Quiet Spaces: Bread for the journey
'Bread for the Journey' is our theme and Tom O'Loughlin begins with his article 'I am the bread of life'. Reading our Bibles, we discover more about Jesus, who calls himself the Bread of Life, and David Winter writes on 'The Bible: a heart-to-heart conversation'. Tim Blewitt helps us to look at our theme further and Heather Fenton writes on the theme 'Bethlehem: house of bread'. Other material helps us to look at our theme from different perspectives.
Contents list:
The Editor Writes
Heather Fenton
Bread
Margaret Harvey
The Bread of Life
Thomas O'Loughlin
The Bible - a heart to heart conversation
David Winter
Entertaining angels
Tim Blewett
My Space
Tony's reflections: The best meal of the day
Tony Horsfall
Margaret's space
Margaret Harvey
'Bread Time' liturgy
Bethlehem: house of bread
Heather Fenton
John's prayers
John Birch
My space
Give us this day our daily bread
Heather Fenton
Why not make some Irish soda bread farls?
Jesus Christ the apple tree
Looking at the world through the eyes of Alexander Carmichael
Meditating with Scripture: John's Gospel
Elena Bosetti
The People's Bible
Martyn Payne
Celebrating the King James Version
Rachel Boulding / Alison Shell
Heather Fenton introduces Bread for the Journey:
Thanks for joining us at our meal! This time round we are tasting some good food of the word of God, and our focus will be on bread. What a feast we have in store for you!
Among the good things set out on the table is Tom's exploration of Jesus calling himself 'the bread of life', which is one of the 'I am' phrases found in John's Gospel. As Tom helps us to think about who Jesus is, elsewhere I enable us to think about 'Bethlehem: the house of bread' - the 'house of bread' is the meaning of the name of the place from which the bread of life comes. Meanwhile bread is one of Margaret's favourite sections of the supermarket shelves, stacked with a wonderful selection. Sometimes she buys it straight off the shelves but she also likes making her own, and she tells us how to make some, and what meditations we can draw out from doing this.
Tim Blewitt writes for us under the intriguing heading 'Entertaining angels' - entertaining angels without knowing it. Furthermore David Winter tells us about lectio divina or spiritual reading, which and more and more people today are discovering as a fresh and inspirational way to approach the sacred text, which in turn makes possible a radically different, though not contradictory, approach to scripture.
If you want to have a quiet time or a whole day of quiet with a group of people, why not try incorporating the 'bread time' liturgy, and afterwards you could serve some Irish Soda farls (yum!), made according to the Quiet Spaces recipe! (Is this the first recipe to appear in Quiet Spaces, I ask myself?)
Until the advent of television, microwaveable meals and similar supposed 'improvements' to our daily lives, eating was a very sociable activity. It also took up a lot of time and was therefore seen as something much more important than we may view it today. Especially at times when it was scarce, food had to be treated with great respect. Alexander Carmichael, who was born just before Queen Victoria came to the throne, is known for his attempts to collect ancient Gaelic prayers. Many of these are about food, or things related to food, and made me think about how we could weave a pattern of thanksgiving for various aspects of food into our own hectic lives.
Talking of food reminds me of the ancient festival of Lammas, and the article 'Give us this day our daily bread' helps us to think about how we have developed the basic idea of bread over many generations and suggests some ways in which we might recognise and celebrate this.
Most of the food I have mentioned so far is, of course, bread, a basic staple in the West. The apple is a very popular fruit here in Britain, however, and I remember hearing the choir of Ludlow church singing 'Jesus Christ the apple tree' there a couple of years ago. So you too can discover this old song, to bite into and to enjoy.
Margaret's space reflects on 'food for the journey', and John's prayers, which combine 'daily bread' and 'bread of life', add to the rich meal prepared for you. Breakfast is said by many to be the most important meal of the day, but Tony Horsfall helps us to think about the quiet time as an important 'meal time' and makes some suggestions for a practical recipe for doing this.
So recipes, ideas, worship material and new insights are all here encouraging you in your own journey, and giving us the strength to go on, discovering abundant food for the journey and, above all, realising again that Jesus is indeed the 'living bread that came down from heaven' (John 6:51, NIV).
Contributors include Tony Horsfall, Margaret Harvey, John Birch, Thomas O'Loughlin