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The Lonely Loaf of Bread

Here is a loaf of bread by master bread baker Eduardo Morell. His loaves have the texture and taste of fine ingredients, plus the alchemy of skill & devotion. They are basic hearty nourishment that is divine. For me as a child, the fields of barley, rye, wheat, and oats were experiences of delight and freedom, undulating and swaying in summer’s wind. My body and heart bouncing and skipping along unpaved dusty roads, alongside that which feeds. What a miracle! Delight, Gratitude, Reverence…. A beautiful loaf of bread will always make me tear up with awe, especially these days… 

 

Even in war times we find poetry and bread. A lonely loaf of bread. In today’s newspaper this scene: “A snow-dusted loaf of bread remained on the park bench on Monday….” (a link below to article & photo) We know immediately that the photo is not luxury item advertisement. We know it refers to people absent, perhaps a desperate flight, blood in the sand, or dead bodies strewn nearby. The poetry of death has no words, but silence. 

 

When I came to America, the huge packed refrigerators and iceboxes were completely new to me – full of half-eaten items, molding, waiting to be thrown away. This would break my heart, and initiate furious tears of disbelief. Whether in war times or in times of peace, food is sacred. Never to be wasted. It deserves our attention, forethought, planning, and care – is that too much to ask for? Perhaps only after we experienced hunger will we know this mandate, and stop taking for granted the blessings of food and water. 

 

In the first months, I had to get used to so many lonely and abandoned shoes, T shirts, apples, oranges, half eaten sandwiches, strewn on street corners, in parks, everywhere…. All things that were scarce in our family when growing up in a country that is now 68 years later considered among the most affluent in the world. 

 

Here I am jumping from one thing and one place to the next. The scenes belong together however. All this exists close together in our world: affluence and hunger, war and peace, not far from each other. But pictures alone cannot teach us the preciousness of food, or respect for life. These must be known in our heart and soul. 

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/06/world/europe/ukraine-kharkiv-death.html 


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