The grain has been milled into flour, if all goes well…   by tomorrow I should have a (literally) home grown loaf!

The Chillies are now chilli marmalade, some others are almost chilli jelly.

Fairtrade cadbury’s is just mmmmmm….

Chillies

But now I have a nice four ounces of wheat grain, there is probably just over that left to harvest eight ounces will make one loaf, just perfect!!  Our theme for the harvest is ‘Bread for the Journey’  Hopefully if the bread works we will distribute it as people leave.

Straw and Chaff

Wheat Grain

Sheaf of Wheat

This is the first harvest of some wheat I grew this year as an experiment.  I only grew a small patch, so harvesting when each stalk was ready was easy.  It’s drying at the moment, but when ready I’ll be preparing it and grinding some flour.  When all is harvested and prepared I hope to have enough to bake a loaf for our harvest festival, big enough for everyone to have a small piece to take away -a la ‘Blessed Bread’ in the orthodox tradition and talk about bread, the process, food and time.  I might even use this reflection as a bread blessing.

I didn’t quite preach this last Sunday, but it was something similar, the following is pretty much the thinking behind it, albeit done after the event in true Primary/Secondary Theological fashion.

Monty Python’s Life of Brian may have been one of those films which invoked passions of loathing or loving from religious commentators and practitioners alike however, I think that Brian may have been right.
I’m pretty sure his mother was also right on one count at least, ‘He’s not the messiah’ but perhaps misguided on the second, ‘he’s a very naughty boy’.  Putting his night of pre-marital passion aside, which comes directly before the immortal lines.   He then addresses those who have been eagerly following him in the misguided assumption that he is either the messiah or has something worthwhile to say.
But perhaps Brian does have something worthwhile to say, not that those following him are ready to listen properly of course, they are just caught up in the hysteria of searching for a messiah, someone to rally behind who will destroy the Roman Empire and re-establish the kingdom of Israel.  Brian says, ‘you’re all individuals’ to which the crowd responds as one voice, ‘Yes, we are all individuals’ completely ignoring the statement.  Brian also says ‘You’ve got to work it out for yourselves’, again the crowd respond ‘(ex?)parrot fashion’.  But perhaps Brian is right, we’ve got to work it out for ourselves.
The first people to experience the life, death and resurrection of Christ are long gone.  Their testimony of those moments is lost to us through years of compounded theological building.  During that experience they would have – knowingly or not had an experience which would have led to later theological development upon the experience.  It was a moment of Primary Theology.  Other experiences on top of these would have led to further moments of Primary Theology and the Secondary Theology – the articulating of the experience and its meaning to others in the form of discourse or written word, (most probably the former) – would have been compounded upon layers of Primary Theological experiences the articulation of which have been lost.

Therefore, Brian was right.  ‘We’ve got to work it out for ourselves.’
We need to start with our own experience of where Christ is present to us, be it in bread and wine or other symbolic offering and move out from there remembering that others place greater or lesser importance upon the elemental constituents of what is offered.  The point is that we should at the very least be able to agree that there is ‘presence’ as apposed to ‘absence’, a common point of departure as we share the ‘Bread of Life.’

Yesterday I came up with this, baked a roll, and shared it with our chapter.

Blessed are you, Lord God of all Creation

Blessed indeed is God, Lord of all that is.  We cannot add or take away from you.
You stand in, above and below all that is made, before and behind us, the source of life itself, the breath in all that lives.
We greet you Lord God, and gather in your light and grace.

Blessed are you, Lord God of all Creation
Through your goodness we have this bread to set before you

Such order, manifest in creation, such careful design, the Goodness of your earth, bound up in wheat, the sun and rain in divine proportion gives unto us this golden grain to be ground to the finest flour.
Mineral salt given up from the earth and sea to flavour and colour.
Yeast, the natural leaven the living breath of the bread, the smallest of life creates through decay, new life of goodness and nutrition.
Water, a gift for life, nourishment for parched bodies, enlivens and binds the dough on a path to perfection.

Blessed are you, Lord God of all Creation
Through your goodness we have this bread to set before you
Which earth has given and human hands have made

Hands you have crafted O Lord, work and knead, skilled in the ancient art; knowledge gained from your natural processes put to use for our benefit, earth has given up her best. We craft and create with it our daily bread.

Blessed are you, Lord God of all Creation
Through your goodness we have this bread to set before you
Which earth has given and human hands have made
It will become for us the Bread of Life.

So in recognition of all of this we set aside a portion, enough to taste the goodness throughout which you have created, been creating, intrinsically involved from the very first seed.   In the knowledge that all bread is blessed, a hurried loaf on a Monday morn, a sliced white in a lunch box, fluffy and regularly square, wholegrain and seed bread in careful plait, sourdough, soda, spelt, paskha, rye, olive, rolls and bloomer, split top, French loaf or cob; because it all comes from you, yet in and through this bread, this gift, this offering of your gift back in recognition of all your work,  we ask for a blessing once again, blessing on what has been created and set aside, blessing on those who gather to draw nourishment from it.
Because we do this, we acknowledge all that has gone before and as Christ broke bread and ate with his friends so many times, so we too follow his example and share this blessed bread with all who come to table.

Blessed are you, Lord God of all Creation
Through your goodness we have this bread to set before you
Which earth has given and human hands have made
It will become for us the Bread of Life.

Blessed be God forever.

I have been writing about bread for a few days, but have come a little unstuck.  I like my bread home-made, with as few ingredients as possible, so whilst reflecting on a bread delivery man, I thought I had better gather some other ‘bread habits’ if you don’t mind sharing them!! email or comments as you like…

What do you buy regularly if you have the widest choice?

What do you go for if there are slim pickings at the last minute?

Any favorite bread items?