Words of Light and Hope from Helena Crockford LLM
Words of Light and Hope 18th August 2024 Helena Crockford LLM
Bread of Life
The Gospel readings for the last two Sundays have included verses from John’s Gospel on the theme of bread: Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. John 6.35
Humble and basic and everyday as bread is, it can be a symbol of our interconnectedness across peoples, times and cultures and also of strange and wonderful processes of transformation in the midst of daily life. These poems capture something of this.
Naomi Shihab Nye is a Palestinian-American poet. She wrote:
“How to make bread”
Grain into wheat, wheat into flour, flour into bread, bread into hands, hands into life, life into bread.
Paul Laurence Dunbar was the first African-American poet to find national recognition in the 19th century. He wrote:
‘Life’
A crust of bread and a corner to sleep in, A minute to smile and an hour to weep in, A pint of joy to a peck of trouble, And never a laugh but the moans come double; And that is life! A crust and a corner that love makes precious, With a smile to warm and the tears to refresh us; And joy seems sweeter when cares come after, And a moan is the finest of foils for laughter; And that is life!
Malcolm Guite, the poet-priest now based in Norfolk follows Jesus in leading this metaphor right back to God himself.
“Where to get bread?”
An ever-pressing question That trembles on the lips of anxious mothers, Bread for their families, bread for all these others; A whole world on the margin of exhaustion. And where that hunger has been satisfied Where to get bread? The question still returns In our abundance something starves and yearns We crave fulfillment, crave and are denied. And then comes One who speaks into our needs Who opens out the secret hopes we cherish Whose presence calls our hidden hearts to flourish Whose words unfold in us like living seeds Come to me, broken, hungry, incomplete, I Am the Bread of Life, break Me and eat.
