Blessing with Bread

Hold a piece of bread in front on you

Master of Scenarios:

What was required for this bread to exist? 

Participants:

The evolution of the universe

Stars, the earth, the biosphere

Plants and fungi

The emergence of our species

Development of agriculture

Cultivation of fire

Invention of ovens

Master of Scenarios:

This particular bread required the scientific and industrial revolutions

Power generation, locomotion, electricity

The grains and flour represent the plant kingdom

The plants are the lungs of the planet

We animals provide carbon dioxide

The plants provide oxygen and nutrients

The sun provides the energy

The yeast that raises the bread represents the fungi kingdom

Plant and fungi in symbiosis

Plants provide fungi with sugars produced by photosynthesis

Fungi provide nutrients that they scavenge from the soil

Plants use fungi to send and receive information and nutrients

Fungi share nutrients with plants in need, like seedlings

Dying trees donate nutrients to their neighbours

(Fungi will return later for the blessing with wine) 

Bread is a ritual object

Symbolising symbiosis and mutualism

Life as an interconnected network of support

We give thanks to those who created this bread

With this bread I acknowledge and appreciate

My naïve caricature of the universe

The interconnectedness of life

My wonder and awe in imagining

Participants:

All is one, as if one

Here and now

On this leading edge of existence

You and Master of Scenarios:

We seek to improve our understanding

Of cosmology and morality

How things are and which things matter

We wish to care for this biosphere

In which we are embedded

And – please, please – we wish to be gentle on this world

Eat a piece of bread