Bread That Remembers

by Joseph J. Juknialis

​A long time ago
​People had not yet forgotten
That bread always remembers
What is spoken in its presence.
Then everyone knew that if goodness was spoken
Among those gathered around the bread
Then those who ate that bread would be blessed;
And if it was selfish and evil that was spoken
Why then those who ate the bread would be cursed
With cold hearts and hardened spirits.
 
There were in those days two brothers.
Many thought them to be twins
for they looked so much alike
not only in appearance
but in what they did
and how they treated others.
However though they were born in the same year,
they were not twins,
for the older had been born in January
and the younger in December of that very same calendar.
Their mother had died in giving birth to the younger,
and so the two brothers
had been raised by their kind and loving father –
each reflecting his goodness and gentleness. Perhaps that is why they were thought to be twins
by the many who knew them.
 
One day in early spring,
after they had grown to young manhood,
yet before either of them had married and left home,
their father grew seriously ill.
Before the seeds of that season had sprouted with life
the father died,
leaving his sons, then, to depend upon their own goodness.
Together the two brothers came before the judge of that land
So that the father’s will might be unsealed
in order that each might receive
what the father had promised.
The reading of the will
revealed equal portions of life for each of the sons.
Because the father had loved them both,
without favouritism of any sort,
each of the sons received half of the farm
on which he had been raised.
 
At this, the elder son grew angry and resentful.
He had deserved the greater share,
he insisted,
for he was the older of the two;
and with that he turned away from the judge
and from his bother
and left them both
alone
in that chamber of justice.
 
When the older brother arrived home
he sat in anger
at the very table where he and his brother
together with their father
had shared meals
and love
and life.
There at that table,
he allowed his anger to unravel more and more.
Shattering the gentle stillness which had long been a family member,
He spewed curses and hatred
At the embarrassed and loney silence.
Suddenly
he stood
pounded the table with yet more violence
and left.
In all of his anger
what the elder brother had never noticed
was the bread on the table.
 
Shortly thereafter the younger brother came home.
Having found the elder brother gone,
he sat and waited amid the stained silence.
When the elder brother never returned
the younger brother ate his evening meal alone.
in the torn darkness of that night.
There he ate the bread which had heard the elder’s anger,
the bread that remembered.
That night the heart of the younger brother
grew cold and hardened,
scarred with the same selfishness and hatred
which lived within the elder.
 
The next day’s morning son
Was the sole source of light in the brother’s home.
The older brother did return
but without the gentleness and love which once were his.
So also did the younger brother live
without his father’s gifts,
twinned again,
though now in hatred
as once they had been in goodness and peace.
 
During those weeks of summer,
the entire countryside came to recognize the change
which had come about between the two brothers.
Their hearts quietly wept in sadness
Over that tragic occurrence.
 
Somewhere in the middle of that summer
the wise one of the village
invited the inhabitants of the surrounding countryside
to a common meeting.
On a warm summer evening
all but the two brothers
came to the village square in the center of the town.
Men and women gathered
children along;
strangers were welcomed.
 
There on the table in the center of their gathering,
was placed a single loaf of bread.
When it seemed that all had arrived,
the one who was wise came before them
and explained why (s)he had called them together.
If  it is true that the bread always remembers, she said,
then perhaps we can bring blessings of gentleness and love
once again.
She then invited all those who had come
to tell stories of the goodness
which once lived in the hearts
of both the elder and the younger brother,
and to tell those stories in the presence of the bread –
the bread that always remembers.
 
One by one, then, they came forward
and stood before the bread
and before their neighbours.
there to tell their own story
of how they had been blessed with life
by the two brothers.
 
Many stories were told that night
all in the presence of the bread.
There were stories of how the two had once
taken in a stranger who was sick and lost,
and other stories of the time a neighbour had broken a leg
at the beginning of the planting season
and how the brothers worked nights
by moonlight
to plant his fields
after they had planted their own
in order that the neighbour might have crops to harvest
come autumn.
Others told stories of how the brothers
had shared half of their own harvest with a neighbour
when his barn burned
and, with the barn, all of that season’s labours as well.
 
All evening long villagers and countryfolk
stood in front of everyone
and, in the presence of that lone loaf of bread,
told stories of the gentleness and goodness
which once had made a home among the brothers.
When the last story had been told,
well past the time when many of the children had fallen asleep
in the arms of their parents,
all those who had gathered
made their way to their homes
and to the healing sleep which awaited them.
 
After all had left
the wise one who had gathered them all
stood alone at the table with the bread.
There in the summer silence of that night
she picked up the loaf of bread,
placed it in a sack,
and began her journey to the home of the two brothers.
She arrived just before the sun,
when the nighttime had not yet begun to shed
her skin of darkness.
Her deed was simple and quickly done –
to leave the bag which held the bread at the door
and depart.
 
As she made her way home
amid the early showers of morning sun,
she realized she was not tired
though she had not slept the entire night.
Instead she felt within herself
a rising hope of life,
led by the faint possibility
that perhaps the two brothers,
when they found the bread,
 
might just offer each other that bread
and with it
all of the goodness and gentleness and love
it remembered.

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