Eating from the loaf

Sunday, June 11, 2023

Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ

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Eating from the loaf

After writing sermons every week for decades, John Ames in Marilynne Robinson’s book Gilead said, “For me writing has always felt like praying. You feel that are with someone.”

I recognize that feeling. When I am writing God feels closer and so do you. The words that flow onto the page generally clear a path between us rather than obstructing it.

I’ve always been primarily a visual learner. Even when I listen to an audiobook, I lose track quickly if I’m also looking at anything with words on a page or screen. And when I speak, words usually get tangled up and I even confuse myself, let alone others.

Poetry encourages that relationship with “someone” more than anything. A couple of days ago Dietrich Bonhoeffer spoke into these devotions. Bonhoeffer also wrote poetry now and then, and this poem “Who Am I?”, even as it expresses his loneliness, also reminds him by the end of God’s presence and even of ours.

Who am I? They often tell me

I step from my cell

calm and cheerful and poised

like a squire from his manor.

 

Who am I? They often tell me

I speak with my guards

freely, friendly and clear,

as though I were the one in charge.

 

Who am I? They also tell me

I bear days of calamity

serenely, smiling and proud,

like one accustomed to victory.

 

Am I really what others say of me?

Or am I only what I know of myself?

restless, yearning, sick, like a caged bird,

struggling for life breath, as if I were being strangled,

starving for colors, for flowers, for birdsong,

thirsting for kind words, human closeness,

shaking with rage at power lust and pettiest insult,

tossed about, waiting for great things to happen,

helplessly fearing for friends so far away,

too tired and empty to pray, to think, to work,

weary and ready to take my leave of it all?

 

Who am I? This one or the other?

Am I this one today and tomorrow another?

Am I both at once? Before others a hypocrite,

and in my own eyes a pitiful, whimpering weakling?

Or is what remains in me like a defeated army,

Fleeing in disarray from victory already won?

Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine,

Whoever I am, Thou knowest me, O God, I am thine!

I write and have written poetry to tell a story, to exorcise a personal demon, to weep or laugh, sit silently in the presence of God or shout hallelujahs.

Remember how for forty years now the Lord, your God, has directed all your journeying into the desert?

For me it’s been more like fifty years, or sixty, writing alone, to no one really, but then God’s constant presence during all of it becomes the most significant fact of all.

God will show you and has shown you that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God. Do not forget the Lord your God.

But I do, forget, as we all do, and even Moses had his bad days, his days of self-pity, which God dragged him out of. Do not forget the Lord your God. It’s usually in the writing that God drags me out of whatever hole I’ve dug for myself that day.

Nothing like it. Living and active, sharper than a two-edged sword. God speaks through all of us, and brings us back to life.

The cup of blessings that we bless, the bread that we break, are they not a participation in the body and blood of Christ? The loaf of bread is one, and we though many, are one body, for we all partake of the same loaf.

(Deuteronomy 8, Psalm 147, 1 Corinthians 10, Lauda Sion, John 6)

(posted at www.davesandel.net)

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