If forced to only eat five foods for the rest of my life, bread would be at the top of my list. I adore bread in all of its shapes and sizes and forms. Bread is universal, every culture creating their own version, and to date I have never met a bread I don't enjoy.
The sustenance of bread is one thing. The sacred symbolism is another.
Regardless of your religious leanings (or un-leanings), breaking bread together offers the opportunity to pause and usher in an attitude of connection and communion. To break bread is to take something whole, something beautiful, something otherwise picture-perfect, and tear it into rustic, broken bits so that we can share and savor its fullness.
Without the breaking we cannot commune.
The idea of breaking bread speaks to my heart. Bread is beautiful. But beauty without sharing and connecting is empty, fleeting, anemic. In order to share in what the bread offers, in order to taste it, chew it, bite it, experience its full potential, we much break it. We could just gaze upon the beauty of a baguette or boule, but that would be the end of it. If, however, we slice, crumble, tear, and toast that same bread, we can create croutons, crumbs, and chunks for dipping.
We can create more when the bread is broken than when it is left whole.
Just as we break bread so that we can enjoy its fullness with those with whom we gather, we too must embrace our broken places and see them as the birthplace of true beauty and connection.
Where have you been broken? I promise there is beauty there, and the breaking is not death, but life. The breaking births connection, change, and courage that would not exist in you otherwise. A perfect loaf of bread serves no one but the admirer from afar. But a loaf broken into bits? That bread can serve a multitude.
