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Cultivating Wild Patience
- Heidi Holliday
- 7 days ago
- 4 min read
By Heidi Holliday, Executive Director
These days, I find that I need rituals, but it has been hard to quiet my mind for these sacred practices unless my body is moving too. I find myself drawn to active meditation - hiking, kayaking, fossil hunting, and the reassuring flow of baking bread.
I was gifted my sourdough starter (“Dough-phelia”) the week that I started at the Center last February. I laughed at myself, taking on a new hobby and a new organization in one week. But the ritual of bread-making attunes me to the food I nourish my family with, and the love I bake it with. I’ve become deeply attentive to the ratios of liquid and flour, and the way that even the weather impacts the final product.
Sourdough requires intention. At least 24 hours in advance of when I need the bread, I begin the process. I feed the starter before bed, and leave it on the counter overnight. As I sleep, the microorganisms bubble and bloom, doubling in size overnight. Sourdough, as you likely know, is a living food. The wild yeast that naturally exists on fruit, flowers, tree bark, and in the air finds a perfect home in the sourdough starter. In other words - sourdough is another way of converting nature’s bounty into digestible, delicious food.
As I mix the ingredients - starter, flour, water, salt - I think about what is bubbling up in my life. What am I feeding with my time and attention? Just as the quality of ingredients impacts the loaf of bread, the attention and care we pour into our lives, communities, and work impact the outcomes. If we collect wild yeast in a heavily polluted environment, the bread will not thrive. The same is true with us.
Patience is a crucial ingredient in the making of bread. You can’t rush the process, or you risk the dough falling flat, or not baking properly. The dough must sit. The dough must be stretched and folded. The dough must sit. The dough must be stretched and folded. The process is repeated.
As I stretch the dough I think about my own growth edges. Where do I need to stretch my leadership and my comfort level? Where do I need to relax?
So often at the Center we learn directly from the wisdom of nature. In the baking of bread, it can almost feel one step removed - the yeast is already out of the wild. It’s cultivated. However, the yeast is still teaching us. When it is hot, the yeast bubbles quickly, full of energy. When it is cold, it slows down. If it’s stormy and the barometric pressure is low, the dough rises as fast as the cumulonimbus clouds on the horizon.
“A wild patience has taken me this far,” my favorite poet Adrienne Rich writes. What does it mean to cultivate “a wild patience”? Wild patience is not inactive. Wild patience is tending to the growth and development happening under the surface, attentive to the community’s needs. Wild patience is knowing that the fruits of our work may not be visible yet, but will be soon. I see this wild patience in our SINGs - working across the country to offer a spiritual home for wisdom seekers in nature. I see this wild patience in our staff and board, working to change narratives and practices around the relationships we cultivate with the more than human world.
Sourdough shows me how to have wild patience in this impatient time. A learned knowledge of when to act, and when to wait. No two processes are exactly alike. No two ovens are the same. To be successful, you must develop an intuitive understanding of what the dough needs - more time, more heat, more hydration.
Finally, when the process of bulk fermentation is complete, the bread is formed and baked. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I prefer not to score the dough. I like to see the organic way it bursts open. Examining its fault lines can feel like reading tea leaves or finding images in the clouds - what is the bread telling me today? What am I learning?
Often I find one of the many joys of baking lies in sharing – it’s a way to break down barriers and to deepen relationships with neighbors and friends. Across cultures, time, and language, the act of breaking bread together is a sacred act rooted in religious and cultural traditions. Increasingly, the social cohesion that results from sharing food together is firmly documented in psychology: sharing the same food results in the release of neurotransmitters associated with bonding and trust, and strengthens relationships.
We invite you to break bread with the Center at our Spring Walks in LA and Texas, with me at our mindful kayaking experience in Texas, and at Payton’s upcoming speaking engagements. In doing so, we hope that you discover rituals that bring you meaning and joy, and deepened relationships with our broader community.
