Give Us today Our daily Bread
Now we’re going to start with the notion that “bread” has many forms and many names worldwide. Of course Texas Toast is not the same as a crumbly crouton. Also in the U.S. most of us think. Of a loaf of sliced bread not realizing that prior to Otto Rohwedder’s 12 year effort that came to fruition in 1928 (less than a century ago) sliced bread didn’t come from the store in a plastic bag with red, blue, and yellow dots on it or any other bag for that matter. Because sliced bread per se wasn’t a thing. This of course leads to many questions like how in the world did we make a grilled cheese or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in 1843? Well it’s likely we didn’t. So what did we eat with tomato soup?
Well there are some things this and future generations will never know. However there are somethings we do think we do know about bread. Like we sort of think that bread became a known food thing somewhere around 12,000 years ago most likely when York the cave dweller said “I could really go for a Wooly Mammoth on Rye.” Well maybe not. However it seems that a flat bread is recognized as the first form of bread and records indicate it dates back that far. Now bread has evolved and served many purposes. We might think that bread as a slang term for money was a late 1960’s and early 70’s thing. Wrong again. Bread was actually used as currency during some periods of history which probably was the forerunner of cooking the books?” After graphite became a material used for writing and drawing and before the widespread availability of industrially manufactured rubber, bread was used as an eraser. This of course led to the small student’s explanation to his school teacher—“well.. I have lots of mistakes and my homework is only part done because my dog ate some of it and part of my pencil too.”
Okay let’s move to a bit more current era. In the United States current data indicate that there are somewhere around 100 varieties of bread sold in stores in restaurants, and in specialized bakeries and we eat a lot of it. The latest stats show that every man woman and child consumes around 53 pounds of bread a year. However, fret not. Wheat is the most frequently used grain to make bread and we produce our share and then some. In the late 1990’s and ever since then the state of Kansas alone has produced enough wheat to feed the entire planet. In fact, in 1997 statistics showed that Kansas produced enough wheat to bake 6 loaves of bread for every man woman, and child on the planet. There’s a lot of choosey mothers out there so I doubt if Skippy or Jiff can claim the same.
Okay that’s enough about the bread—how about the “daily?”
In the “Lord’s Prayer”people request their daily bread. Maybe in seeking peace and joy we could focus on being satisfied with having our circumstances be such that we only sought food and other possessions needed to get us through the only day we ever live which of course is today. There are people going hungry and daily bread would be great for them and there are people who have enough bread to provide loaves (and fishes) for everyone on the planet for days and days and days and days (you get the picture. The point is this… there is probably enoughbread out there so that everyone could have some daily and we would probably live fuller lives if we lived each day on what we have instead of trying to collect material things that often grow stale and grow green stuff that only once in a great while turns into a cure for disease. In short perhaps there would be more peace and joy if we appreciated our daily bread and offered to share enough that everyone had a slice.
