• Skip to main content

Finding Your Soul

by David Anderson

  • Home
  • About Me
  • Topics
    • Change
    • Faith/Trust
    • Family
    • Fear
    • Forgiveness
    • Freedom
    • Happiness
    • Justice/Peace
    • Love
    • Nature/Creation
    • Science
    • Surrender
  • Books
  • Contact David Anderson

The Heaven of Bread

January 19, 2023 by David Anderson 9 Comments

“Can you get that bread out of the oven?” Pam calls to me. “I think it’s done.” I open the oven door and a soft cloud of heat drifts over me. Then the smell wafts out, wave after wave—the yeasty aroma, the malted perfume, the toasted whiff of . . . I don’t know—heaven. Or home. Safety. Love.

As I carry the perfectly browned loaves to a wire rack for cooling, I remember once hearing that authentic spirituality should be like freshly baked bread coming out of the oven: a totally immersive experience, no description necessary or possible.  Every powerful encounter with the divine is like that, enveloping us, dissolving our “normal” sense of separateness, revealing—if only for a moment—our oneness with God, with one another and the whole Creation.

Epiphanies like this are direct and self-authenticating. We don’t need a book, a creed, or a set of doctrines to validate what just happened. It isn’t about what we believe or even hope for. It just happens to us, in spite of us, in a cascade of grace. A black sky splashed with a million stars or the touch of a loved one can do it, but so can great suffering, which breaks down that separate self and heaves us, helpless, into the everlasting arms.

When we have an experience like this, we just know it. We don’t need anyone to talk us into it, and no one can talk us out of it. Sadly, most religious or spiritual life is not powerfully immediate, like freshly baked bread emerging from the oven. It’s more akin to the chemical scents pumped into malls to sell cinnamon rolls, a simulacrum many settle for, never discovering the real thing.

If we desire to know God deeply and directly, we must be still, quiet, open. We must learn, every day, to trust what is, right here, right now. Be ready, in other words, to meet God at the oven door.

Filed Under: Daily Practice, Grace, Heaven, Love, Now/ the Present, Prayer/Meditation, Reality--trusting it

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. John says

    January 19, 2023 at 9:31 am

    The “simulacrum of cinnamon scent” reminded me of a passage in Phillip Yancey’s new book “Where the Light Fell.” He’s quotes Augustine reflecting on his pre-conversion years: “I had my back toward the light, and my face toward the things on which the light falls.”

    Reply
    • David Anderson says

      January 19, 2023 at 9:47 am

      Interesting–at a retreat on Sunday I was teaching from a poem by Joyce Sutphen that is based on Plato’s famous allegory of the Cave, where the person is seated in a cave with a fire behind her and all she can see is the flickering shadows on the wall of the cave in front of her. And because she is chained to her seat she cannot turn and see the fire. So–in Platonic thought–we see only shadows of the real things. But in this poem, the woman frees herself from the chained seat and stumbles out of the cave–and sees the very Fire!

      From Out the Cave
      by Joyce Sutphen

      When you have been
      at war with yourself
      for so many years that
      you have forgotten why,
      when you have been driving
      for hours and only
      gradually begin to realize
      that you have lost the way,
      when you have cut
      hastily into the fabric,
      when you have signed
      papers in distraction,
      when it has been centuries
      since you watched the sun set
      or the rain fall, and the clouds,
      drifting overhead, pass as flat
      as anything on a postcard;
      when, in the midst of these
      everyday nightmares, you
      understand that you could
      wake up,
      you could turn
      and go back
      to the last thing you
      remember doing
      with your whole heart:
      that passionate kiss,
      the brilliant drop of love
      rolling along the tongue of a green leaf,
      then you wake,
      you stumble from your cave,
      blinking in the sun,
      naming every shadow
      as it slips.

      Reply
    • Michael says

      January 19, 2023 at 12:02 pm

      yes, Augustine had what David was describing, a spirituality once removed.

      Reply
  2. Cathy H. says

    January 19, 2023 at 10:25 am

    The comments are already a bonus! As one who has recently, sadly, begun a gluten free experiment – there is *nothing* like fresh bread. There are no substitutes with God either (although we try). Thankfully, that aroma can still affect me deeply.

    Reply
    • David Anderson says

      January 19, 2023 at 11:20 am

      Yes, I feel a bit sorry for the GF community. But, as you say, the aroma can still be completely savored.

      Reply
    • Michael says

      January 19, 2023 at 12:06 pm

      oh, now there is a metaphor—let’s avoid a gluten-free relationship to God.

      Reply
      • David Anderson says

        January 19, 2023 at 5:11 pm

        I’m waiting for a GF reader to exclaim, Gluten-free bread is still bread, still great!

        Reply
  3. Johnna says

    January 19, 2023 at 10:35 am

    No words can express it – so true. Pablo Neruda’s “Odes to Common Things” is the closest I’ve found so far. Thanks, David!

    Reply
    • David Anderson says

      January 19, 2023 at 11:18 am

      Just read “Ode to Common Things”–wow, what a gift. Thank you, Johnna.

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Copyright © 2023 · David Anderson