“By the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread, until you return to the ground, from which you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” – Genesis 3:19
“Intense listening is indistinguishable from love, and love heals.” – Kenneth Blue
The instructions call for room temperature water. Not too cold. Not too hot. Pour the water into a well of gently mixed flours, instant yeast, and salt. Gradually pull these dry ingredients into the well of water with one hand, leaving your other hand free to hold and turn the bowl. As the warm water floods and softens these tightly wound grains, they expand onto my hand and I find myself unsure of this sticky mess. I keep going. Pulling, stretching and folding. I am told that eventually, these transformed ingredients will become cohesive, ready to be made into something nourishing and sustaining, even worth sharing. But first, before we can stick this softened warm ball of dough into an environment of extreme heat, it must rest. Longer than we might like.
Last year, the church I call home enfolded another dwindling congregation. It’s been a time of stretching and folding. I’m reminded that we are no longer in the bowl we were shaped in (our old location), we are in a newer and bigger bowl. There are different textures of materials and people to get used to. There are little anxieties about finding a new place to sit, and bigger anxieties about feeling at home. My family has the benefit of still knowing the leadership, but not everyone has this benefit. There is trust and safety to be built with loving and kind hands. Some are eager and willing to use their gifts, and some are content to rest and receive. But all of us draw from the same well – not too hot, not too cold. Sometimes in tall glasses, gulping it down in one sitting, or shorter sips; gradually, over time.
When I tell my Aunt that I’m baking bread for Lent, her ears perk up. She’s a natural baker. I am not. I tell her that I’m spending the next forty days practicing saying no to two things that take me out of the present moment and make me think I’m more powerful than I am. In turn, I’ll say yes to this adventure of making bread. I tell her I’m listening to God during the different stages of making bread, praying breath prayers such as, “We are being transformed / into God’s image” (2 Cor. 3:18), and “The Word became flesh / and dwelt among us. / From his fullness we have received / grace upon grace” (John 1:14, 16). Like the kind teacher she has always been for me, she replies, “You are being receptive.” I pause and reflect. I am. For maybe the first time, I am de-centering myself from the productive act of being in the kitchen.
What do receptive postures look like in our churches? Not aiming to consume, but curious and soft. Sometimes we let our respective church homes become loaves of bread that only we want to eat. We say things like, “this is mine,” and then try to control the temperature of the water, the ingredients, what kind of bowl we’re using, and how hot the oven is, all the while putting too many or too few expectations on leadership. It’s a sticky situation to be sure.
As I make another loaf of bread this morning, pouring the tepid water into the dry well, I am reminded of baptism. As Christ was baptised into water, with the loving affirmation of His Father and the humble, willing hands of John the Baptist, we too are immersed and risen with Him. We let Him lead us into the wilderness because He knows the terrain. He knows what it’s like to listen to the voice of the Enemy, whispering temptations that prey on our vulnerabilities, without giving in.
In his book, Practicing Resurrection, Eugene Peterson reflects on Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus, noting that it can seem risky and daunting to let such a broken and beat-up group of people become transformed into the image of Christ. Belief must flow into behavior, and it can feel like God is “skillfully setting a compound fracture…knitting together and healing.”
Even now, we feel this. “Once our attention is called to it, we notice these fractures all over the place. There is hardly a bone in our bodies that has escaped injury, hardly a relationship in city or job, school or church, family or country, that isn’t out of joint or limping in pain. There is much work to be done.”
As I continue to stretch and fold my dough, I exhale “from His fullness we have received.” The fullness of Christ, the Bread of Life, broken and given to us.. As the dough sits resting until it’s appointed time to bake, I think about my little church that isn’t really mine at all. How we so desperately need the faith to trust that God is at work even when we are not.
There is a group of about twenty of us within the church that have made a commitment to listening. We practice different forms of prayer, such as the Examen or Centering Prayer, Imaginative prayer immersed in Scripture, and Welcoming Prayer. There is a bench dedicated to prayer available during the service, with two people always ready to listen and pray with anyone who comes. Our group gathers collectively, or in groups of three. We jot down what we notice. We pray and talk about where we see light streaming in and where there are shadows. We pay attention and yield to the work of the Spirit within this church body we call home. All of this is done in receptivity, so that it can be received and offered in love. Out of this fullness, we offer hospitality so that church leaders are not always on the verge of burnout. Often, leadership is most formative through proximity instead of position.
There is an invitational commonality to church leaders and laity alike to lead from the center of who they are in Christ. All are invited to be known in the inner terrains of their souls and walk in new terrains of freedom. Sadly, we are all too familiar with the realities of church leaders positioning themselves with power instead of the life of the paradoxical Servant King. As Patricia Brown laments in her book, Learning to Lead from your Spiritual Center, “The failure of leaders to deal with their own souls, their inner life, is deeply troubling not only for themselves but also for other persons in the misery they cause. The destructive consequences from leaders who fail to work out of a deep sense of their inner self are staggering…Leaders have a particular responsibility to know what is going on inside their souls.”
I’m struck by the story of pastor Matt Canlis, author of Backyard Pilgrim and the documentary Godspeed. In the film, he is told by a friend and congregant that he comes more alive on Monday nights during the casual gatherings, but Sunday mornings are a little different. He seems less like himself. His friend encouraged him to risk trying the Monday night approach on a Sunday morning. As Matt considered the risk, he felt great excitement and great fear:
“Fear because, if I tried speaking without my notes, I didn’t know what would happen. But I feared what would happen. I would freeze, I’d get lost, I’d feel a fool. And that might not be other people’s fear but it’s mine. But I also felt great excitement. If I could just talk face to face to people about Scripture. About things I care about, things they care about, this could be a conversation. So I took the risk. I sat in the front row, with the congregation all behind me, and I heard two voices. One was saying, ‘Go for it. Enjoy this. You have nothing to lose.’ The other voice said, ‘You have everything to lose… I could not have won that battle in my brain by myself. I needed help. And that’s when I believe the Spirit helped me stand and turn and face the congregation. Who in facing them ceased to be ‘the congregation’ they became…all the people I knew who would give me the grace I could not give myself.”
Matt goes on to name all of their names. Because he listened to the voice of the One Who Loves Him, as the Ignatian Rules of Discernment reference God, he began to lead by proximity instead of a pedestal. In doing so, these transformed ingredients of the church become cohesive, ready to be made into something nourishing and sustaining, even worth sharing. We stretch and fold through collective listening – with God and with each other. Out of this center, vision and action become grace.
I don’t know if all of my loaves will turn out this Lent. Some might be a real flop. But I do know this, the One Who Loves Me can’t wait to hear all about it.
