Our Daily Bread

Our Daily Bread

I’ve begun many of the mornings of this year with Morning Prayer—a short structure of hymns and psalms and prayers that I use to remind myself I’m not just taking an extended vacation…there is supposed to be some sort of spiritual point to all this time I’ve given myself. The “Our Father” is part of the morning prayer, and for many, many mornings that line “give us this day our daily bread” was quite a comfort. It prompted a quick mental inventory: right, right, we’ve got food in the kitchen and some money in the bank.... That line of prayer reminded me not to take this bit of security for granted, and not to ask too much of myself or Girlfriend when it came to financial security: we didn’t have to have every dime of our retirement in place before we took a breath, considered what we wanted in this life we shared.

Maybe the incredible shrinking stock market has prompted it, but I’ve begun to think of “daily bread” in wider ways—and I’m beginning to getting irritated with it.

Let me offer an example. I attended a class on writing on faith at Yale Divinity School over the summer. While there, I spoke to folks who spoke highly of two different seminaries: Virginia Theological Seminary, which is just up the hill from where I live, and Earlham School of Religion in Richmond, Indiana, which has a track on writing and a distance learning structure. I began exploring both, and building up a plan of developing a course of study out of a combination of the two of them. It made such sense: Earlham is a Quaker school, and Quakerism is the one Christian religion I can approach without comparison to the Catholicism in which I was raised. Earlham’s cheaper—by a lot—than VTS. But VTS is local, I might get a chance to feel some belonging—heck, lots of my ancestors attended there. My father went to high school right next door.

And, I said, I know myself—and I work better stretched between a couple of institutions. I maintain a healthy distance, don’t get overly involved in all the politics. It might be unorthodox, but I wanted to do both.

I set up meetings at VTS, arranged a visit to Indiana.

And woke up yesterday, finally certain all my blah-blah-blah was hooey-hooey. I want to go to VTS, for reasons I can name and reasons that I can’t (what is it about walking on those lawns I know my grandfathers and uncles crossed?). I don’t know if they’ll accept me, I don’t know how to afford it—but that is what I want and Earlham is a distraction and would be a settling for, if I continued on this path.

Several times across this year, I’ve woken to these knowings. Sometimes alone, sometimes with Girlfriend: we will build a plan and polish it, and set out on its way (e.g. “the basement—done—this weekend!” “Henceforth, on budget, every day!”). And then some morning we’ll wake up and see it for the huge stone it’s become, too big to keep on rolling up the hill. (Actually, the image that is rising in my mind is the well-packed ball of shit a certain dung beetle rolls up and then cherishes, a smelly sort of desert snowball). There isn’t any sense of loss in letting go—there is, instead, this feeling of relief and coming back to self.

Yesterday, I glimpsed a way this pattern, all these polished plans, could be another kind of daily bread. I was different in my meetings up at VTS than I would have been without another seminary in my pocket—a little bit less frantic, less intense, less do-or-die about the school. Because of that, I was more open with the people I encountered, and to the feelings that arose as I walked through those halls and buildings.

The notion of also weighing Earlham was a kind of manna in the desert—just enough to get me through this process of discerning, to the place where I no longer needed it.

As soon as I began to think of thoughts as daily bread, a thousand more examples came to mind: Back when Girlfriend and I first got together, I didn’t think we’d make. I considered our relationship a terrible idea. And so, I was more honest, more relaxed, both more and less demanding. That mood or tone, that misunderstanding is part of how we got here, to the ground where we have stood together for a decade.

Taking a “sabbatical” from work got me to the point where I can see that, really, I am quitting. The process may be slow and undramatic, incomplete in many way. But I don’t think that I will be, much longer, a writer of technical reports and meeting minutes.

It’s something like a mental limp, this daily bread of my imagined future—I step forward on my good strong leg, my vision of what’s next…and then I drag the truth of me up to it. It’s not so bad a system, really—I couldn’t face the questions I was asking, in their fullness, any earlier.

But this making, and remaking, of grand plans is…shall we call it humbling? And more than just a little scary.

There is a tone I recognize in retrospect…a bit too smooth, a bit too much like marketing, when I discuss or even think about the plans that I’ve developed—the ones that will evaporate once I have the nerve to face up to myself. But I can’t recognize that tone in real-time—for all I know, I’m using it right now and sometime down the road will look back at this writing with chagrin.

Every spiritual tradition points us from the future to the present. In all his talk about the kingdom of heaven—which most folks think of as a heaven we reach after death—Jesus kept telling his disciples they should look around, right here, at hand. Don’t be anxious for tomorrow, blah blah blah. It all sounds sort of comforting and comfortable, but it feels to me more like walking through a tunnel with a wimpy flashlight in my hand—and certain knowledge that I’m not alone there, in the dark.

It’s a little spooky, wondering: is this new idea the final one? will I really truly head to VTS? or will I just march in that direction, and discover something different once I get myself a little further down that path?

We’ve got food down in the cabinets, and little bit less money in the bank. This weekend, we intend to drive up to New England, where we’ll marry once again, with friends out in a park and the recognition of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

I don’t know what, if any, difference this will make. Can’t predict the fun or tension that might arise across the weekend. But we’ve got, I guess, our daily bread: our notion, plan, hope, and intention. And I guess that is an answer to my prayer.