​The Kingdom of Heaven is like…

When I was a child, my mother kept a sourdough starter—this quart-sized mason jar of yucky-looking, beige goo. I didn’t exactly understand how the jar, which took up precious shelf space in the refrigerator and got pushed to the back of the fridge over the course of the week, related to the two loaves of bread that she baked every seventh day. But I knew that it was worth keeping, because something in that jar produced the most amazing breakfast bread. All you needed was a pat of butter to melt over the warm bread, and you were fortified for the day.
 
My job wasn’t to feed the starter, or leaven the dough, or bake the bread. My role in this operation was to take the second loaf, still warm enough to sweat in the ziplock bag, to a neighbor. I don’t know how Mom would do the choosing of which house was in need of the bread, but she did. Then she’d call for me, and I knew it was time to begrudgingly get on my shoes and traipse across the street to go for a visit with one of the neighbors and deliver a loaf of bread.
 
Mom built a leavened neighborhood for my childhood—one abundant, generous loaf at a time.