bread of life

Bread must be one of the most universal foods in the world. The idea of putting together ground up grain of some sort and adding water and sometimes letting it rise is to be found in most places.
These days we can get bread very easily - a trip to most local newsagents or supermarkets will yield a plastic wrapped, sliced loaf. We can even make bread at home very rapidly these days - with super-rapid yeasts and bread machines flour and water and yeast can be transformed in about an hour and a half - although it does come out much nicer if you have time for the three hour cycle!
Not so long ago I was experimenting with natural yeasts. Instead of buying yeast you simply mix together organic flour and pure water and leave it for a while. Every so often you stir it, check it and add some more flour to feed it and if you get it right (and if you have no hostile mould invading) you end up with some starter. It is a very slow process and the bread you make from it is slow and dense bread - it is a sourdough, rising for eight hours each time and it can be left for days to provide a loaf with a strong, yeasty, pungecy - which I must say was too much for me.
I like this idea in relation to Jesus offering us himself as bread for the world. When you make a sourdough starter (the stuff with the yeast in) you usually use most of it but reserve a bit for use in the next batch - that way you always have some yeasty stuff to start from. This idea of proving the dough and of continuity says something to me about the temporal and the eternal (you cannot push this too far) - but the idea that God feeds us, proves us and helps us rise at every Eucharist and yet still there is more of God and always will be (in so many senses).
The Eucharist is not a finite act and it is certainly not a rapid-bake cycle - it is a slow proving. Week after week, month after month, year upon year. God changes and moves us even when we are not aware of it. God moulds us and waits for God's often slow action to work through us - knowing there will always be more.
Breadmaking is not a perfect metaphor but it says a lot to us about universality but also about different paths, patience and reward - not to mention basic sustenance and stuff of life.