Eating, Drinking, Smelling, Breathing

Pentecost +11 – Year B

Imagine a cascade of life-giving substance flowing toward you. In Shikasta, by Doris Lessing, this is called SOWF – Substance-Of-We-Feeling. A question in our life and in her book is how such a Living (Flowing) Gift seems to miss its mark and we feel starved?

Part of a response is our lack of imagination to see more life available than we think or feel we experience. To help with our imagination we need to shift images of eating away from chomping and masticating stuff to finding a larger energy available through and after these technologies.

In the gospel lesson we run into the literal matter of cannibalism. Until we can get around that, we won't catch what is going on with Jesus and better follow the path he opened. (It also means we won't be able to take our place in leading so Jesus and others can draft on us – Do you follow the Tour de France or NASCAR enough to sense that pull and be willing to sometimes be the puller?).

To Eat Jesus (as opposed to Eat at Jesus') is to feed where he feeds to ingest hope and transform it into an energy of love. To Drink Jesus is to be reinvigorated with the electrolytes of life – those little moments of encouragement and glimpses into something larger. Perhaps we need to start with Smelling Jesus in the same way that even before we see the presentation of a sustaining meal, we catch a whiff of something wonderful this way come. (This is related to Breathing Jesus as referenced in this poem by Judyth Hill, Waging Peace.)

This is the bread and drink we need – flesh and hope. Blessings upon your next meal that will feed you beyond simply being fed.