WBLUMC

Blessing the Bread (from "Bread Prayers", White Bear Lake United Methodist Church website, Community Bread Oven link:
http://www.wblumc.org/subindex.asp?pageid=4&subid=3201

Blessing the Bread~ Lynn Ungar

Surely the earth is heavy with this rhythm, the stretch and pull of bread, the folding in and folding in across the palms, as if the lines of my hands could chart a map across the dough, mold flour and water into the crosshatchings of my life.

I do not believe in palmistry, but I study my hands for promises when no one is around. I do not believe in magic. But I probe the dough for signs of life, willing it to rise, to take shape, to feed me. I do not believe in palmistry, in magic, but something happens in kneading dough or massaging flesh; an imprint of the hand remains on the bodies we have touched.

This is the lifeline -- the etched path from hand to grain to earth, the transmutation of the elements through touch marking the miracles on which we unwillingly depend.
Praised be thou, eternal God, who brings forth bread from the earth.