🍞 TREE 650: All bread is sacred

L A W R E N C E × J E F F
chapter · 2
part · 4

St Paul said there are two kinds of people:

One person considers one day more sacred than another;
another considers every day alike.
Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind.
(Romans 14:5, NIV)

I’d say it’s more of a spectrum. I swing closer to every day being alike. I think that’s why Brother Lawrence inspires me.

He said:

That with him the set times of prayer were not different from other times: that he retired to pray, according to the directions of his Superior, but that he did not want such retirement. nor ask for it, because his greatest business did not divert him from God.

and

That he was pleased when he could take up a straw from the ground for the love of God, seeking Him only, and nothing else, not even His gifts.

Or, as Rob Bell likes to say, ‘This bread is sacred because all bread is sacred.’ (The counter-argument is, Rob, have you ever eaten a slice from one of those guaranteed-to-stay-soft white loaves? To which I would counter-counter argue, That’s not bread.)

The point, especially for us everyday-alike folk, is to move from the feeling nothing is sacred to understanding that it’s all sacred because it’s all part of life and everything is connected to everything else.

Lawrence nourished his sense of connection by forming ‘a habit of conversing with God continually’ and ‘speaking to Him frankly and plainly’.

Here are some things I do:

• pay attention to what I’m eating and drinking

• look at the sky

• get lost in music

• remind myself that the people I disagree with are human like me

• then look for signs of their humanity

• say thank you

• and think about why I’m thankful

• be outdoors

• choose curiosity over cool

• read The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts (The last section is seriously woo woo, but still totally worth reading)

• listen more than I talk (I need to do a lot of work on this one)

• see the funny side

I’m forming habits of consciously and continually connecting with the universe in frank and plain ways.

Grow slowly
Jeff