Perhaps you have baked bread or know someone who does or has. Baking bread has been a hobby of mine for years. I note some parallels between bread baking and faith / spiritual development. In this post, I’ll share a few.
Consider your best loaves. How did you achieve them? My guess is the result was neither luck nor a random, chance event. On the contrary, I imagine time, effort, and practice were required to find the best ingredients and to learn how to work with them in your unique situation.
For example, the best flours I acquire here in northern Arizona, and use at my home situated at seven thousand feet, consistently require more water than my recipes call for. Without practice, experience, and acquired knowledge, I would not know this. As a novice, at the start, I would follow the recipe carefully and produce a dry, hard-to-work dough that would not hold together well, and clearly would not rise to the occasion!
Practice, including careful consideration of the results – both hoped for and achieved – has led me to have confidence to craft my efforts. Adjustments are made. Better results are achieved.
It is the result – a good loaf – that I pursue. Not an exercise in precise steps that fail. I do not need steps that lead to a less than useful and satisfactory result. Blind habit produces little of value.
Faith and spiritual development are little different in my experience. There are various recipes, or sets of suggestions – even prescriptions – as there are recipes – and there are the local conditions. What unique combination of practices will bring about the result to which I aspire? Or, to which you aspire?
I must seek, try, practice, and learn (learn – a relatively permanent change in my behavior as a result of my experience). Adjustments are made on the way. My favorite and most used recipes are almost covered over with the notes I have made to record efforts and relate them to the outcome.
My faith development journey is little different. I seek sources of information and possibility; I consult the experiences of others. I write notes, just as I am doing now.
Practice with faith development? Worship – listening to the Light, serving with others (this is always a very large source of learning – a must do) – and learning; spiritual support and companion groups, the occasional class or seminar.
Another commonality between bread baking and faith development is starting with the end in mind. My “end-in-mind” has been, and is, to lead a good, useful life that contributes to loving relationships, integrity, healthy community, spiritual development for self and others, and the development of resources for coping when adversity strikes me or someone around me. I want to learn to be the best version of me I can produce.
A little yeast has to be used frequently to get a great rise.
How will I do that? Similar to baking in which I seek good explanations and descriptions, along with advice on how to achieve a good loaf (I will read Peter Reinhart, Jim Lahey, or Samuel Fromartz, or maybe consult a website such as theperfectloaf.com – to name a few) – on the spiritual development side, I’ll read scripture, The Diary of George Fox, books by Elton Trueblood, Ben Pink Dandelion, Rex Ambler, Howard Brinton, Rufus Jones, Wilmer Cooper, Jim Pym, Western Friend, Friends Journal, various Faith and Practice – oh, the list could go on). And I will practice – worship – Listen to the Light and the ministry of others; feel the presence. And act! (Doing today what I did yesterday will yield the same result – and not advance my transformational spiritual journey.)
Reading, discussion, and most important: practice, practice, practice. Have I written practice enough? For in the end, achieving a great loaf is about transforming my baking practices; achieving a great life is about transforming as well – amending my daily habits, shifting my understandings, and having the courage to walk where I have not walked before.
I am in hopes that you have picked up something you can use on your journey – Larry
Leave a Reply