Easter Sourdough

Growing up I went to a church that was brimming with children. Every Easter the children would gather and sing a song that went like this, “Every morning is Easter morning from now on, every day is resurrection day, the past is over and gone. Goodbye fear, goodbye guilt, good riddance. Hello Lord, hello Son! I am one of the Easter People, my new life has begun.” This song has been playing in my head a lot these days. I think because Easter didn’t get to have the same feel it normally does. No community egg hunts, no big brunch or family dinner, no worship service with our church family, no boisterous Hallelujah chorus. But the song rings true, because the feelings and traditions of Easter morning don’t have to be confined to that day. As a Christian the whole idea is that every day we get to experience the gifts of Easter.  

When this quarantine began, we, like so many others trending on social media, decided to make a sourdough starter as yeast was in short supply at most grocery stores. The way that flour and water ferment is fascinating. The whole process makes me fully aware of the intricate way our world works. This thing that was just two ingredients comes alive. It needs to be fed each week, a new bit of flour and water added to the starter to continue the fermentation process and keep it alive.  

For Easter we toyed with what to make and decided a simple loaf of bread might be best. Jesus ate bread and drank wine with his disciples and I think that’s what we’ll do this year too. We read recipe after recipe and learned that the best way to learn how to make a good loaf is to simply keep making them. You may have seen our first loaf on Instagram or Facebook, and it’s safe to say that try number two produced a loaf that is significantly better than the first. 

If you aren’t familiar with Wendell Berry, I suggest you spend some time during this quarantine to read a bit of his work. He is wise. He urges us to live in small communities, to be near to our neighbors and to be acutely aware of the world around us. One of my favorite things he has written is a poem called Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front. A piece of the poem goes like this

So, friends, every day do something

that won’t compute. Love the Lord.

Love the world. Work for nothing.

Take all that you have and be poor.

Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace

the flag. Hope to live in that free

republic for which it stands.

Give your approval to all you cannot

understand. Praise ignorance, for what man

has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.

Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.

He ends the poem with one powerful sentence. Practice resurrection. This Easter let us practice resurrection rather than just celebrate it; to see the way the earth practices resurrection in the rebirth of the flowers and the leaves on the trees, the new life in the fermentation bubbles of a sourdough starter. I hope that we can see resurrection all around us this Spring and be reminded daily of the ultimate resurrection. Let’s try to see every morning as Easter morning and continue to live into the joy that accompanies this one special Sunday morning. 

Happy Easter!