Osler's Razor

I'm hoping that a prurient title will pull people in today!

Some of you, no doubt, expect me to expound on my desire to someday be the Pointer of Interest in the Grosse Pointe News, but let's face it-- that desire has never been very secret. Every week, they have talked about someone, for the over 2200 weeks that have passed since I moved to Grosse Pointe as a kid, but I have never made the cut. Meanwhile, dead people, vagrants, even a dog (it was a pointer, duh) have been profiled, but not me. What's a guy gotta do?

Anyways, that's not my secret desire. My real secret desire is to make the bread for the eucharist during advent. I can't fully explain why this is. Part of it, no doubt, is based on my deep connection to that wonderful and ancient process of making bread... there is an intimacy to it, really, because the bread is a living thing (at least leavened bread, using yeast, is). It responds to your touch like a lover, based on mood and temperature and place, and there is this wonderful mix of physicality and patience that is required. You work on it hard, with your knuckles and the heels of your hands, and then you wait... and if you don't wait, your efforts are for nothing. It sits there, building up, under a cloth on the counter (can you see it?). And then, in the end, there is a miracle. I remember once describing this to Craig Pankratz, and he nodded either knowingly or obligingly, but it felt good to talk about.

Next week I am giving an advent sermon at Holy Comforter in Richmond, Virginia. I won't get to make the bread, but the sermon has to be made the same way, with kneading and patience and hopefully a sense of wonder at what comes out, only partly made by me.