Unlike computers, we can and often do learn in a manner which requires time. We come to know a thing by living with it. We read a book and slowly discover that we love a character or don’t trust them; we live year after year with a child or spouse and come to recognize them for who they are, to find before us a unique individual, not just an extension of our initial impressions, desires, fears, or expectations.
This is one of the ways in which we come to know God, not just as facts and dogma, but as a living being, closer to us than we are to ourselves; yet, beyond all comprehension.
Our learning in this manner is akin to action of yeast in bread. Yeast is not just something in bread which remains distinct. Rather it is united to the bread as it transforms it through a process of ‘eating’. The dough is made bread by being permeated, interpenetrated, transformed by yeast, not just by having some yeast ‘in’ it. The where of the yeast is ‘everywhere’. Further, it is kneading which facilitates this process
Similarly, when we love someone, when we know someone or something in a truly personal way, we are transformed by that love, by that knowledge. Such truth is not just an indifferent fact, but has penetrated every part of the soul and makes it living bread. Thus we grow into knowledge, into love, into life.
Perhaps even in our dying, there may be something we are growing into.
The Kingdom of Heaven is like the yeast a woman used in making bread. Even though she put only a little yeast in three measures of flour, it permeated every part of the dough
Matthew 13:33
