Shuffle Bread

Guiding Prayer for Today

As our week is to be focused on reciting the Lord's Prayer three times each day, take a moment before reading on to quiet your heart, quiet your mind, your thoughts, you body.  As the stillness and quiet begins to take over your senses, slowly begin to recite this paraphrase of the prayer Christ taught us to pray...

Our Father, who is in heaven, your name is holy.

May your kingdom come here on earth 

as it already has come in heaven.

Give us today all we need.

And help us to forgive others as you forgave us.

Help us not to fall to temptation, 

but deliver us into righteousness.

For everything on earth, under the earth, 

and above the earth are yours...

all glory, all honor, all power forever and ever. 

Amen.

Shuffle Bread

I was a missionary in Romania for almost three months of the summer of 1999. I lived in a tiny village called Chieueste that felt like stepping back in time to the 1930's. There were possibly three cars in the whole town, the farmers still harvested their wheat with a scythe and most of the homes did not have running water or indoor toilets (including mine). To say that I didn't quite know what to do with myself would have been an understatement.

But there was one thing that they beat the pants off America in...bread.  Their daily bread was fresh and meant to literally be eaten daily.  It was baked locally by several local women and sold at the local stores.  It was thick,crusty,delicious and cheap because it didn't keep more than a day or two. It was our daily bread.

When there was a "federal" holiday or a Catholic holiday and the people were off of work and school, it was never a day to rest. The people of Chieueste would come together for a community project.  Because construction resources were scarce and a bit dated, the men all came together to combine their tools and manpower to help a neighbor.  

I was privileged to get to participate in one of these community work days.  A neighbor was adding a room onto his currently one room home and I thought I might get to hammer a few nails.  That was not the case. I quickly learned that the men worked on the house and the women worked on the meal.  Someone had to feed the twenty some men who were working on the project.

I helped the women prepare soup, stuffed dill cabbage leaves and homemade bread. As the men worked on the homes and the women on the meal, I realized that it was about so much more than the meal or the project.  It was about reconnecting; introductions of new family members by marriage and by birth and about proving oneself as a contributing member of this tight knit community.  It was a labor of love.

The low man on the totem pole was in charge of keeping the hand cranked cement mixer moving. The low woman on the totem pole (me) was in charge of doing whatever the older women told me to do.  One of my jobs was helping to make the bread.  I helped to mix and knead the bread and then we waited as the bread would rise in old round metal pans with cheesecloth over them.  Once they had risen we would press them down again and then wait again.  After half a day of waiting, they would take the bread out of the pan and put it on a wooden paddle and into a round brick kiln.   My job was then to shuffle the bread around in the kiln from the hottest spots to cooler ones and make sure it didn't scorch.

When the meal was finally ready, they set up tables with boards on sawhorses and the men would sit and the women would serve. I wasn't crazy about this idea of the women not eating at the same time as the men.  I was hungry! The women had worked as hard on the meal as the men had on the house! But as the men ate, I watched the women.  I watched them take pure delight in the men's gracious and often over-the-top reactions to the meal. I watched them serve with joy. 

And I watched the men tear apart the bread and pass it to one another.  Those large, strong hands of masons, carpenters, students, farmers, truck drivers and mechanics breaking bread together and giving thanks made me think of the Lord's table.  

At that last supper of Christ with his disciples, it wasn't about the meal, like my Romanian friends, it was about establishing community and legacy. It was about preparation and remembrance.  It was about blessing and commissioning these common men; these tax collectors, fishermen and zealots, who had become part of something far greater than themselves.

This week as you have attempted to order your day around Christ and prayer, have you noticed a difference?  Are you more aware of people as you are less focused on food? Would you find joy in service if it meant denying oneself? Today I challenge you to keep your eyes wide open as you say the Lord's Prayer.  Look around you at people as they work and serve.  Know that you are a part of their lives.  Don't rush through your time with them. Make it a point to serve them in some way this week and know that in doing it you are connecting more deeply with them and with the One who said "Do this in remembrance of me".