Brian’s Reflection: Wednesday, July 22, 2009

[ Feast of St. Mary Magdalene in the Christian Calendar]

Dinner in a Quick Lunch Room

Soup should be heralded with a mellow horn, 

Blowing clear notes of gold against the stars; 

Strange entrees with a jangle of glass bars 

Fantastically alive with subtle scorn; 

Fish, by a plopping, gurgling rush of waters, 

Clear, vibrant waters, beautifully austere; 

Roast, with a thunder of drums to stun the ear, 

A screaming fife, a voice from ancient slaughters! 



Over the salad let the woodwinds moan; 

Then the green silence of many watercresses; 

Dessert, a balalaika, strummed alone; 

Coffee, a slow, low singing no passion stresses; 

Such are my thoughts as -- clang! crash! bang! – I brood 

And gorge the sticky mess these fools call food!

-Stephen Vincent Benet, poet, born on thus date,
in Bethlehem, PA, 1898


I love poetry ….. well, poetry I can understand – and a lot of it I can’t, so what is the point??

Anyway, I loved this poem by Benet! I see “lunch” as a metaphor - for Life. Jesus did too, apparently. Which is why the Christian Church (well, a large part of it) centers around the “Lord’s Supper”. If we can in any way think that, in “instituting” the Common Meal, Jesus had a conscious intent, then I think that Jesus meant His followers to see Life as a banquet - the whole thing, from “soup to nuts”, as a feasting upon God. And to understand that this feast of the soul was the essence for Life.

Without knowing it, Benet was sort of “used” – as I think poets are – as an instrument for explicating and sustaining Life. So much comes out way! Soup, entrees, fish, flesh, salad and other greens, desserts, coffee. All symbols for the phenomenal variety of experiences that enrich Life – all of them heralded by a thrumming of our amazing senses, including those of the spirit. What an amazing experience the Feast of Life is! And the question is – how attuned are we to it all?

How crassly we often make of it a “sticky mess”! We just shovel in Life like fools, oblivious to the music that accompanies every course of it, inviting us to see and swoon at the wonder of it all!

Living is not a “quick lunch room”. Living is a gourmet extravaganza!

For Jesus, bread and wine was a godly feast. And so should our Life be.

Brian+