I’ve had Gunilla Norris’s book, Becoming Bread, on my bookshelf for years. Paging through it – the first time in years – I found this meditation inspired by the rising process where the yeast “breathes out” carbon dioxide that is trapped in the dough, expanding and so transforming it.
“The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and hid in a large tub of flour until it made all the dough rise.” (Matt 13:33b, NCV)
Rising
Here in the bowl
is warmth and time to rest.
The dough is set apart and covered.
Here in the bowl
the rising starts
and creeps up the sides
reaching into time,
into space … into possibility.
Dreams are like this,
full of air,
going ahead of us,
wanting to take us
beyond the rim
of our horizon,
wanting to lift us out
of where we are.
Dreams are like this … unfolding
a moment at a time,
expanding us, breathing us,
demanding something new,
wanting to take shape.
This is also dangerous
for there are dark dreams, terrible
dreams. And the ones where
love asks the impossible from us.
Can this be the restlessness
of God? Are we being dreamed?
from Becoming Bread by Gunilla Norris, p. 45-46