we wait.   Half hour after half hour I take turns letting the bread rise and then knead then rise and knead. I've discovered this to be a delicate process.  There can not be too much of one step or else the bread won't bake right. 

I wonder if God had made us the same way.  Really, he makes us that way.   We are born, we grow, we learn, we grow and so on and so on.    The bread will be done in just a few minutes.  For us it takes a lifetime.  A lifetime?   Is a lifetime possibly enough?   Could we ever stop learning and growing?   I imagine that we never do.  I imagine that the process of discovering is an unending wonder for us.   Is it possible for our great creator to do the same?   He is the beginning of all things; does he wonder? I can't find answer to that question.  Maybe he finds it hard to wonder at things like stars and changing seasons, just because he orchestrates every movement.   Does he wonder at us;  The one being on earth that holds free will from day to day? I am blessed and pleased at the actions and thoughts of the people in my life.  Perhaps God is the same.   It's nice to think that we make him smile and even laugh.