July — The Day of Abundance
“Knead joyfully, granddaughter, you don’t want that bread to be heavier than a rock,” grandmother teased.
All the Caretakers were gathered at their house to bake together for the Day of Abundance. They had started early in the morning and the aroma of fresh bread, right out of the oven, filled the whole house. Under their diligent hands, the first grains of harvest yielded their goodness, transformed into an elastic and malleable dough that was lighter than air.
Masterful fingers kneaded and shaped it into a million different shapes, crescents, wreaths, boules, baguettes, rolls, and, to the absolute delight of the children, little bread critters. Growing up, Aifa had her fill of plump bread chickens and overstuffed bunny rabbits; this activity was the realm of the children, and the little ones engaged in it with glee at a separate table, scattering flour everywhere and expressing their creativity. Their productions, which varied from mostly symbolic and endearingly misshapen to very crafty, found their places on the baking sheet, where they were generously bathed in glaze, and after that went into the oven, in a process that almost looked like they were making pottery.
“Are you sad that you can’t make dough chickens anymore?” granddaughter teased again, grabbing a handful of dough and offering it to Aifa.
She was in great spirits, more than usual, the girl was surprised to notice; she smiled and shook her head.
“I am too old to play with dough, doyenne.”
“Oh, you are never too old to play, dear! Do what gives you joy, that’s what life is all about!”
She looked around to assess the state of their activity. All around her, trays of fresh baked breads were waiting, ready to be placed in baskets for the communal activities. The bread varieties ran the gamut: from rye to spelt no grain was missing, as tradition required. All grains had to be baked into bread and then taken out into the fields, to bask once more in the warmth of the sun. When noonday passed, they were brought back to the Hearth, so that the people could share. Legend said that on this day, no matter how many people partook in the bread of the harvest, the baskets never ran empty.
As she shaped the last batch of dough into an elaborately braided circle and blended its ends in such a way that nobody could tell where the patch was, Aifa’s grandmother uttered the traditional blessing out loud but softly, so that only the people closest to her could hear.
“As the earth blessed us with this abundant harvest, may the spirit bless the work of our hands. As this bread rises, so may everything that is good into our lives rise.”
Aifa didn’t know why, exactly, but these words her grandmother spoke softly every year always touched her heart in a way that brought tears to her eyes. Her voice was muffled by emotion when she responded.
“And may we find wisdom.”
Grandmother finished her bread wreath, glazed it and sprinkled it with sesame and poppy seeds and placed it in the oven with measured, reverent movements.
“Do you think it’s the Twins, doyenne?” Grandmother looked at Aifa, puzzled by the question. The latter clarified. “Who refill the baskets with bread. Do you think it’s the Twins?”
Grandmother put the bread paddle down, thoughtfully, and paused to carefully craft her answer regarding her point of view.
“What do you think?” she turned to Aifa, looking intently into her granddaughter’s eyes, as if she wanted to get her answer from them, and not her mouth.
Aifa was going to mention that she saw the Twins turn into water, but it sounded so crazy that she reconsidered and shrugged to express the fact that she didn’t really know.
“I have been on this earth for more years that I care to count, and in all this time I learned two things: the first is that nothing is impossible, and the second is that you should never assume anything. Let me present to you the following scenario. Suppose that you have suddenly been brought into existence, from nowhere, and all you see around you is complete darkness; suppose that somebody told you that very soon a giant ball of fire will rise from underneath the earth and light up the sky. Remember, you don’t know anything about existence at all. Can you describe to me your reactions?”
“Well, first I would be afraid that I was going to die,” Aifa started.
She loved these conversations with her grandmother. No two of them were ever alike, and they always revolved around topics that boggled the mind. That was done in order to bring some mindfulness and perspective into her life, she said.
“Very good,” grandmother nodded. “What else?”
“Then I would look for a place to hide, to maybe not get killed by the ball of fire,” Aifa continued her hypothetical end of times scenario.
“Somewhere under ground, or in a cave, maybe?” grandmother embroidered on the hypothetical.
“Yes.”
“What next?”
“Well, I would sit in there and wonder why nothing is happening, and then I would think it was all a lie.”
“Go on,” grandmother smiled.
“And then, the fire ball would come out, and I could see some light coming from it, and I would try to crawl even deeper into the crevice, so that it doesn’t touch me and burn me alive.”
“Great! Now, how long would you stay there?” grandmother asked.
“Probably until the ball of fire disappeared.”
“When you would do what?”
“Go out, see what, if anything, remained intact.”
“And what would you learn?”
“Well, I couldn’t see very well in the dark, so it would be really hard to tell, I wouldn’t have any way of knowing what was there before, in order to compare it with what was left.”
“This is getting better by the second,” grandmother thought, hardly able to suppress her laughter. She kept a straight face while she encouraged Aifa to continue.
“Then, I wouldn’t know that the fire ball would be coming back, because nobody told me, so it would surprise me the next morning.”
“And what would you do next?”
“I would be terrified and run as fast as I could to reach shelter before the light turned me to ashes.”
“So, you would spend the next day in your little hole in the ground.”
“Yes,” Aifa acknowledged.
“How many times, do you think, you would go through this process before you tried to learn more about the fire ball?”
“I don’t know, I would be too busy trying to find ways to stay alive.”
“Just give it a guess. A year? Ten years? The rest of your life?” grandmother pinned her with curious eyes.
“I honestly don’t know,” Aifa said.
“Just pick a number. Remember, this time period is measured in repetitions. Every time a repetition occurs, you see it leaves things exactly the same. You start noticing there is a pattern.”
“I don’t know,” Aifa struggled. “Ten years?”
“Ten years!” grandmother gasped, shocked. “You would spend ten years in a hole in the ground, fearing the same thing over and over again!”
“As I said, I don’t know,” Aifa back paddled on her assessment.
“Never mind the time period,” grandmother said, disappointed. “What would you do after that?”
“Aahm… I don’t know. I would get bored, I guess. Of course, during all of those years I would live my life at night, find something there to do,” Aifa continued.
“Interesting,” grandmother thought, but she didn’t interrupt the girl, because she wanted to hear more about it.
“I would learn everything there is to learn about the night. What creatures are out, how to see better in the dark, how to find food and shelter,” the girl went on, describing her mental picture.
“Which you would enjoy in your burrow, no doubt,” grandmother tried very hard not to crack a smile. “Any art forms?”
“It would probably have to be music,” Aifa frowned. “It would be kind of hard to see a painting in the dark.”
“I got the complete picture,” grandmother interrupted. “An entire civilization adapted to live in the dark. Now suppose that that person who told you about the giant fire ball, told you that it would come up to warm and nurture the earth and all of its creatures, and in the light you could see the world around you, in bright colors you can’t even imagine, and it was all wonderful, but only for as long as the sun was out. What would you do then?”
“I would spend all day in the sunshine,” Aifa said.
“And when the sun went down?” grandmother smiled.
“I would be afraid that it won’t come up again. I would be afraid of the creatures that crawl in the dark, that they would hurt me,” Aifa said.
“Would it occur to you to stay up at night and go explore that crevice in the ground, that we discussed earlier, in complete darkness?”
“Why on earth would I want to do such a thing?” Aifa jumped involuntarily at the thought.
“How long would it take for you to be curious enough to learn something about it? Wait, don’t tell me, ten years?” grandmother said.
“Maybe never,” Aifa replied.
“That is even sadder than I thought,” grandmother mumbled. “Now, go back to your previous scenario, and suppose that after ten years had passed, you had finally decided to come out into the light, and realized it won’t hurt you. There are many people out there, who lived in the sunlight their whole lives, and sadly, you know close to nothing about it. What would you do?”
“Try to learn as fast as I can, to catch up with them,” Aifa said.
“But you would be ten years behind everybody, it would take you a while to catch up,” grandmother said.
“Yes, it would,” Aifa replied.
“So, you would think that the ten years you spent in the dark were wasted, then?” grandmother inquired.
“At first, maybe,” Aifa whispered, very softly because she didn’t feel comfortable contradicting her grandmother.
“Do tell,” the latter encouraged her.
“Well,” Aifa started, “see, doyenne, remember how I said that if I were to live in the sunlight from the beginning, I would never explore that crevice? That’s what all of the people I would find there would do too, it’s human nature. They would have no desire to do something unpleasant and potentially perilous when they are easily provided with everything they need. I assume they would have laws against going there, too. I would probably be the only person who really knew the truth about it, who could see in the dark, and learned to appreciate the richness of life inside it. I would be the only person there who would not be afraid.”
“And this, granddaughter, brings us full circle to the start of our conversation, and the reason I learned not to assume anything, and never stop learning. You asked me about the refilling of the bread baskets. What would bring you more comfort, knowing that somebody is always there to fill the baskets, so that they never run empty, or experiencing the mystery that the very essence of bread replenishes itself endlessly, because it is its nature?”
“But it is not about comfort, doyenne, it is about which explanation is true.”
“Wouldn’t it disappoint you, if it was not the one you think? Wouldn’t you want to dismiss it as unacceptable or evil?”
“How can it be evil if it is the truth?” Aifa replied. “What do you believe?”
“The one and only answer I can give you right now is that I don’t know. Besides, why do you assume that you have to choose one or the other? Maybe it’s both, maybe it’s sometimes one, sometimes the other, maybe it’s neither.”
“What, you mean like night and day at the same time?”
“Boggles the mind, doesn’t it? You are not going to tell me that is not possible, just because you never experienced it, are you? The truth is that reason can only carry you as far as you can see. There is a difference between believing and knowing, granddaughter. The things you know, you never doubt again, but there is no end to the things you don’t know, they spring from nothing, to bewilder you, just when you thought you had everything figured out, and that, I believe, is the very nature of the divine.”
She jumped, alerted by the scent wafting from the oven, to take the braided wreath out, not a moment too soon.
She examined it, critically, and gave it a pass. The woven bread circle was perfect, and no matter how long one tried, one couldn’t find a beginning or end.
