'the loving care he gave to that bread'

Pip Wilson has a blog, which has been a helpful blessing to me in more ways than I can say. And now he has a book too (actually one of many). Opening the book at random I came across this (and it touched me):

One man, a Chef in a college community,
striving to meet the needs of young humans,
started to tell me how he baked bread.
And then he started to weep as he told me
of the loving care he gave
to that bread -
to those humans.
Beautiful

The last few weeks for me have contained a big mix of stresses (some good). On the blog, Pip had recommended acknowledging feelings but not being ruled by them. Recognize the fear, paranoia, stress, anger - acknowledge and then realize that the feeling does not have to rule your behaviour. I am sure I am not quite capturing the message but the exercise has been enormously helpful for me the past view weeks - freeing. Certainly helping me to see the world differently.

This is some of what I have been up to.

I don't always feel as clearly but here is the part of the Auden poem I was thinking of.

You need not see what someone is doing
to know if it is his vocation,

you have only to watch his eyes:
a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon

making a primary incision,
a clerk completing a bill of lading,

wear the same rapt expression,
forgetting themselves in a function.

How beautiful it is,
that eye-on-the-object look.

The rest of it is here.