Sourdough Focaccia: A Case Study of Love
By Tori E. Owens
Uncontrolling love in the ordinariness of life.
I started making sourdough during the pandemic.
That’s cliché. I know.
Yet, I’m still making sourdough. I’ve moved from loaves to weekly focaccia, sometimes pizza dough, and cinnamon rolls packed with butter, pecans, and bacon when our hearts can stand it.
I’ve made every kind of awful loaf you can possibly imagine—flat, stodgy, no color, hard as a rock, inedible. The dramatic and horrific reveals that post-bake don’t happen much anymore. There’s a reliability and consistency in the parts that make up the whole: real flour (not bromated), water, good olive oil, and chunky sea salt. Profoundly simple. Basic. Unadorned. Ordinary.
More likely, though, there’s a growing consistency…of something…in me.
I’ll get to that.
***
I have been trying to write this essay for weeks.
I’ve read and reread Oord’s book on amipotence.
I’ve sat in the crisp morning air listening to the busy leaf-rustling activity in the trees and the gorgeous birdsong overhead.
It is not for lack of inspiration nor carving out time to allow ideas to gestate nor just being still for a moment to free up the space for the rising up nor even sitting at the laptop.
Rather, how do you reflect and write authentically on uncontrolling divine love without wanting…maybe even needing to control the outcome of what you write?
***
I baked yesterday morning.
On bake days, I allow for an hour of further rise time after transferring the focaccia dough to a large well-oiled cast iron skillet. Thirty minutes of rising after its relocation to the heavy pan, then thirty more minutes after you’ve poured more olive oil on top, dimpling the dough with your fingertips while pushing up fresh air bubbles, and a final salt.
I stepped into the kitchen to begin that familiar process.
On the wooden cutting board, the thin tea towel atop the dough was lifted above the bowl rim and draped down the sides. The best rise yet! I could just make out the big soft air bubbles beneath the material. I gently pulled back the towel not wanting to disturb this marvelous creation of ordinary things and chemistry and life.
What had been happening throughout the night?
What a wonder!
***
It’s much easier to not do the obvious bad things that interfere with the well-being of others. Most of us agree on what those things are: murder, stealing, cheating, lying, abusing, etc. Think the Ten Commandments as a springboard.
It’s much more difficult to not do what you believe to be the good or “right” thing that still interferes with the well-being of others.
There is no list for this. That’s what makes it so hard.
I have so many personal examples from which to choose. If I were texting this, I would insert various emojis to relay my sarcasm: the sweating tooth grinning face, the wink, the hands clapping, the crooked face laughing through tears.
Here goes:
• That time last week, I yelled at Finn, the goldendoodle, for excitedly rolling in deer poop when he was just being a dog, doing and smelling of dog things, when I was just frustrated I had to consider taking the time to bathe him post-walk.
• This summer when I was ticked after weed eating in nature and getting stung by yellow jackets more times than I could count because I disturbed their nest but was too busy listening to music and singing to pay attention and honor where I really was.
• Serving as manager of a domestic violence shelter, having an immediate flash of judgment about a client self-sabotaging the very day they were supposed to move to a transitional housing facility rather than understanding how deeply afraid and anxious they were about moving, trusting new advocates, and failing in their new program.
• In therapy, assuming what someone needs rather than just asking them what they need or dream about or wish or want or hope for or envision. What are their priorities? What are their abilities? What is success for them? What does it mean to be happy? What does self-care look like? What are their stressors? Not what I believe they should be, but what they really are.
• In the day to day of living in a broader community (politically and globally), the times I’ve had an opinion about what someone believes, why they believe the way they do, how they got there, or who they are as a person based on who they vote for, the programs they support, or the signs they have in their yard.
• My personal theological beliefs—i.e., my own cultural, sexual, philosophical, psychological, spiritual, environmental, anthropological, political, practical interpretations of a very long, long line of particular and personal interpretations of the varied, possible, and intentionally curated first-hand accounts of the life of this one person, Jesus—being the “right” way to believe and excluding others because of it.
• Every day, mostly with my family, in some small or big way, the depression, or anxiety, or emotional reactivity that negatively tells me I must take control of all that I can and love, because if I don’t, it will sling off the rails, or spiral, or end up somewhere I cannot anticipate or reverse or turn back from or end up unfindable somewhere in no man’s land.
I could easily keep going.
I have endless examples of the negative impact and conflict created by my “right” expectations, “good” assumptions, and knowing what’s “best” have on my relationships, environment, and world.
***
Sliding the focaccia dough into the pan, I try not to do too much.
Don’t poke or prod it. Be gentle. Don’t flatten it. Let it be.
Same as most baking and cooking: less is more.
***
There is a risk in letting things be.
Being human, I always carry with me the belief I can control the outcome of most of my immediate world—where the grass grows and how high, whether my dog is leashed or listening to me in order to prevent poop rolls on walks, what symptoms a mentally healthy person should or should not have, what goals or purpose someone should have in life, who passes or fails the political litmus test in my mind, how the relationship with my loved ones should or shouldn’t look or play out, who is or isn’t most Christ-like based on what they do or believe, and even how the sourdough focaccia turns out.
With the best of intentions, I can box people in or leave them out, I can remember rules more easily than grace, I can become so focused on the outcome that I lose my way, I can tick all the boxes and still miss the point, I can believe something to be important for all the wrong reasons, I can hang the Ten Commandments for all to see and still make distinctions about who actually is my neighbor.
I can so easily forget to begin, to be steeped in, and end with love.
***
So, every weekend, I bake bread.
Bio: Tori E. Owens is a full-time therapist, a part-time doctoral student in Open and Relational Theology, and most definitely an everyday mystic attempting to blend it all together in such a way that it might be a little healing for someone.
OORD’S DRABBLE* RESPONSE
Tori Owens is a beautiful writer, and her essay on amipotence and sourdough wonderfully showcases her creativity. I especially loved her list of what it means to do good. Amipotence is God doing good—but in a uniquely divine way. Since God lacks a physical body, divine action differs from ours, yet not so drastically that goodness becomes incomprehensible. Tori’s use of sourdough as a metaphor beautifully illustrates how love doesn’t require control. Just as we cannot fully control what we bake but still care deeply for it, so too God cannot control what God loves, yet remains wholly devoted.
For more on Oord’s view on God as an incorporeal spirit, see this blog article.
* A drabble is an essay exactly 100 words in length.