Breaking Bread

Backstory

I have a vivid memory of the occasion when I first fell in love with what I’ve ever since called “real bread.”

It was in the mid 1960s – a long time ago.  I was in the midst of 3 years seminary training in northern New Jersey, and in one of our summer breaks, my wife and I made a road trip in our trusty VW Beetle up into Nova Scotia. (This was yet a few years before we had children.)  Our itinerary took us up to Quebec City, and from there northeast on Route 20 – about a hundred miles close along the south side of the St. Lawrence Seaway, until Rivière-du-Loup, then southeast down into the Atlantic Provinces.

As we paralleled the St, Lawrence, it seemed that to our left, in each small town, was an ornately period-beautiful Roman Catholic church, and to our right, it seemed dozens of small villages and homes where bread was baked in outdoor stone ovens, which we could often see from the road, and available to travelers like us for immediate sale.

We just had to stop and buy a loaf.  It was hot from the oven, and with a hard crust – so we did some quick-local shopping for some fresh butter and a bread knife.  I have few other memories of that trip, except our cutting and eating that bread.  And to this day, I’ve never been able to duplicate that experience of some 60 years ago.

So now to my primary topic – Breaking Bread

Oddly enough, I was in my kitchen, dipping my hand into a bag of quality tortilla chips, and found myself breaking each one before I snacked.  I asked myself, “why am I breaking each in two with my hands, when I could just bite it?”  And “if I were with somebody special, would this have a special meaning?”  And the immediate answer was “Yes.”  Even with some quality tortilla chips!

Somewhere in my (perhaps faulty) memory, there’s a painting of an elderly man alone at his dining table with only a loaf of bread and a knife, praying. 

Bread is known in some places (like our Bible) as “the staff of life.”  Historically, the term has usually referred to something that is essential for survival or sustenance. My own local (and famous beyond Fenton) bakery is named “Crust.” (Half a block from my office. )

Breaking

We often use the term “slicing” for bread.  Which at first isn’t the same as “breaking. Yet each has the general implication of “opening” the bread so that it can be more easily shared and eaten.  That bread loaf in Quebec probably could have been ‘torn’ open, but only by a strong hand.  And so the knife generally does the same thing, though the energy is softer, albeit still sacred.  When I buy a loaf at my bakery, I’m always asked if I want it sliced.  I’ll refuse, because I like to slice it myself at home – with my own knife.¹  Kitchen knives have always had a sacred quality to them (actually most all knives do).

Breaking itself has a sacred purpose.  Cowboys ‘break’ horses, so the horse can be of value to the rancher.  A woman’s hymen is ‘broken’ in order for her to bear children – and in earlier times, guarantee a future for the tribe.²  A ribbon is ceremonially cut at a new store opening, so commerce can begin.  A surgeon uses a knife to open a body for the purpose of healing something gone wrong.  The Sun breaks open the darkness, and opens for us a new day.

When two or more people “break bread” it’s a ritual opening or acknowledgment of relationship and friendship. 

When the old man in the painting, prays and dines alone, the knife and the loaf represent the bi-directional feeding relationship of this elder man with his God.

I begin writing this Newsletter on a Saturday evening, knowing that tomorrow morning, I’ll be in the congregation of my local parish church.³

High Spirituality

My own primary spiritual tradition is Christian, and my ritual tradition is generally within the practices of The Episcopal Church.  Within both the Christian and Jewish traditions and Scriptures, “breaking bread” is high symbolic.  We also know it as The Lord’s Supper.

       I begin writing this Newsletter on a Saturday evening, knowing that in the morning, I’ll be in the congregation of my local parish church

So Tomorrow Morning…

       Our priest, in the center of the service, as she (yes, we have women, called to be priests) recites the holy words, then will hold high (raise to heaven), some baked bread, ritually break it, us.

       (In earlier days when it was a crisp large wafer, you could often hear it crack), symbolic of Christ’s broken body, so that it can be shared (usually with a larger blessed supply) among all of us as “The Body of Christ….” – that special ritual sharing a meal (at the altar/table) with a friend who loves each of us very much.

       The spoken words are called the Consecration, and the breaking itself is called the Fraction.  The sharing is called The Holy Communion.  (The other consecrated sacred element is the wine – also from his broken-for-us body).

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A Healing Act in a Broken World

So “Across the Board” (which is an idiom that means something that can apply to everyone or everything without exception), I’m arguing for Breaking Bread as a powerful ritual feat – a social, psychological, and spiritual act of Healing. 

I’m reminded of the broken Japanese Bowl – Kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold. Broken and repaired with gold, it’s value becomes much higher.

At least in my Christian tradition, a sin forgiven is much more pleasing to our God than any perfect act.⁵  So, Christ on the Cross is akin to humans breaking bread.  (How’s that for a strange synchrony?)  And you don’t even have to go to church.  Just break open to each other – using the ancient symbol of a shared loaf of bread.⁴

So let us Break Broad Together

   – and just possibly bring healing to ourselves, each other, and the world.

Bill McDonald
February 3, 2026

Footnotes

  ¹ The knife we quick-purchased in Quebec was generally what I’d call back then “Kmart variety” – a tightly serrated, simple blade, and a wooden handle painted white.  Back home, I removed the white paint, so I could oil the natural wood.  (I used to do things like that.)  But in later years, upon obtaining an 8-knife block from Chicago Cutlery, which had a quality serrated knife of its own, I finally gave up, sadly, that original one. 

  ² My early and adolescent years were spent growing up among Midwestern farmers.  And the tradition was that farmers had children, “to help work the farm” – thus guaranteeing the “people” of the community and the larger world would be fed.

  ³ I am myself an ordained Episcopal Priest, though for almost 50 years, I’ve had a private practice secular job as a counselor and psychotherapist, with a Social Work license.  But I’ve also done ‘priest work’ in the meantime, from which I’m now technically retired.

   But throughout my life, my worship has been centered in the Eucharist (The Lord’s Supper), the quiet (secret) center of my inner life.

  ⁴ Or maybe a lowly tortilla chip.  And if it’s bread fresh from the oven, have a knife and fresh butter ready at hand.

  ⁵ Hence (in my understanding) our First Commandment (against idolatry or perfection).