Dear Friends,
This week our readings continue, as they have in recent weeks, to draw our attention to our bellies. Yes….more talk about bread! But truly, of course, the focus is beyond our ‘bellies’ and more about our ‘gut’…that deeper core place within us that is not to be satisfied by a slice of bread…or even the whole loaf. I saw a delightful sign the other day
which speaks to these readings in very few words: “Without the Bread of Life, we are toast!”
We live in a time when, despite a plentitude of food on the planet, people continue to literally, physically, starve to death, It is inexcusable, that we who have managed to walk on the moon and send a rover gallivanting around planet Mars, haven’t found a way to feed the hungry and nourish the poor on planet Earth. A theology of judgment would say: “we’ll have to pay for that someday.” But, I believe that we are “paying for it today”. We are paying for it by living with the awareness of how much we have and how little we share. We pay for it when we live with or watch the news and witness vicariously violence in our streets and neighborhoods and around the globe. And, of course, as with our readings on ‘bread’….it’s not just about the physical hunger, but rather about the spiritual hunger so rampant in our world today. Just as physical hunger causes people to languish and eventually die, spiritual hunger likewise drives people to languish and/or to lash out. Like physical hunger, spiritual hunger causes us to lose focus, to lose the capacity to make a difference in our own lives let alone the lives of others. Often we are blind to our own needs let alone the needs of others. That blindness ‘feeds’ the kind of spiritual hunger that is palpable and operative in our world today.
Everywhere we look and listen, we hear people searching for ‘more’. Yes, that need for more is often expressed in terms of the need for increased concrete human services and response to specific physical needs. But deeper than that this the cry for a “more” that feeds the soul, so that after the ‘loaves of bread’ have been delivered, the spirit of each of us can grow and develop. So that we nourish our own hearts and our world as well. Which brings us full circle back to our gospel in which Jesus proclaims that he is the ‘living bread” his “flesh for the life of the world”. We are called to be bread for others…and to put our flesh to work for the life of our world. Jesus did not come among us to die, but rather to show us how to live and to tend to the body and soul of
of one another. Tomorrow is the 1st anniversary of the death of our community member and poet, Mary Rice. In her memory we share with you this piece from her poem, “Communion”. Her words invite us to deeper reflection on Jesus and his presence among us that we “may have life.”
This is my body
Jesus said, all those years ago,
of the broken bread.
The angel of death did not
pass over him, nor the torture
of empire.
Hoc est enim corpus meum
priests intoned for so many years,
standing beneath an image of the crucifixion they still require,
lest people forget the pain and suffering, as if we need an image
to remind us, life being what it is, lest people rejoice in the
communion of the body and the spirit.
iv
Before Jesus, there was
Demeter, goddess of the grain,
whose pain was separation,
whose presence was in the bread
her followers shared, celebrating
the mystery of life.
Do this in memory of me
Jesus said, the transformation,
the sharing, the abundance.
Take and eat, all of you.
I have come that you
might have life.
-- Mary Rice
We invite you to come and be nourished at The Spirit of Life! Through our time of prayer and sharing together, we work together to grow in our self-understanding and in our relationships with God and with God’s people. We celebrate the gift of our faith and the responsibility that is ours as followers of Jesus Christ. It is our prayer that what we as a community experience in our praying together will overflow into the rest of our lives, making us more fully human and more ‘whole’….holy! We invite you to join us in this endeavor and journey with us as we seek to grow in our love of God and to grow in our capacity to be living expressions of God’s loving peace and justice in our world.
Wishing you peace in your hearts,
Blessings,
Jean & Ron