An Unhurried Life
By Ana Mullan
(From the October - December 2019 issue of VOX)
The sense of smell has the power to transport us back in time. Maybe for a few seconds, we go back to being children and remember an event, an outing or something nice that we used to eat.
Our sense of smell can also give us a feeling of coziness, of welcome. It is lovely to arrive to a place and smell the aroma of baked goods. Personally, I love the smell of freshly baked bread. Back home in Buenos Aires, it was my father’s task to buy fresh bread each day at the nearby bakery so we would have bread for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
As much as I love bread and love cooking, I am not a good baker and for a long time, the idea of making my own bread was very daunting to me. But one day I discovered a simple way of making bread that suits me perfectly; it is called “no knead bread.” It only takes four ingredients, flour, salt, yeast and water. You mix the ingredients in a bowl, cover it and there you are!
Now the next part is what makes it work: time. And we are not talking about one or two hours, but between 12 to 18 hours! Then eventually it will be ready to bake.
All of the above made me think about how we live our lives in the 21st Century and what yeast has to teach me about it. It made me think about hurry and busyness.
My observation is that most of us tend to live in a hurry. We never seem to have enough time for all the things we think we have to do. For me, hurry implies panic. It might help us to accomplish what we want to do but it can leave us with the feeling of been absent from the task in front of us.
Even in our heads, we can be in a hurry. Have you ever had a conversation while your mind was already thinking about the next task? We can fail to be present to the person in front of us or to the task at hand. But most importantly, we can fail to be present to ourselves; to how we really are. We accomplish many things while constantly being ruled by anxiety, worry and fear.
Being in a hurry and being busy are not the same thing. The yeast is extremely busy for 12 to 18 hours; it is working with the flour, salt and water to bring about the growth in the dough that will then transform it into bread. However, the yeast is not in a hurry; if it were it would not produce the bread that it is supposed to. My job is to leave it to work and not to interrupt the process, to trust the method and to be surprised at the end.
Jesus was not in a hurry
“Jesus was busy but fully present to each person that He met.”
Jesus, the master of life, whom I have been following for many years, compared the kingdom of God to yeast. He was trying to teach His disciples and us, how God works in a way that is totally countercultural. He is never in a hurry or panic. Jesus was busy but fully present to each person that He met.
When the leader of a synagogue pleaded with Him to go to see His daughter because she was extremely sick, Jesus agreed. But on His way, He realised that somebody had touched His garment and He stopped, asking who it was.
Like most of us, I think I would be saying, “Jesus, there is a girl who is sick, probably dying. We have no time to ask who touched you.” The disciples seemed to be following the same train of thought as I; Jesus was not prioritising things in the right way.
But Jesus acknowledged the person who touched Him. He found out who she was and took the time to call her “daughter.” He told her, “Your faith has healed you. Go in peace.”
In the meantime, the little girl had died. So what now? He should have been in a hurry. He should have gone faster. None of that seemed to affect Him. Within Jesus there was the deep assurance that He and the Father were working together. There was no need to panic or to be anxious. The timing was right, He brought the girl back to life and those in the room were astonished.
The more we allow Jesus to teach us to live life as God intended, the more we will become people who will live with a rhythm that is inviting to others. We will not be perfect but we will be people who will discern when our hearts are rushing or frantic. We will go back to Jesus and allow Him to teach us how to live well.
We will know how much to do and when to do it; we will find that God has given us enough time to accomplish what we need to do each day. We will be present to others and value people by doing that. We will know that God is going to give us what we need for each task. We will be like the yeast, busy but never in a hurry.
We will be like the warm and welcoming aroma of freshly baked bread.
Ana Mullan is from Argentina but has lived in Ireland for 35 years, the last 18 in Dublin. She is an artist, a spiritual director, retreat facilitator and an enthusiastic grandmother.
