OUR DAILY BREAD

Here is something Iwrote for the monthly magazine that goes to all the 4100 homes in Tetbury. I thought you might enjoy? it.

This is the season when we customarily celebrate our harvest thanksgiving. This year perhaps important than ever I am so conscious of the great gifts we receive from all those who work hard to provide us with our food. From my youth I remember that in our village church in rural north Devon we always had some sheaves of corn and a large loaf of bread fashioned in the shape of a sheaf of corn. Bread is such a basic part of food the world over and this year I am especially concerned for those many countries and regions in the world where the food crops have either been destroyed or at least diminished by either droughts or floods or, as in the case of Niger, both. So many people throughout the world simply do not have the necessary food to sustain life and the malnutrition is simply horrendous. It is these people that have come to my mind each time I say those words in the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread.” For Christians in those counties that are suffering food shortages this must be particularly poignant with a heartfelt plea that their lives will have enough to sustain them and their children. This has been the case of course right from those earliest biblical days when the prayer was written in the Gospels. But for those early Christians the mention of “Bread” also carried the meaning of the bread that they would receive in Holy Communion at the Eucharist. This gives a fuller meaning of course to the phrase “We become what we eat.” For them and for us “Bread” not only means their food but all that sustains our life. We realise that our all the elements of our lives, including the spiritual dimension, are nourished not only by the food we eat but in so many other ways as well.
An acute awareness of this intimate connection between the physical and the spiritual surely engenders a sense of compassion for those who are suffering any way. Just as receiving the Bread in Holy Communion demonstrates our oneness in Christ so we are at one with those who suffer. We are indeed also one with them and we too suffer with those who are suffering from the lack of the bread in both the physical and the spiritual sense. As we pray the Lord’s prayer we can particularly hold them in our hearts as at this is a time we can give thanks for all of that is truly nourishing enabling us to live the fullness of life. A few years ago I came across an interesting poem called “Bread” by the Irish poet Brendan Keneally which will perhaps point us in the right direction.
Bread
Someone else cut off my head
In a golden field.
Now I am re-created
By her fingers. This
Moulding is more delicate
Than a first kiss,
More deliberate than her own
Rising up
And lying down.
Even at my weakest, I am
Finer than anything
In this legendary garden.
Yet I am nothing till
She runs her fingers through me
And shapes me with her skill.
New & Selected Poems 1960-2004, Bloodaxe Books 2004