Deo, divine Mother of All |
O illustrious companion of Bromios, |
This is how I begin to remember that change is possible. Each week I bake a loaf of bread, and between one step and the next, I say this prayer. The Orphic Hymn to Demeter is a way that I consecrate this ancient, ordinary practice. It’s a way I remind myself of my deepest commitments. You may have guessed by now, I am a Pagan as well as a Unitarian Universalist minister. Bread-baking has become a practice that blends my commitments to these two guides of my life.
It’s a practice I’m grateful for, one that nourishes my body and spirit. One that sustains me. The moments of pause it brings are hard to come by in a busy world, but are so worth making time for. If you’ve dedicated yourself to a spiritual practice, you know what I mean. But if you haven’t, you may be wondering, “Where do I begin?”
A group of us explored this question in a class I facilitated this spring. As we got to know each other’s spiritual lives, we realized we were everywhere on this spectrum. Some of us had been dedicated to a practice for decades. Some were exploring spiritual practices for the first time. And most of us were somewhere in between. As we explored ways of practicing spirituality together, something struck us. The greatest source of spirituality for us was in our everyday lives. In finding meaning and connection in the ordinary. Some found it grinding coffee, some found it doing dishes, or spending time with grandchildren. It seemed to be the most natural and approachable source of spiritual grounding.
I found what many in the class did as weeks of bread rose and baked. The everyday is teeming with spiritual possibility. We just need to face it, consider it, with intention. But that’s not the attitude I had at first. It began as an ordinary, delicious practice. While I hadn’t folded bread into my spiritual life, I knew the potential was there. There is something ritualistic in feeding my sourdough starter each week, and something meditative in kneading dough into loaves. And it does connect me to something deeper than myself. It’s a practice that connects me to my mother, and her mother before her. And on and on, back to the first baker. It’s a practice full of potential. On it’s own, its a nourishing practice, maybe a soul practice, but not a spiritual practice. That takes intention. It also takes connection.
Connection to what, though? My ancestors weren’t the only sources of guidance and deepening. I have studied and practiced Paganisms since I was a teenager. I’ve begun and ended relationships with several gods, but one of the most enduring relationships has been with Demeter, the ancient Greek goddess of agriculture and the harvest. Revered and remembered for millennia, a spiritual partnership with her seemed natural for a bread-baker. And it has been. I pray the Orphic Hymn between one step of baking and another. It helps me center myself at the beginning of the week. And while Demeter is “present at sowing, heaping, and threshing2,” praying this way reminds me of all the ways grain changes to bread. It reminds me to consider all the hands involved in this process. It reminds me that transformation is possible, that I can create it, and that I am not alone in this.
Which is how this practice feeds not only my Paganism, but my Unitarian Universalism as well. Our Shared Value of Transformation calls us to change and be changed in our lives. To make change in big and small ways. And that there is something deeply sacred and transcendent to this. Interdependence reminds us that we are not islands in the ocean of our lives. Rather, we live because others live. And others live because we do, and what we do matters. Finding the spiritual in these values has been one of the most fulfilling parts of my grounding in our faith. These aren’t abstract ideals – they’re virtues we bring to life. Spiritual practices both nourish us and prepare us to look for other opportunities to enact our values.
These are the ways that baking a loaf of bread each week became a spiritual practice for me. Over the years, I’ve tried defining for myself what a spiritual practice is. What I have come to understand is that spiritual practices are a kind of homework. That might not sound very exciting, but here’s what I mean. When we go to worship – to consider what is worthy as a colleague of mine says – we go deep together. As a community, we connect to our values, our sacred stories, sometimes our Gods and Ancestors – the things that are deeper and larger than ourselves. The things from which we draw our sustenance. And spirituality, especially spiritual practice, is how we do that deepening work on our own, so that we are able to show up as our best selves when we’re together. The minister Jen Crow sums it up this way:
“While solitary spiritual practices can quiet the mind and help us hear the still small voice within, they will also bring us right back into community with each other if we practice them with heart and integrity. When we sit alone in prayer or meditation, read the great teachers, walk, or do yoga, our hearts open and soften; we can achieve clarification, discernment, and communion with that which is larger than ourselves, calling us back to this world, to compassion and kindness in all that we do3.”
Our spiritual homework, in this way, prepares us to act in the world. It nourishes and deepens us, digging a clean well from which we draw our sustenance. How it affects us and our world ripples out from these dedicated acts. We know the work of living our values isn’t easy. We need practices that will sustain us if we are going to be faithful for the long haul. Those practices begin in the smallness of our own lives. Self-care practices that remind us to be generous to ourselves and others. Grounding exercises that calm our bodies, equipping us to engage conflict. Commitments to baking and gardening that remind us we can transform the world. The activist and educator adrienne marie brown teaches us to begin this right where we are. In her work Emergent Strategy, she shares that:
“...what we practice at the small scale sets the patterns for the whole system. Grace [Lee Boggs] articulated it in what might be the most-used quote of my life: Transform yourself to transform the world. This doesn’t mean to get lost in the self, but rather to see our own lives and work and relationships as a front line, a first place we can practice justice, liberation, and alignment with each other and the planet4.”
Putting Crow’s and brown’s wisdom together puts the value of spiritual practice into focus for us. Practice opens and softens our hearts. Practice prepares us for our life’s great work. That work needs the sustaining depth that spirituality can bring.
We know this as ministers to one another, whether that’s our vocation or not. When I turn to spiritual practice, I am often running on fumes. Sometimes I lose my grasp of my deepest beliefs. I forget that change is possible. And when I pray and meditate through kneading dough and baking bread, I remember what I truly believe. I draw the water I need for my cup from this deep well. And when I am done, I can feel the difference. My breathing is deeper. My muscles are more relaxed. My thoughts are more focused, and I feel prepared for what our life asks of me.
You may, at this point, be thinking “this is all well and good, but – “How will I find time for a spiritual practice? I don’t have the time to bake bread each week!” Or maybe baking isn’t something you’re interested in. And it doesn’t have to be. Our lives are full of ordinary events. Consider some other ways of making the ordinary spiritual. Consider your deepest values, and where you can find them in your life. Maybe that value is transformation. Where are the little changes that happen throughout your life?
Imagine this. It’s the end another long day, and you’re faced with a sink of dirty dishes. It’s hardly glamorous – boring in fact. But you know it has to be done. So you begin rinsing off the plates and bowls. You notice them in a way you never have before. You soap them up and rinse them off again, setting them aside to dry. The last dish done, you notice how differently they each look and feel and smell. You witnessed change. You brought change into your life. Not world-shifting on its own, but still significant in this moment. How will you fill this simple act with more intention next time? Meditation, or prayer, or intention-setting could all be helpful. Watch how you respond, how the attention you have given change ripples out into the rest of your life.
Our own lives are the first places we practice our values. As people of faith, this includes the deepening work of tending to our own spirituality. It can be hard to hold on to our values when the world challenges them. Spiritual practices – whatever they are – give us ways to connect deeply with what we value most. This includes the conviction that what we do matters. That we can transform our world. The times when that is hardest to remember are the times when we need even the smallest reminders. So as we prepare to leave this place of collective transformation, I ask you this. How will you find change in your own life? How will you notice it, care for it, celebrate it? Our own lives are the first places we tend to and honor great change.
1. Orphic Hymn 40. To Eleusinian Demeter, trans. Apostolos N. Athanassakis and Benjamin M. Wolkow (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013).
2. Ibid., 5.
3. Jen Crow, "Down the Mountain," in Not for Ourselves Alone: Theological Essays on Relationship, ed. Burton D. Carley and Laurel Hallman, 101-109 (Boston: Skinner House Books, 2014), 103.
4. adrienne marie brown, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2017), 53.