"In addition to the head and the heart, I also put my hands to work with ever-growing enthusiasm to bake bread each day. Give us this day our daily bread — for my family, this fulfils a need to provide food and yet by persevering in the boring simplicity of baking bread other factors emerge. Baking bread requires planning and effort, through the need to think ahead, estimate, weigh, knead, rest, bake and have patience. The result of all this effort is a deep satisfaction, at least that is how it works for me. The gratitude of my oldest children every morning are not obligatory phrases to please their father, but instead they are inspired by the feeling that baking bread goes beyond fulfilling a basic need. No two loaves are the same. Never even. Always with a raw edge. It is real and there is family time in it. The intoxicating smell of bread that greets them every morning mingles with activity and creation. My younger son likes to help during the ‘making process’ and intuitively tells us in his toddler tongue that his daddy made that bread with his own hands. This is generative capacity, because baking bread is about caring, taking responsibility, passing on values and above all about ‘giving’. It’s about tribal solidarity, connection and shared pride. It’s about developing a common identity and moving together through life. Bread ís religion.
Baking bread is my ‘caring for’.
It is my symbol of ‘servant leadership’.
It is my ‘act of rebellion’.
From a heart that often beats for others."
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