Moving from Believers to Practitioners and a Thought on Bread

"Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams"
- Fr. Zossima, in Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov

I'm starting to see that being a believer in love, hope, peace -is so different and so much easier than being a practitioner of these things. Like the quotation above says, love in action is harsh and dreadful (at times). I got my first real sense of this in Quito- and have since talked a lot about how my understanding of what love is was expanded. Because sometimes love is dirty little fingers touching your face, sweat, head lice, and playing the same game over and over again. Love can mean smelling garbage and often means being really uncomfortable- physically and emotionally. I haven't loved like that very much since I've been back - and there is something wrong with that. I don't want to love in dreams anymore.


I'm reading this incredible book by Dorothy Day called A Radical Love- besides being an incredibly inspiring person, Day's perspective and writings are poignant and unique.

Day talks about St. Teresa and how she said that Christ is disguised as bread (Matt 6:11, John 6:48, 51) so that we will not be fearful in approaching him. Day goes on to say that as humans we are not "capable of exalted emotion, save rarely." She talks about how we are not always capable of forcing ourselves and/or our emotions to feel love, awe, gratitude, etc. She makes the point that Christ comes to us in the form of bread because it is a daily way that we can readily approach Him- in bread, Christ is so simple. Dorothy Day says that even a child can eat "the Sacred Food with love and gratitude."

I feel a sense of relief in reading about how we are not always capable of exalted emotion- I know that I most certainly am not. Sometimes- a lot of the time, I don't really feel like loving at all. And, a lot of the time awe and wonder is replaced with waiting, worrying and the burden of 'doing'. I am encouraged by the concept of daily bread. Bread is not exciting all the time (although there is this bread I LOVE at Wholefoods called "Seeduction"- lame name, but soo good), eating never ends- we'll have to keep doing it for the rest of our lives, it doesn't take a certain income or IQ to need to eat or to enjoy food.
I feel like I am not doing justice to this idea, but like bread (who really understands yeast anyway- it's alive?!), it's intriguing and comforting.