Kneading & Calling

Sourdough will not be hurried. You can knock it back, you can raise the heat, but the bread keeps its own clock. Push too hard and you get something dense and sour in the wrong way.

I have prayed over more loaves than I can count, mostly because the kitchen is where I am quiet enough to listen.

The slow obedience

A calling rises the same way. There is the mixing — the gathering of gifts and griefs. There is the long, hidden proof, when nothing seems to be happening. And there is the heat, which we rarely choose and never enjoy, that finally makes the thing what it was meant to be.

The lavender outside teaches the same lesson on a longer calendar. You prune in the cold and wait half a year for the scent. Patience, it turns out, is not passivity. It is trust with its sleeves rolled up.