Warren Lee Cohen

Yes, I love to make bread.
I love to combine flour, water, salt and leaven.

I love the alchemy of how earthly substance combines with water; of how air is created by the leavening culture and how at last fire completes the transformation from four simple ingredients into whole loaves.

These are the staff of life.
I like the feel of the dough as I kneed it with my hands, how when I push it, it pushes back against me.

My life meets its life.
We shape one another.

But how, I wonder, am I the bread of life?
In what ways do I nurture the life in myself and in others?

Perhaps it is in those special meetings in which I knead the being of another and equally allow her to knead the essence of me.
I meet you.
You meet me.
Life!

There is a Japanese saying:
Friends eat together from the same bowl.

Let us then companions be.
Let us eat from the same loaf.
Kneading, forming, baking community.

Bake bread. Break it and share it out.

~Warren Lee Cohen