Krista Tippet's third On Being Foundations podcast is on the concept of time: different types of time, the true nature of time, the difference between chronos and kairos time. I invite you to take a listen.

Today, I want to focus on an idea Tippet mentions from the professor of International Peacebuilding, John Paul Lederach.

Lederach talks about the image of "critical yeast" in his conflict resolution work across the globe.

Lederach says that when we think about how change happens, we often think of moments when critical mass arises: massive protests stop leaders from declaring martial law, fearless young people stand in front of tanks in Tiananmen Square, marchers walk across the Edmund Pettus bridge to fight for civil rights.

But Lederbach states that preceding those moments of critical mass he often sees what he calls “critical yeast,” defined as "small groups of people in unlikely combinations in a new quality of relationship." Small groups of people who come together, often despite differences, who join forces to push the arc of the moral universe toward justice and rightness and goodness.

Lederbach notices as well that it is groups of "critical yeast" kind of people who tend to be around after big upheavals to help society mend, heal and find its way again.

This podcast reminded me of where we find ourselves in the arc of history right now. Still recovering from a global pandemic, watching wars rage, and feeling unmoored by a volatile, divisive election in our nation that has left families and friendships fractured and many people reeling and fearful of the future.

I loved Tippet's invitation to all of us to be "critical yeast" in a world which emphasizes what is big and showy. I know, as a baker of bread, that yeast is almost invisible, insignificant, and lifeless until it is dropped into the right conditions where it can spring to life and join forces with more yeast fungi and expand, grow and push at the margins until something bubbly and beautiful and life-giving emerges.

With that image in mind, consider a few questions:

• In your life, your family, your neighborhood, your workplace, your place of worship, your community, how can you be "critical yeast" these days?

• What unlikely people might you join forces with to bring life and hope to others, to the earth, or to other living creatures we share the earth with?

There is so much dis-ease spreading wildly right now. So much hatred and mean-spiritedness, vitriol and violence. The temptation is to bolt the door, pull the shades and retreat. At least it is for me.

But the far greater, generative, life-giving move is to choose -- even if we are scared -- to be "critical yeast" in a world starving for bread crumbs of human kindness.

I would like to be "critical yeast" in my community.

Who's in?

Photo by Anton on Unsplash